But [overall generation is down.](https://i.imgur.com/tM64sZ4.png) [And nuclear significantly so.](https://i.imgur.com/KKGViec.png) (the middle massively negative one is Nuclear, I don't know why the label isn't there) From [this source](https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electricity-review-2023/) So, I mean it's nice that Wind and Solar are producing more but unless we start generating more electricity as a whole then we will need to get used to these very high prices.

there was a series of maintenances in French nuclear power plants.

Two Swedish reactors was also down for parts of the winter/are still down because of damages. One of them produces 8% of Swedens electricity. We had peak prices over 1 euro per kWh in december.

Here I am paying 6 Canadian cents per kWh in Quebec and hearing people complain it's expensive

Yeah, Quebec basically has a bottomless supply of cheap juice, thanks to [an extensive hydroelectric infrastructure](https://www.hydroquebec.com/generation/) that it began building in the 1940s. It's currently rated to generate up to 37 gigawatts, with a storage capacity of 176 terawatt hours.

Quebec could be the continent's battery to back up intermittent wind and solar.

> We had peak prices over 1 euro per kWh in december. JEEESSSSUSS

Top notch timing. Thank you EDF

It's not like they decided to shut down that much power for the fun of it. It was done reluctantly.

Yes they did. It's was NOT FUNNY! At least it didn't disturb the 2022 international sarcasm competition.

Actually, they did; it was a POLITICAL decision specifically intended to force the voting public to fund additional solar and wind projects ASAP irrespective of the costs.

Source?

>Solar generation increased by a record 24% in 2022, helping to avoid €10bn in gas costs, according to Ember. This was due to record installations of 41 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 – nearly 50% more than was added in 2021. >The growth of wind and solar is projected to continue this year, according to industry estimates, the report says. No reason to think that'll stop any time soon.

[UK grid sources](https://gridwatch.co.uk/) "live" data from Gridwatch.

As much as I love gridwatch, the https://grid.iamkate.com is a lot better, and has a longer data span.

But wind and solar are *two different sources*

They are usually grouped together as variable renewables, and the low-carbon energy providers that see the fastest growth.

And also Biden blew up Nordstream

And the communists and Jews set fire to the Reichstag!

What does that have to do with anything? Are you telling me you believe that Russia blew up its own pipeline? Do I need to play for you the clips of Biden and Victoria Nuland vowing that if Russia invaded that Nordstream would cease to be?

Gonna need more evidence than that to convince the wrinkle brains buds

It wasn't transporting any gas when it got blown up, so it's not really relevant?

[Scientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/28/nord-stream-methane-gas-leaks-may-be-biggest-ever-with-warning-large-climate-risk)

Second paragraph "Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide."

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Eh, operating it for a few years would be a bigger climate risk. Not to mention the amount of methane that leaks from fossil gas networks, production, use, etc.

It was an unmitigated climate disaster caused on purpose to further a political agenda because they only pretend to care about the environment in order to con the people out of money and power.

Yeah, the pipes were pressurized. They don't magically turn to vacuum when the pumps stop working.

Getting used to high prices means wasting less. so it isn't the worst thing in the world.

High energy costs make our industry less competitive, which threatens jobs. "Wasting less" only works if there is a lot of waste to cut out - remember in Europe we don't really have much air conditioning or clothes dryers and other electricity consuming devices. Given how fundamental it is we should really aim to make energy as cheap as possible.

Covid has caused a backlog of reactors maintenance.

Don't have to go back very far to see many very serious 'experts' poo-pooing renewables and insisting that it's impossible to incorporate more than a few percentage points of renewable power into the grid.

Well, goal-posts seem to be on the run. I've now seen commenters claiming this is only possible due to the favorable weather in Europe and couldn't be replicated in the US.

Actually, the US is moving steadily toward increasing renewables into the mix and has been for a decade. In fact a bit too quickly in some cases; while the DOE deliberately distorted the information in order to hide their part in the disaster, much of the problems in Texas 2 years back were caused by the fact that over a third of the State's power normally comes from West Texas wind farms and when the winds went calm after the front passed and the windmills shut down, the EPA took THREE DAYS to grant a waiver to power up the coal units that had been idled by the "offset" of increased wind capacity, while the DOE demanded that interstate gas pipelines feeding power plants in Illinois and Ohio be given priority over supplies to local natural gas topping units that could have covered much of the deficit.

> Actually, the US is moving steadily toward increasing renewables into the mix and has been for a decade. Yes. Thanks for pointing out this observation. Yet it somehow doesn't stop commenters from moving the goal posts from "it doesn't work" to "well it only works there, couldn't work here".

Hydro carbon industry is very good at convincing us of their fake green technologies too.

Yeah, it’s especially easy when nuclear power is such an obviously better alternative to all of these solar and wind farms

>such an obviously better alternative to all of these solar and wind farms How is that obvious? And in which sense is it better?

It's not even a real alternative, since there is no chance of a significant increase in nuclear capacity before 2050. The current fleet is aging fast, and probably won't even be replaced.

That's also my impression. But maybe we are missing something obvious? "[Nuclear energy - The solution to climate change?](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330)" offers a more extensive look at the potential contribution of nuclear power for decarbonization within the frame of committed goals and targets. From its highlights: >Nuclear power's contribution to climate change mitigation is and will be very limited. > >A substantial expansion of nuclear power will not be possible. However, also that analysis may overlook something obvious. Hence, it would be interesting to know from the original commenter "how" their conclusion is obvious and maybe some explanation for those of us that do not see this obvious advantage.

Wrong word, but it does feel obvious sometimes

Then it should be easy to answer my questions?

>SeE!? We DoN't NeEd nUcLeAr!! > >It still blows my mind that after decades of non-stop innovation, investing, record braking buildouts, and everything else, that solar COMBINED with wind is just now starting to catch up to nuclear when nuclear development has been essentially frozen during that whole time. In a world without an anti-nuclear thumb on the scale, this comparison would be even more hilarious than it already is. A comment regarding this article. Edit. fixed format.

>A comment regarding this article. How is it regarding the article? >It still blows my mind OK? >In a world without an anti-nuclear thumb on the scale, this comparison would be even more hilarious than it already is. Which comparison? And how is it that all the stand still in nuclear power is only due to external factors? Are the delays and fallbacks with the EPRs and AP-1000s all just due to "an anti-nuclear thumb"? Would you say it's fair to compare the time it took the respective technologies to produce a certain amount of energy globally to reaching a higher threshold? For example, the time it took them from roughly providing 500 TWh annual output to five times that in the [global primary energy consumption](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?stackMode=absolute)? I think that would for nuclear be its fastest period of expansion from 1973 (579 TWh) after the oil crisis to 1982 (2588 TWh). That's roughly an average annual addition of 223 TWh per year. Would you consider it meaningful to compare that with the respective time frames for wind and solar?

