Comment by ViewTrick1002

4 hours ago

Meanwhile to achieve load following in France they sync the fuel cycles of the entire fleet and then let the plants take turns across the week.

You have it the other way around. The marginal price for renewables are zero so consumers buy that first. Which means nuclear power, like the coal plant I linked, is forced to load follow. Which craters their earning potential.

Nuclear power is literally the worst combination imaginable for a grid with any amount of renewable penetration. They both compete for the same slice, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition which nucler power loses handily.

Which means, the window of opportunity for new built nuclear power is gone.

> Our analysis finds that even if, reversing the historical trend, overnight construction costs of nuclear half to 4,000 US-$2018 per kW and construction times remain below ten years, the cost-efficient share of nuclear power in European electricity generation is only around 10%. Nuclear plants must operate inflexibly and at capacity factors close to 90% to recover their investment costs, implying that operational flexibility – even if technically possible – is not economically viable.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...

This is a future you can't escape from. Flexibility is mandatory. It is coming from pure incentives. Lets explore them:

Why should a household or company with solar and storage buy expensive grid based nuclear power when their own installation delivers? They don't.

Why should this household's or company's neighbors buy expensive grid based nuclear powered electricity rather than the zero marginal cost surplus renewables? They don't.

EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.

And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-16/edf-warns...

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ViewTrick1002

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leonidasrup  2 hours ago

If you are now (in the year 2026) optimizing only for costs of producing electricity then you end with electric grid which has more or less structure of Chinese electric grid - big chunk produced with domestic fueled base-load fossil fuel power plants+nuclear power plants, as much hydro as you can build, little bit variable renewables.

If for example Germany would optimize for costs of producing electricity then they would not shut down already build and running nuclear power plants, would not import LNG, would use much more domestic coal.

If you care for CO2 emissions (which is not the case in China) then the problem of electric grid is much more complicated.

Germany is a nice example of electric grid with significant amount of variable renewable penetration (lot of solar and wind, small amount of hydropower). First they decided to phase-out nuclear power and ban construction of nuclear power plants (beginning in 2000), then they decided to replace domestic coal production with imported fossil fuels and then decide to decarbonize grid (until 2045), which is now much more expensive because nuclear phase-out.

In contrast France has already decarbonized the electric grid.

The economic situation EDF is bad because decade long taxation of EDF, the ARENH mechanism.

Under the so-called Regulated Access to Incumbent Nuclear Electricity (Accès Régulé à l’Electricité Nucléaire Historique, ARENH) mechanism set up to foster competition, rival energy suppliers could buy electricity produced by EDF's nuclear power plants located in France that were commissioned before 8 December 2010. Under such contracts, between July 2011 and December 2025, suppliers could buy up to 100 TWh - or about 25% of EDF's annual nuclear output - at a fixed price of EUR42 per MWh.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Agreement-on-pos...

https://www.8advisory.com/en/2026/03/31/nuclear-power-naviga...

So no France didn't actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, it was shielding renewable competition from its aging nuclear fleet.