Comment by danw1979
8 hours ago
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).
The average day ahead price in France in 2025 was 6 cents per kWh.
This is with carbon trading starting to make fossil production very expensive, on top of LNG fossil gas. Which will quickly start to diminish as more renewables and storage comes online.
While the CFD runs for 40 years so into the 2080s for all but the first reactor.