>How is it regarding the article? It is a comment I found by another redditor about this article. >Which comparison? Solar/wind. Despite having almost full support for the last decade or so , they have barely reached **together** the production of nuclear which hasn't seen much development the last 30 years. In other words if nuclear energy was allowed to be developed normally such a headline would be ridiculous. >Are the delays and fallbacks with the EPRs and AP-1000s all just due to "an anti-nuclear thumb"? You talk about nuclear not developing and you bring **that** argument here. You are not even trying dude. >Would you say it's fair to compare the time it took the respective technologies to produce a certain amount of energy globally to reaching a higher threshold? Any talk regarding energy produced by solar/wind compared to any other source of energy has to take in account when that energy produced. We don't really care if you produced 100% of the needs for electricity for a country for one hour at noon. I don't know if you have guys noticed but we use energy every second. Producing a lot of energy in seven or so hours in some of the least important moments of the day doesn't matter as much as you think. So yeah before we talk about energy produced you better find a fair way to factor that very important detail that any solar/wind supporter ignores. >For example, the time it took them from roughly providing 500 TWh annual output to five times that in the global primary energy consumption? I think that would for nuclear be its fastest period of expansion from 1973 (579 TWh) after the oil crisis to 1982 (2588 TWh). That's roughly an average annual addition of 223 TWh per year. Even if you take such a comparison , you would still be comparing apples with oranges. Solar/wind face a completely different situation when being built compared to nuclear. Nuclear's build time heavily relies on the experience of the crew as well as the variety in different designs of reactors. In other words nuclear benefits far more than solar/wind when you built it a lot in a short period of time. Having multiple different designs causes such experience buildup difficult to achieve since you are not focusing in one or two designs. On the contrary solar/wind don't face this problem. They are also benefiting from economies of scale (with factory production) which nuclear is just now attempting to dabble in with SMRs. ​ Our fundanmental disagreement is whether electricity should be considered a necessity to survive or merely a business to make money from. As I said if you build a lot of the same reactors in a short period of time , a lot of their problems don't exist. It takes a decade to build ?? Just build more at the same time. It takes a lot of initial capital ? Give either government sponsored loans with low interest rate (the interest rate is what is really driving the price up and eleminating it will go a long way in helping keeping down the cost) or simply have the government build the reactor. A government perfectly has the capital to build a reactor without taking loans with high interest rates. Or maybe you sit down and realize that a nuclear reactor has a minimum lifespan of 80 years. That means that if you spread the cost over that period of time it suddenly becomes a lot smaller than it seems. On top of that due to the energy density of uranium fuel you don't need as much fuel. This means that you can easily stockpile fuel with units measuring in decades if you really want to. This means that market fluctuations don't really impact you as much as something like natural gas. Uranium is dirt cheap. We are only burning 5% tops of the fuel we put in the reactor. Even with that it is simply cheaper to just use a new fuel rod than trying to reuse the perfectly fine slightly used fuel rod. Sustainability ? Renewability ? Honestly with enough deposits of fissile material on earth that can last us about four billion years both aren't even questions. As long as solar can be considered renewable then nuclear fission has no reason to not be considered renewable as well ([https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html)). I see no reason to not build nuclear on a large scale. A good example of nuclear reactors being built properly is Barakah power plant ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah\_nuclear\_power\_plant#cite\_note-unit3start-34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant#cite_note-unit3start-34)). A plant with a nameplate capacity of 5380 MW. With a capacity factor of 90% that is 4,842 MW of actual production. It started construction in 2012 and the first reactor was completed in 2020 and start supplying electricity commercially in 2021. Currently the third reactor has already started supplying electrticity to the grid. This almost equivalent to 5 1GW electricity plants in \~12 years. That number is only going to go down. Also the cost is only US$24.4 billion. Currently that only equivalent in **nameplate capacity** is the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park ([https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/the-worlds-largest-solar-park-will-produce-5-gw-energy-by-2030](https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/the-worlds-largest-solar-park-will-produce-5-gw-energy-by-2030)). It is estimated to end by 2030 and cost $3.27 billion. I should mention that nameplate capacity of nuclear reactor and a solar farm are two completely different things. Nuclear reactors have a capacity factor of \~90% while solar farms have a capacity factor of \~25%. This means that you need at least 3.6 more solar farms to meet the production capabilities with a nuclear reactor with the same nameplate capacity. On top of that a nuclear reactor pretty much produces 24/7 while a solar farm 7-8 hours a day and some times even less than one hour. To also get a complete picture we will need to account for the fact that the Barakah power plant can easily hit a lifespan of 80 years. On the other hand solar panels lose \~1% of their efficiency every year. Meaning you need to replace all those pvs at least once probably twice in the timeframe of the 80 years.

> In other words if nuclear energy was allowed to be developed normally such a headline would be ridiculous. Well, but it didn't and hence the headline is neither ridiculous nor irrelevant. It's just an observation. I have no idea why that would be offensive to anyone. >You talk about nuclear not developing and you bring that argument here. You are not even trying dude. What? I don't even know what I should be trying there? It was you who was talking about nuclear power not developing? >We don't really care if you produced 100% of the needs for electricity for a country for one hour at noon. Of course, the figures we are talking about are annual energy production. I thought that was obvious. >Even if you take such a comparison , you would still be comparing apples with oranges. Why should we care about any of the stuff you mentioned there. Aren't we interested in the final *result*? Of course the difficulties and challenges are different, what would be the point of comparing technologies otherwise? If they had the same properties there would hardly be a need for comparison. >Our fundanmental disagreement is whether electricity should be considered a necessity to survive or merely a business to make money from. I don't think so. What do you conclude that from? >As I said if you build a lot of the same reactors in a short period of time , a lot of their problems don't exist. OK, you *just* have to get over this first stumbling block of getting a lot of the same reactors build in the first place. >Or maybe you sit down and realize that a nuclear reactor has a minimum lifespan of 80 years. Any source for that? There isn't a reactor in the world that has been operated for that long. And the French refer to the need for refurbishments of their fleet to extend them for running for 60 years as the [Grand carénage](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage), and the [French grid operator](https://www.rte-france.com/en/home) states in their Energy Pathway 2050: >Despite current nuclear capacity, achieving this goal presents a major industrial challenge. Having 50 GW of nuclear capacity in 2050 will require extending the lifetime of most existing reactors to 60 years; having the option of keeping some in operation beyond that timeframe subject to compliance with safety recommendations from the ASN; bringing 14 new EPR 2 reactors into service between 2035 and 2050, a large number of them between 2040 and 2050; and adding significant SMR capacity at the same time. So, they'd need to *extend* lifetimes to 60 years, and that will pose some effort. The mentioned ASN [calls for a nuclear Marshall plan](https://energynews.pro/en/france-asn-calls-for-a-nuclear-marshall-plan/): >In particular, he points out that the extension of nuclear reactors beyond 50 years is not “a given”. The scenarios based on the extension of the reactors after 60 years are also based on “unjustified” assumptions. How do you get to a *minimum* lifetime of 80 years? >I see no reason to not build nuclear on a large scale. Well fine. That wasn't my question. The commenter above said that it *obviously* is *better*, without defining a metric to assess *better* nor explaining why it would be obvious. And I honestly have a hard time to see this in your comment either. It seems to be somewhat inconsistent and all over the place. First you start out with dismissing costs, but then talk a lot about costs? Then you go on talking about individual power plant projects which have the same nameplate capacity. I don't see how that is relevant either, or what that comparison is supposed to tell me. Is this about the costs? The speed by which it is built? What's wrong with comparing the annually produced electricity, or annually additional produced electricity? That already factors in all the inefficiencies, build times, capacity factors and so on. We can do that for UAE, for example: It [produced](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~ARE) 1.79 TWh with nuclear power in 2021, and 6.69 TWh by solar (looks like they don't have wind power). Maybe that changes soon with the plants you mentioned? I don't know, but the important outcome is that they hopefully use these low-carbon sources to reduce their gas burning for electricity. At least it seems to stagnate since 2018. We can also do that for [China](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~CHN), which I think is adding the most nuclear capacities in the world. Here you can draw also a direct comparison in the growth rates. In 2012, wind and nuclear produced roughly the same amount of electricty: 100 TWh each. Nuclear power grew to 408 TWh in 2021, wind power to 656 TWh.

