Comment by goldenarm
10 hours ago
These titles are misleading, they always omit the rest of the grid and the final carbon footprint.
In March, the UK emitted 161g CO2/kWh. France did 6 times less CO2/kWh with 2x less renewables !
10 hours ago
These titles are misleading, they always omit the rest of the grid and the final carbon footprint.
In March, the UK emitted 161g CO2/kWh. France did 6 times less CO2/kWh with 2x less renewables !
The title may be misleading, but IMO not for the reasons you mentioned. "90%" is based on generation right now, live. On the site from the post you can see that for the last day (24h) renewable generation was 66%, for the last week 46%, for the last year 42%. So it's nowhere near 90% renewable in general, but it is 90% at the moment (there's sunlight and good wind). Emissions on the website from the post are lower than on the website you linked - 107 g/kWh for the week, 124 for the year - but I don't know why that is.
Because nuclear. Which is a great 20th century French achievement !
If the EPR2 doesn’t spiral into costing £17.5bn per unit as the UK-PWR has, perhaps we can get them in to “rustle me up a nuclear power station” or two, in the words of Tony Blair.
https://youtu.be/Gq-l07XmQVc
Just needs a bit of "4be2be4be2be", we can do that!
The subsidies for the EPR2 fleet is a 10 euro cents per kWh CFD and interest free loans. With the first reactor coming online in 2038 at the earliest.
That sums up towards 20 cents per kWh in total.
It’s an absolutely horrifyingly expensive boondoggle before they have even started, and it won’t deliver any electricity in the relevant timeframes for electrifying industry and society.
On top of this EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for their existing paid off nuclear fleet. Let alone new builds.
And that is France which has been extremely protectionistic shielding their nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and even then its already leaking in on pure economics.
A 10c€/kWh CfD is not strictly speaking a subsidy, at the government will recover the average market price.
That being said, the total cost per kWh could well reach 20c/kWh, which is ridiculous. It's not only not competitive against renewables, but also not competitive with natural gas (CCGT are probably around 10-15c€/kWh).
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France has an amazingly developed grid, with a lot of nuclear. But I think there's a risk of seeing grid make ups as "one size fits all". Norway and Sweden do well with huge amounts of hydro storage, but few countries have the geography for that level of hydro. Similarly, the UK has an abundance of offshore wind (especially in Scotland), so further developing that (rather than focusing heavily on nuclear because it works in France) is by no means a bad idea.
Hydro is great for long term storage, but the potential is too small and sparse on the globe to be a scalable solution.
France has much more nuclear. You can argue that is better but even if you agree it would take decades to get there.
South Korea builds nuclear power plants in five years.
Not any more they don't. Those were older reactor designs which nobody wants now. And the 5 years was first-pour to switch on. Add a few years for planning, permitting and actually supplying to the grid.
Newly approved Korean plans are aiming for 2038. Best of luck to them. I'm sceptical they'll make it.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/plans-for-two-ne...
Edit to add:
They used to be pretty fast but like everyone else seem to be slowing down significantly.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
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That's only because that chart isn't bookkeeping nuclear as renewable, which is misleading at best.
Why would you classify nuclear as renewable? You can say it's clean energy but it's not renewable.
We've probably increased the amount of fissile material on earth. It's pretty renewable at that rate.
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The definition of renewable is a bit silly, wind and solar come from the sun's nuclear fusion.