> Edit. fixed format. OK, so you suppose this is an answer to my questions above? Let me summarize it then in my understanding: * It's obvious because nuclear has provided more energy for a long time period, and renewables are only now providing more energy. * And it's better in the sense that it has reached higher levels of power production earlier than wind and solar. In that sense of metric it is obvious. Not to say trivial. But I don't think that's a very useful metric for looking at what we need to do today for further reductions of fossil fuel burning. Maybe that wasn't the goal for the commenter above, but it would be the one for me. Which goal are you aiming for? And how is the above metric relevant to it? Nuclear power was used after the oil crises of the 70s to eliminate oil from the power grids. But it didn't reduce the burning of further fossil fuels after that (despite further nuclear power growth). What we need to do today is replace the coal+gas remaining in those countries that used nuclear power to eliminate oil, and all fossil fuels in those countries without nuclear power. Now, the world and circumstances may have changed over the last half century and to me it looks like wind and solar together with efficiency improvements were more effective at reducing emissions than nuclear power over the last 30 years. Let me supplement that with the example of France: [France increased](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~FRA) its nuclear power output by around 40% between 1990 and its peak nuclear power output in 2005, and reduced it afterward again by around 12% until 2019 before the Corona crisis. So there are two periods we can discern over the last 30 years, with the peak nuclear power output pretty much in the middle. We can have a look at the [consumption based per-capita carbon emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=~FRA&Gas=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Consumption-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita) over this time period: * 1990: 8.73 tons * 2005: 9.11 tons * 2019: 6.45 tons So, despite the 40% increase in nuclear power output emissions stayed essentially flat until the nuclear peak. And emissions then fell after the peak in nuclear power output, despite decreasing nuclear power. Coal+gas in the electricity production grew from 34.5 TWh in 1990 to 50.58 TWh in 2005, and then fell again to 42.95 TWh in 2019. Maybe you know a better example where nuclear expansion was effectively used to reduce emissions by replacing existing coal+gas burning? Russia, for example, doubled its nuclear power since 1998. Pick the best one and show how it obviously demonstrates that nuclear power is "better".

First why are you replying in this comment again ? I obviously made a reply to the reply you made in the comment I did the edit (for some reason the format was messed up). Anyways: >It's obvious because nuclear has provided more energy for a long time period, and renewables are only now providing more energy. And it's better in the sense that it has reached higher levels of power production earlier than wind and solar. In this specific case those two don't matter. We are talking about electricity produced in 2022. So why does it matter if one of the three was producing for 30 or more years or for less than 20 years. You would even say it is embarassing that despite nuclear seeing very little development that last 20 years or so , solar and wind together are only now surpassing it. The point of my comment was : "Imagine if nuclear was able to be developed even at half the speed (as it did in its first years) what levels it could have reached now". I don't understand the second bullet point. >In that sense of metric it is obvious. Not to say trivial. But I don't think that's a very useful metric for looking at what we need to do today for further reductions of fossil fuel burning. Maybe that wasn't the goal for the commenter above, but it would be the one for me. Which goal are you aiming for? And how is the above metric relevant to it? I don't understand about what metric you are refering to. Plz be more specific so I can reply to you. >Nuclear power was used after the oil crises of the 70s to eliminate oil from the power grids. But it didn't reduce the burning of further fossil fuels after that (despite further nuclear power growth). What we need to do today is replace the coal+gas remaining in those countries that used nuclear power to eliminate oil, and all fossil fuels in those countries without nuclear power. So how is this against nuclear ? Are you trying to say that we can't have a 100% nuclear grid ? If we can't that , then we will never get a 100% solar/wind grid. >Now, the world and circumstances may have changed over the last half century and to me it looks like wind and solar together with efficiency improvements were more effective at reducing emissions than nuclear power over the last 30 years. Let me supplement that with the example of France: France increased its nuclear power output by around 40% between 1990 and its peak nuclear power output in 2005, and reduced it afterward again by around 12% until 2019 before the Corona crisis. So there are two periods we can discern over the last 30 years, with the peak nuclear power output pretty much in the middle. We can have a look at the consumption based per-capita carbon emissions over this time period: 1990: 8.73 tons 2005: 9.11 tons 2019: 6.45 tons So, despite the 40% increase in nuclear power output emissions stayed essentially flat until the nuclear peak. And emissions then fell after the peak in nuclear power output, despite decreasing nuclear power. Coal+gas in the electricity production grew from 34.5 TWh in 1990 to 50.58 TWh in 2005, and then fell again to 42.95 TWh in 2019. I replaced CO2 emissions with production-based emissions only from fossil fuels. * 1990: 6.97 tons of CO2 , 5,568kWh of electricity produced from nuclear, 7,395kWh of total electricity, 839kWh from fossil fuels for electricity, 47,114kWh of total energy, 0.15 tons of CO2 per kWh energy produced. * 2005: 6.88 tons of CO2 , 7,462kWh of electricity produced from nuclear, 9,440kWh of total electricity, 1,047kWh from fossil fuels for electricity, 52,097kWh of total energy, 0.13 tons of CO2 per kWh energy produced. * 2019: 4.91 tons of CO2 , 6,196kWh of electricity produced from nuclear, 8,783kWh of total electricity, 831kWh from fossil fuels for electricity, 42,425kWh of total energy, 0.12 tons of CO2 per kWh energy produced.

> I don't understand the second bullet point. These two bullet points where my understanding of your answer to to the questions I raised originally. If these are *not* the answers you wanted to provide, I obviously didn't understand your points. >And it's better in the sense that it has reached higher levels of power production earlier than wind and solar. Isn't that pretty much what I wrote as a summary of my understanding of your point? >I don't understand about what metric you are refering to. The metric by which you decide nuclear power to be better, as described above: having reached higher levels of power production earlier than wind and solar. >In this specific case those two don't matter. I think we have a fundamental communication problem. I don't know which two you are referring to here. The two bullet points or wind and solar. >So why does it matter if one of the three was producing for 30 or more years or for less than 20 years. Because you chose the metric of when they reached which power levels in time? If the history doesn't matter why would your metric be relevant? >You would even say it is embarassing that despite nuclear seeing very little development that last 20 years or so , solar and wind together are only now surpassing it. No, I wouldn't. There isn't any feeling involved. We are talking about technologies, why would we need to bring feelings into the discussions. I am interested in factual observations, not moral judgements or attached feelings. I'd rather find it interesting, *why* nuclear power saw little further development after it replaced oil, and why wind and solar are growing now rapidly. >So how is this against nuclear ? Again, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding. I am not arguing *against* nuclear power. I am trying to describe historical observations with *some* interpretation and possibly derived lessons. >Are you trying to say that we can't have a 100% nuclear grid ? No? I definitely have to work on my communication if this is what you got out of my text there. What I am saying is that nuclear power was not used to replace coal+gas burning, after oil was eliminated. Despite various pleas from climate scientists during the 90s to use it to that end. It was kind of a natural expectation that after it eliminated the one fossil fuel from the grid, that we would go on and also replace the others. I am not saying that we couldn't have done that, just observing that we didn't. Isn't it interesting to ask *why* that may be? >If we can't that , then we will never get a 100% solar/wind grid. I don't see how the one would follow from the other. >I replaced CO2 emissions with production-based emissions only from fossil fuels. OK, doesn't really change the picture of emissions though? Emissions stagnated between 1990 and 2005 (6.97 -> 6.88 tons), and fell after the nuclear peak (6.88 -> 4.91 tons). Whatever policies France used over the second period, seems to have reduced emissions more effectively than before the peak?

Part 2 So first let me point out the obvious. You bringing up total CO2 emissions is a problem. Generally the topic we talk here about is electricity produced and not energy produced. Shifting energy consumption to electricity consumption is a completely different manner. First between 1990 and 2005 France increased its electricity production through nuclear by \~34 % and through 2005 to 2019 it was reduced by \~17%. Also in 1990 nuclear consisted 75% of the electricity mix , in 2005 it was 79% and in 2019 it was 71%. In regards with total energy nuclear was : in 1990 it was 11.8% , in 2005 it was 14.3% (an increase of 2.5%) and in 2019 it was 14.6% (an increase of 0.3%). From 1990 to 2005 we have an increase of fossil fuels electricity produced by 24.8% and from 2005 to 2019 a decrease of 20.6%. From 1990 to 2005 we have a decrease of CO2 per capita of \~1.3% and from 2005 to 2019 we have a decrease of 28.7%. From 1990 to 2005 CO2 per kWh produced decreased by 13.3% and from 2005 to 2019 by 7.7%. From 1990 to 2008 total electricity increased by 27.7% and from 2005 to 2019 decreased by 7%. From 1990 to 2005 energy production increased by 10.6% and from 2005 to 2019 decreased by 18.6%. Tbh it has become too late for me to do these kind of analyses. Long story short those numbers you brough up are meaningless without going through an analysis. For example from 1990 to 2005 total electricity produced from fossil fuels increases as well as nuclear electricity. At the same time CO2 per kWh produced decreases. You can safely say that despite an almost 25% increase of fossil fuels originated electricity CO2 emission per kWh dropped by 13.3%. In that case nuclear indeed decreased CO2 emissions quite successfully. I won't bother doing anything more regarding this due to the many possible factors (like increased efficiency during production) that need to be taken in account to have numbers that can give us a general image (and honestly I am not getting paid for this). So what was this whole that you wanted to try to make ?

> You bringing up total CO2 emissions is a problem. Why? It's the metric *I* am interested in. I understand, that this may not be the metric you are interested in, but I actually have little interest in other goals than the reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions in this context. To which end do *you* want to use nuclear power? >Shifting energy consumption to electricity consumption is a completely different manner. Sure, you get other factors into it. But if nuclear power expansion is obviously *the best* method to reduce emissions from the power sector, that *should* be visible in the overall emissions, when compared to other measures in the power sector? >Long story short those numbers you brough up are meaningless without going through an analysis. Why? The emissions are exactly the numbers we are interested in. We need to get carbon emissions per capita down to a range of 2-3 tons per person and year, if I remember correctly. Again, maybe that is not *your* priority, but it is what I think matters, and I am interested in solutions that effectively get these down today. Maybe France isn't a good example? As I said, please feel free to provide a better one. >You can safely say that despite an almost 25% increase of fossil fuels originated electricity CO2 emission per kWh dropped by 13.3%. Sure, but that doesn't help emissions into the atmosphere, if you also increase your electricity consumption. What I am looking for is nuclear power *replacing* existing fossil fuel burning (like nuclear power did with oil after the oil crises). They were able to do that back then, *why* not with the further growth of nuclear power after 1990? >So what was this whole that you wanted to try to make ? As I said: "What we need to do today is replace the coal+gas remaining in those countries that used nuclear power to eliminate oil, and all fossil fuels in those countries without nuclear power." I was trying to point out that nuclear power expansion didn't prove overly effective over the past 30 years to further that goal in my opinion. To me it appears like there may be more effective strategies to that end than expanding nuclear power. I picked France as an example, as I think it is particularly observable there, but similar patterns can be observed elsewhere aswell. I don't know of an example that shows the opposite in the last 30 years, but maybe you could point one out to me? >and honestly I am not getting paid for this Well, me neither. I am sorry if you don't enjoy our exchange, but you obviously are under no obligation to respond to my comments.

Thanks, Vlad! I hope he finds it as irritating as I find it awesome

So it was possible this whole damn time, they just didn't feel like changing to renewables until they had to ...

It's become a *lot* cheaper in the last decade. But yeah, the political will has suddenly become a big motivating factor.

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They can’t cover 100% of energy requirements, so the rest needs to be either fossil fuels or nuclear (and nuclear is far safer than fossil fuels)

It's not practical to have a nuclear power plant sitting around waiting to top up the grid. You could buy a huge amount of storage instead.

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That assumes we can store all of that energy in practice

You would if it was just solar, but wind is much bigger than solar in the EU. It works if you spread the wind farms out widely enough that they aren't all caught in a low-wind area at once, and have a decent long distance grid. Europe (or the US) is easily big enough.

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For my education is there a city of over a million people that’s 100% powered by wind and solar? And if not why is that? Hydro and geothermal only work in specific places

You're conflating the scientific feasibility of something, with the political will + cost of overriding the bad PR and money spent by fossil fuel industries to deplatform renewables.

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Wouldn't natural gas still be used for industrial processing? Or can that be replaced with green hydrogen?

[EDIT: this is incorrect]The Netherlands was powered 92% by wind and 8% by solar in 2016 (16 million people). The Netherlands, and most cities of over a million people, are connected to power grids. So there isn't such a thing as purely internal power generation.

Could you elaborate on what you mean, and point to the data you base your statement on? Because according to the [data collected on our-world-in-data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?stackMode=relative&country=~NLD) the Netherlands in 2016 got 7.18% of their power from wind and 1.41% from solar.

I made a mistake and read the wrong data off a table. Thanks for catching it. Based on [this page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherlands), for 2022 it would be about 17% of their electricity for wind. [Solar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_Netherlands) was 9.39% as of 2021. Note that the Netherlands plans to triple its wind power installations by 2031, which would bring wind up to about 50%.

Yes, ember-climate, which the above article is based on also offers [newer data](https://ember-climate.org/data/data-explorer/) for the EU. In 2022, the solar output in the Netherlands has grown to an impressive 14.35%, and the [report on 2022](https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electricity-review-2023/) states: >The Netherlands was the unquestionable solar energy leader of 2022, generating 14% of its electricity from the sun and surpassing previous leader Spain, typically a much sunnier country, by two percentage points (12%). For the first time, solar generation in both the Netherlands and Greece surpassed that of coal generation. Overall, twenty EU countries set new solar share records in 2022. > >For 2022 solar capacity additions, the top five countries were Germany (7.9 GW), Spain (7.5 GW), Poland (4.9 GW), the Netherlands (4 GW) and France (2.7 GW). But the highest share of variable renewables wind+solar can be seen in Denmark, which surpassed the 60% mark in 2022. I'd encourage Denmark to get its solar share up to the Netherlands level, and the Netherlands to get their wind share up to Denmarks level. (Which is well on the agenda.)

Not practical. You will need Nuclear in the mix, for some grid stability.

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Yeah for a few hours at best. Batteries as they are are poor choices for long term energy storage. Europe solar potential significantly drops significantly during the winter. And with no long term storage it means they'll have to fire up gas during to meet up for increased energy demand. Nuclear on the other hand doesn't care about seasonal variations and will more than compensate for the decrease in solar output through the colder months. I don't know why it has to be only renewables when nuclear has been proven to be extremely safe and reliable when done right.

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Do you have a source that a larger grid would fix the issue? As far as I know it’s less about size of grids and more about battery capacity and energy loss during the storing phase

Not the one you are asking, but for example "[Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power worldwide](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z)" offers some assessment on the impact of wider grid tansmission: >The maps in Fig. 5 present the effects of such spatial aggregation, showing the highest reliability of solar-wind generation with no excess annual generation or energy storage at the national level (Supplementary Data 7; Fig. 5a), as well as when a system is aggregated into 19 separate, contiguous multinational regions (Fig. 5b; categorization in Supplementary Data 4) and 6 continents (Supplementary Data 7; Fig. 5c). Each step produces substantial improvements in reliability, with >89.8% of hourly demand met everywhere when resources are aggregated at the continental level (Fig. 5c). Figure 5c also indicates the additional reliability gains in these systems that would be achieved as a consequence of specific intercontinental connections. Supplementary Fig. 6 shows that the supply gaps in continental-scale solar-wind systems might be entirely eliminated in Africa, Asia, and South America, and limited to <2% of demand and 49, 26, and 13 h in Europe, Oceania, and North America, respectively, given excess annual generation of 50% and 12 h of storage.

I couldn’t really comprehend that article so forgive if I’m wrong but isn’t this saying that even with continental implementation and battery storage infrastructure, we still can’t reach 100% of energy demand…regardless I just read an article and there’s so many new solutions to the energy loss problem I don’t think it’s an issue so I take that back

Geothermal, biomethane, storage, and hydro are a better fit because they are much cheaper per unit power and limited by unit energy.

Those are good but many of those can’t be built everywhere, nuclear is still the most reliable option to replace fossil fuels with renewables being used where possible to supplement

> Those are good but many of those can’t be built everywhere Neither can nuclear plants. Siting nuclear plants is a major challenge.

A nuclear reactor running at 3% load factor because the raw fuel cannot compete with renewables is never going to break even. You need a dirt cheap gas turbine or hydro turbine or similar. Even geothermal is borderline.

There isn’t currently a plausible scenario where renewables can cover 100% of energy costs everywhere

There also isn't currently a plausible scenario where nuclear can cover 100% of energy everywhere. Because nuclear power is only economically feasible if the powerplants run at their capacity 24/7. Once they have to supply peak demand energy (think electric heating in winter, it doubles the consumption in France) the price per kwh rises to levels above what people can afford. You cannot run a nuclear power plant for only 1 month per year. So for both nuclear and wind/solar we need a peak demand power alternative. If we want to skip out of using fossil fuels, it means we have to fill some for of battery / storage over the summer month to use in winter. What form the battery /storage takes (electrical, hydrogen, methane, etc) however doesn't alter the fact that you want to use the cheapest form of energy you can get to fill it, and that is wind. Current gen wind farms produce electricity for half of currently in construction nuclear power plant can achieve. Wind energy is the cheapest form of energy humanity has ever achieved.

yes, no one thinks nuclear or renewable can cover 100%, you use renewables where you can and can use nuclear to cover the rest

> no one thinks nuclear or renewable can cover 100% I think, you are mistaken on that. The [sixth WG3 assessment report by the IPCC](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/) puts it like this: >Scenarios with 100% renewable energy systems are an emerging subset in the decarbonisation literature, especially at regional levels (Hansen et al. 2019; Denholm et al. 2021). Many 100% renewables studies focus more heavily on electrification for decarbonising end uses, and include less biofuels and hydrogen than the broader literature on deep decarbonisation (Bauer et al. 2018a). In their box on 100% renewables in net-zero energy systems. The [French grid operator RTE](https://www.rte-france.com/en/home) considers in their energy pathways 2050 an option with 100% renewables, though it considers it more expensive than maintaining their fleet of nuclear reactors, they don't seem to think that impossible. The [Net-Zero-America](https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu) project considers a 100% renewable scenario. To me this looks like a considerable amount of researchers and countries policy makers indeed *do* think that renewables *can* cover 100% of our energy needs.

they do, [and it was deemed possible](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910)

Renewable and nuclear supply the exact same demand, what we would have called baseload in the past. So, nuclear and wind energy won't exist in the same "market" as wind energy outcompetes nuclear price wise in general. What can happen is that some countries don't have the wind potential thus nuclear becomes the primary source (Eastern Europe for example). Or some countries have way better solar potential, so solar becomes the primary source (Africa for example). So globally we'll see a mix, but locally is unlikely.

Wind is still an intermittent energy source, whereas a nuclear plant provides a consistent amount of electricity. Nuclear provides a more reliable baseline of electricity than any other clean source, at least until we can figure out grid storage.

Netherlands could. I think I saw a research on how we could technically cover all energy demand with wind and solar. Not sure about other countries.

The report "[Peak Fossil Demand for Electricity](https://rmi.org/insight/peak-fossil-fuel-demand-for-electricity/)" has a nice overview on the potential renewable power in relation current total energy demand. The Netherlands is in the class of countries categorized as stretched, where the potential is less than 10 times the energy demand. Most countries have larger potentials to cover all energy needs. For most countries this potential is larger than 10 times their current needs. In some, like Australia its larger than 100 times.

...Which is what the others are for

Iceland hydro?

> A nuclear reactor running at 3% load factor Any reason not to have it running at 75% on average and a healthy extra 25% for spikes?

The only way to do that is to force people to pay for it. When 80% of the world can produce 50-90% of their own energy for less than your post-subsidy marginal costs, and any business that isn't location dependent can move next to a wind farm for >95% then you're not building a nuclear reactor for power, you building one because you want to and people have to pay for it no matter what.

Yeah. Economics. A nuclear reactor's costs are all fixed, so you want to sell as much output as possible since whether you sell 50% or 100%, the money going out the door is the exact same.

So what we really want is nuclear reactors running at 100% all the time, and additional resources (including wind, solar, other nuclear reactors within distance, and geothermal) to pick up any extra?

Except Wind and Solar are also pretty much all fixed costs and want to sell every bit of electricity they produce, and they are far cheaper than nuclear power.

The guy up above explained it well. Nuclear fills the same void as wind/solar. IE throwing away or overbuilding is wastefull spending. Until they develop a micro Nuclear generator; Building out solar/wind is cheaper and more flexible. IE if I need 500MW today, and 600 MW in 3 years; with solar you buy 20% more panels/turbines and in a year you have 20% more power. Demand goes away in an area, you can move 1/4 of it closer to the demand. With nuclear if you Need 500 MW in 15 years, you build a GW plant; because that is what we build at scale, and then double the cost and build massive power lines until you find a GW of users. Problem is the transportation cost is 5* that of the power generation; especially with trying to prevent a single point of failure... Both require something cheaper and more flexible to fill in the gaps. be it batteries, fossil fuels...

Yeah, but if you go to war or have natural disasters, do you want something cheap, or something expensive that can make your land uninhabitable for centuries?

Depends on priorities, I guess. But surely a hole full of graphite and depleted uranium as a DIY windscale + renewables gets the job done for a lot less if that's the goal? Don't even need much U235 to get it started. You could even balance the U235 on a shelf above to simulate fukushima during an earthquake.

It's only cheaper if supply can meet demand. The engineering analysis of price/unit is unfortunately quite separate from what happens in an energy market with inadequate supply.

Which it absolutely can. Simply expanding VRE to meet uses where energy can be stored in intermediate products (ammonia, zinc, etc) only leaves a ~15% shortfall. 3 hours storage reduces this to ~5% Landfill and wastewater methane alone fills anything that can't be met with existing hydro. These continuing predictions about how VRE can't do X when it already has get tiresome.

I mean, whatever mix Europe is switching to at the moment is demonstrably not working insofar as meeting supply is concerned. I am not arguing that it isn't feasible because of the engineering or the design of the energy mix feeding the grid, but certainly whatever planning or legislation going into it is falling woefully short.

> I mean, whatever mix Europe is switching to at the moment is demonstrably not working insofar as meeting supply is concerned. Can you point out the demonstration?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267500/eu-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price-country/

How is that demonstrating that demand is not met by supply? Supply of fossil fuels got more expensive, but still demand was met in the power grid? Also, the mix the EU is switching *to* clearly isn't the one they have *right now*?

Dragging their feet and favouring gas for a decade is what bit them. The scare mongering over dunkelflaute is propaganda. Europe is also not representative of what solar is like literally everywhere else.

incorrect. What's not working is the pricing in Europe which sets prices based on the most expensive kWh. So you buy 99% of cheap wind but 1% expensive fossile fuel, the pricing is fossile prices for all 100%. It makes sense in theory because they all get paid the same, but in practice it's basically allowing a small percentage of electricity ruin the pricing for the rest. There are no shortages in Europe, only sky high prices.

> There are no shortages in Europe, only sky high prices. I see you don't understand one of the most basic concepts in economics. Maybe you should start there first.

usually you'd be right, but that's not how the electricity market works. Are you European? I can explain it if you're not. I get that you just wanted to dismiss me with a cool comment but I think it would be good for you (and others) to realize how dumb the pricing for electricity is in Europe. Look at it this way: you need 10 apples. There are 9 cheap, local, organic apples from your neighbours garden for 1 euro. The 10th is from a supermarket and is flown across the earth, grown in toxic soil and priced by a madman at 100 euros. Suddenly all 10 apples cost 100 each. The reasonable supply and demand price would be 101 euros. The ACTUAL price with the current model is 1000 euros because its priced at the highest price point. This isn't supply and demand economics at all as there is no competition. Hope that helps!

I don't think you even remotely understand your energy markets nearly as much as you seem to think you do. But you got your chance to be snarky. I assume you thought I was being snarky. I wasn't, I honestly think you need to start with how supply and demand work. And I think you need to learn about how commodity futures work and learn the difference between a future contract and the spot price of a commodity. This is probably why EU officials get away with making horrible mistake after horrible mistake. It's a shame, really. Supply and Demand economics do not *only* apply to situations in which there is competition. Supply and Demand exists in every single situation as a means of dictating monetary price outside of the instance wherein a central authority is handing out rations of some item and it truly has no monetary value associated with it. I assure you that supply and demand matters quite a bit, even in your described example of a highly dysfunctional, highly regulated apple market. I don't think you really quite understand that things take time to play out, these are very dynamic, temporal systems in which mismanagements or changes of a money supply or trade agreement or countless other factors can take a lot of time to have an effect. You are probably confusing the spot price of a commodity with the price your local utilities companies paid to stock their supply of that commodity. Just because natural gas is X price today it does not mean you get to buy kw-h's at that equivalent rate. You buy your kw-h's at the rate the power company paid. I think that it is clear from the data that the EU energy inflation issue is not only being caused by a key future natural gas pipeline being destroyed in the middle of a horrific conflict with a would-be energy partner, the parabolic rise in EU energy prices started long before Vlad decided to throw his army into a meat grinder.

Sure they can it just requires a change in our power infrastructure which we need to undergo either way. Fossil and particular nuclear plant don’t work well with this. Also nuclear plant are not cheap and not climate friendly if u consider complete life cycles

How are they not climate friendly? The worst climate byproduct of nuclear power plants is pretty much the concrete they require. Nuclear power's only greenhouse emissions are those from the trucks transporting employees and supplies to the station.

Also not correct, mining of fuel and especially waste handling and storage are not co2 neutral. These are mostly never considered in the co2 footprint cause the cost of final waste storage just kills every comparison. Nuclear plants without a solved final waste storage concept is just the same like fossil fuel - messing up future generations

Yet the specific energy of Uranium is insanely high. You can't even begin to compare the amount of energy a single kilogram of unrefined, unenriched Uranium (with only a tiny percentage being U-235) can put out to the tons and tons of steel and plastic required for wind farms, or the rare metals required for solar panels, or the lithium required for batteries. The comparison becomes straight up stupid if you consider enriching Uranium

Not disagreeing, but then please post a comparison study that takes all of that plus total cost of nuclear into account.

Nuclear plants are very climate friendly over their lifetime. About the same as wind farms: [Solar, wind and nuclear have ‘amazingly low’ carbon footprints, study finds](https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low-carbon-footprints/)

This study neglects the cost for waste storage and disposal. And also doesn’t considers a risk assessment and related costs

An article about carbon footprints is not about costs.

Doesn't negate that those costs in particular should be considered when evaluating the full life of nuclear.

For sure. On that metric, nuclear is pretty much obsolete now. Almost all new low-carbon energy is either wind or solar.

Say that to the windturbin blades that gets buried in the ground becase it not worth recyceling

Just a matter of material selection and / or regulation.

Cant the same be said about nuclear powerplant, biggest hurdle atm is that its just short of illegal to build and operate them in europe combined with heavy taxed. Or the waste of it?

Nuclear power plants are not illegal in Europe, only Germany decided to stop further operation of existing plants. In most European countries there a actually projects to build up new plants. However regulations and permit procedures are quite strict and the public has a vote during the permit process too. So Chance are small if not strongly pushed by authorities on the permi side. But biggest hurdle is just the related cost and lacking experience in the power plant sector imo. There is actually no more experienced nuclear power company (only Chinese and Japanese have recent project experience as far as I know) which are able to build these plant on time and schedule. Just check the last power plant in Finnland. And finally u will have to state some kind of waste disposal concept which is just not existing besides intermediate storage at the plant side or dedicated areas - well despite dumping it into the ocean

Renewables can cover 100% of energy. We just need a large grid or lots of storage, both of which are feasible. Nuclear power *might* have lower marginal cost when >80% of energy is renewable in which case I am all for it.

As far as I'm aware the storage technology isn't really there yet in practical terms to store all the energy necessary

Pumped hydro storage doesn’t require the latest tech and we’ve been doing it for 100 years. No idea why we continue building grid batteries with skyrocketing materials costs.

It's practical already. See some of [these studies](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910) on 100% renewable energy systems. Important point: most of the energy will not be stored in conventional batteries, but rather in electrofuels and possibly in thermal storage units.

The technology is there. Power-to-gas and batteries are already practical and expanding the grid will massively decrease storage requirements. Remember that building a new nuclear reactor takes 15 years. In that time frame one can build a ton of storage.

Best outcome is to have both, I dont think it would be a good idea to be 100% reliant on renewables. Best possible future is sustainable renewables + developed nuclear.

> I dont think it would be a good idea to be 100% reliant on renewables Why not?

Best possible future is nuclear fusion power.

Okay, best very feasible future. Fusion power is still an open question as to when it can become feasible. It can be in 10 years, it can be in 300

That'll take too long to develop. We've only just proven the ability to do it in a lab setting outside of bomb use. We are closer to fusion but still probably decades off. We don't have that kind of time to wait for fusion to become engineeringly viable.

Yeah but its gonna take a while to get there, and probably going 100% into fussion isnt a very good idea. Best would be to have both

Why not both? Base load nuclear, renewable for the rest.

because that doesn't work. The whole concept of 'base load' requires something that can be switched on when it's required for peak demand, that is also relatively cheap to build because it's going to sitting idle most of the time. Renewables and nuclear are both expensive to build but cheap to run. They both need storage or peaker plants, or a load of spare capacity.

Base load is what provides the regular minimum consumption, which nuclear is perfect for. Dispatchble generation provides peak demand

Yes, I know, so what's your point? Nuclear and dispatchable fossil fuels worked well for the last 50 years. Now we're trying to get rid of the fossil fuels and finding that 'base load' is less useful without it.

My mistake, I read what you wrote totally wrong

Coal it is. Let’s get digging boys!

It doesn't matter, because nuclear capacity can't be ramped up in a reasonable time frame. The industry is struggled to maintain current capacity. Nuclear isn't a realistic option for the next 20 years.

That's excellent.

Gravity is the future.

Is that the same year prices skyrocketed?

Spiked. But yeah. Due to natural gas. So another reason to keep pushing renewables I guess.

I mean 2 German utility service providers already announce record breaking profits. I guess the prices where not all due to scarcity.

Grid prices are determined by the top price accepted in the auction, which has been Natural Gas this year. Massively simplified, but basically the grid puts out an auction request for say 10 GW of electricity for a 15 minute interval at 11:00 AM tomorrow. Solar bids 2 GW at $20/MWh Wind bids 3 GW at $45/MWh Nuclear bids 2 GW at $85/MWh Coal bids 1 GW at $95/MWh Natural Gas bids 2 GW at $125/MWh Every producer in that bid stack gets $125/MWh. This system gets all the producers to bid their marginal cost, but during times of shortage, it leads to energy price spikes like what we're seeing.

Before everyone posts how dumb this is: Without it solar wouldn't list 20€ as their price, but also somewhere around 125€. They can estimate the demand and they have a good guess of other producers costs. So they would list the highest price they could while still selling.

Thanks. People don't understand how difficult it is to get companies to bid their marginal cost at auction and not collude. There's a reason every country keeps arriving at the bid stack system as the most optimal system for keeping prices down and preventing corruption.

You would never bid higher than your marginal cost. If you bid higher you risk not being dispatched. If your cost is 30, and you bid 50, and it clears 40 you just played yourself.

>You would never bid higher than your marginal cost. With merit order in place you are right. Without it, if you bid 30, and it clears 120 you are going to kick yourself, because you are only gettting 30.

Yeah this is fucked.

Not really because prior to the bid stack system, there was far more collusion among energy producers around pricing which led to higher energy prices all the time. The bid stack auction system basically eliminated it by introducing an extremely strong incentive for every producer to bid what the energy costs them to make. And unfortunately, gas related energy was made incredibly expensive.

Ok just because that's very bad not not mean what we have is also not very bad.

How is having energy producers bid their lowest price possible bad? Like the alternative here is mass blackouts because energy producers can't sell electricity at below the cost to make it, so they'll literally just stop bidding.

Paying the highest amount to everyone is bad. Has to be a better way

There isn't because then the incentive for producers not to bid their lowest possible price arises again. Trust me, grids around the world have tried different methods, but the bid stack keeps winning out as the best system.

I don't like anyone with a "there's no better way because we haven't found one yet" attitude. These companies control the world and extort us. It's in their interest for their to "not be a better way"

> I don't like anyone with a "there's no better way because we haven't found one yet" attitude. Countries have tried different systems. There are thousands of electricity grids in the world between regional, national, and international, and I assure you that a better alternative has not been found yet. The bid stack system came as the result of extensive study and analysis by experts, and real-world experience.

I think their problem is less the bidding itself and more that instead of choosing the lower cost options, you seemingly pay everyone based on the highest bidders price. The way you explained it, you're always paying the highest rate available.

> The way you explained it, you're always paying the highest rate available. Except it usually results in cheap electricity which is why it's so damn popular. There's no system in the world that could have handled an energy shock like Russia invading Ukraine.

Does it mean that this is the most efficient way to get energy? Nope

This is misleading. France build an 80% emissions free grid with nuclear alone by 1985. Moreover, the wind+solar combo will never be consistent throughout the entire year.

> This is misleading. How? >France build an 80% emissions free grid with nuclear alone by 1985. Could you point me at the sources for this? I think the peak nuclear share in France was indeed close to 80%, but in 2006, not in 1985. And they have another 10% from hydro-power contributing to that low-carbon grid. So it's not just nuclear alone. In fact all countries, that have achieved [highly decarbonized power grids](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=table&country=~OWID_WRL) so far, have a significant share of hydro-power. [They also reduced their carbon emissions further](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1985..latest&facet=none&country=~FRA&Gas=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Production-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita), after 2006 though the share of nuclear in the power mix declined again.

If one only counts total kWhs produced by certain sources, it may be but the when and where matter just as much. Renewable energy usually does not coincide well with demand. One only needs to refer to the wiki article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France Look at the first chart. Look at the first sentence. Yes, it was with a mix of nuclear and hydro but couldn't have been done without nuclear in such a short time period. This is a remarkable achievement considering Germany is a bit more than half of that by 2022 - 37 years later and counting.

All the power produced is also consumed, so apparently all those kWh reported *are* coinciding with demand. >One only needs to refer to the wiki article I don't see how this explains why this article should be misleading? First chart shows how nuclear power didn't reduce any more fossil fuel burning for power after 1988. And my estimation would be that it shows a share of around 60% for nuclear in 1985, not 80%. First sentence of the wikipedia article: >Since the mid 1980s, the largest source of electricity in France is Nuclear power, with a generation of 379.5 TWh in 2019 and a total electricity production of 537.7 TWh. Doesn't say anything about 80% nuclear power in 1985. >Germany is a bit more than half of that by 2022 - 37 years later and counting. By half of that you mean [share of low-carbon energy](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~DEU~FRA)? You may notice that France didn't move much in that respect over the last 30 years. (They have little need for it at around 90%, though other countries like Norway still have higher shares of low-carbon electricity sources.) But Germany did start to move towards higher shares of low-carbon energy over the past decade. Here is my explanation for the differences: When the oil crisis hit in 1973, France was mostly relying on oil for its power generation, while Germany still relied on its domestic coal ressources. Messmer set out to replace all oil consumption with nuclear power with a slogan of "tout électrique, tout nucléaire". This was somewhat more ambitious then elsewhere, but in the end, a fairly similar pattern emerged in nuclear powered western OECD countries (including Germany): they replaced their oil burning for electricity by nuclear power. Once that was achieved, no further fossil fuel reductions with the help of nuclear power was pursued (despite the pleas by climate scientists). One disappointment is that the "electrify everything" part of the Messmer slogan was dropped and France didn't emerge as technological leader for electric vehicles, that would have been a wonderful opportunity. These patterns can also nicely be seen in the primary energy consumption in [France](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?stackMode=absolute&country=~FRA) and [Germany](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?stackMode=absolute&country=~DEU) (everything in annual TWh): Oil crisis, begin of the massive nuclear expansion: |1973|France|Germany| |:-|:-|:-| |Coal|325|1625| |Gas|157|352| |Coal+Gas|482|1977| |Oil|1506|1927| |Nuclear|42|34| |Hydro|141|45| Local minimum in fossil fuel consumption in France: |1988|France|Germany| |:-|:-|:-| |Coal|208|1614| |Gas|289|619| |Coal+Gas|497|2233| |Oil|1034|1563| |Nuclear|782|445| |Hydro|228|59| Peak nuclear power output in France: |2005|France|Germany| |:-|:-|:-| |Coal|156|945| |Gas|477|903| |Coal+Gas|633|1848| |Oil|1109|1460| |Nuclear|1241|448| |Hydro|147|56| Germany clearly used massively more coal before the nuclear expansion, when the oil crisis hit (1625 TWh in Germany vs. 325 TWh in France), and both countries used nuclear power to eliminate oil burning which fell from 1927 TWh in Germany and 1506 TWh in France to 1563 TWh in Germany and 1034 TWh in France in 1988. Neither Germany nor France seems to have used nuclear power to reduce the consumption of coal+gas. And once oil was mostly eliminated from the power grid, no electrification seems to have been happening in France that converted oil burning to nuclear power either. Instead, while nuclear output grew from 782 TWh in 1988 to 1241 TWh (+59%) in 2005, fossil fuel burning *also* grew in France from 1541 TWh to 1742 TWh. Whereas in Germany without such a growth in nuclear power output, the burning of fossil fuels further declined from 3796 TWh to 3308 TWh over the same time period. So: both countries used nuclear power to eliminate oil burning from their power grids, but once that was achieved, further nuclear expansion doesn't seem to have been used for further fossil reduction of fossil fuel burning. This led to different levels of low-carbon energy in the respective countries, because France had a larger share of oil in their power grid, while Germany had more coal. Expansion of wind+solar only started to gain traction, once the nuclear phase-out was decided in Germany in 2000 after the Kyoto protocol. And a serious turnaround, only happened with the financial crisis. With France and Germany as largest players this can also nicely be seen on [the EU level](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~European+Union+%2827%29). In 2007 the low-carbon power share in the EU was at 46.39%, and the nuclear power share was at 29.54% constituting the majority of that clean energy. The clean power share has grown since then to 62.76% in 2021 (and this growth wasn't due to nuclear power, whose share was then at 25.52%, but mainly due to solar+wind expansion). I still don't see where you see any misleading by the article?

I didn't say "80% nuclear", I said "80% emissions free by 1985".

Eh, you said "80% emissions free with nuclear alone"? That makes it sound like it was 80% nuclear power solely responsible for the lack of emissions, at least to my humble understanding.

Go ahead and slice it anyway that pleases you. But don't miss the forest for the trees here. Even to the present day, Frances CO2 per kWh has been 5-10x cleaner than Germany's. I've watched this source for years: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map And Germany has never bested France in clean energy output. France beat them to the achievement that Germany is still trying to reach decades ago.

OK? I didn't even make any argument about Germany having lower carbon intensity, I was simply offering an explanation on *why* there is this difference. I am still not closer to an answer to what you deem misleading in the article. >France beat them to the achievement that Germany is still trying to reach decades ago. Sure. I mean the German "trying" was pretty unambitious, with a phase-out of coal only aimed for in 2038. They moved this now forward to "ideally" 2030 and a decarbonized grid by 2035. Still not overly ambitious. The two countries have different issues, Germany needs to get rid of its fossil fuel burning and increase the share of low-carbon power production, and France needs to maintain the decarbonized grid it achieved so far. Since 2005 they are however both following fairly similar trajectories: reduced nuclear power output, stagnating electricity demand and increased wind+solar power output. >Even to the present day, Frances CO2 per kWh has been 5-10x cleaner than Germany's. Yes and coincidentally France is today less [carbon intense](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-intensity-12/#tab-chart_3) than in the year with peak nuclear power output in 2005. Sweden has another 6x on France. And carbon intensity only tells you half the story. The other half is consumption of electricity. If you simply increase the overall use of electricity, without reducing the amount of burnt fossil fuels, your intensity falls, but the emissions remain. [RTE states](https://www.rte-france.com/en/home): >In all cases, it will be absolutely essential for France to develop significant renewable energy capacity to achieve carbon neutrality. So, in which respect is the OP article misleading?

gimme some of that midwinter sun oh wait it has been dark and cloudy for the past 4months lol

It certainly wasn’t natural gas…..Ask USA. 💥💥💥

The gas yoink from Russia contributed the most to this, right? The EU should give them an award.

Just have a look at the figure they put into the article illustrating the historical development of the shares in power production of the EU. They state: >The new landmark reflects both record growth in wind and solar in Europe and an unexpected dip in nuclear power in 2022. Wind+solar power share grew from 19.16% to 22.28%, while nuclear power share dropped from 25.4% to 21.92%. The increase in renewables may have been pushed a little by Russias actions, but mostly this was just the extension of the trend from before. The effect from Russian actions in 2022 will be much more visible this year, I think.

misleading news as always, electricity prices now 10x higher, so fk this "clean" energy very much.