France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power between EU countries.
Back before 3 Mile Island a nuclear plant was cheaper to produce then coal plant and had 2x the amount of live time with 10x cheaper fuel cost.
> France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power between EU countries.
France has the lowest electricity prices in Europe had them for quite a long time.
Nuclear is not expensive if you are building many of them, just like everything else.
One of the major problems with nuclear is that it is extremely national and most western nations don't have a demand for scale.
And then the 3 Mile Island disaster happened, and people tighten up regulations. That seems reasonable, no?
Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids in Africa who then get sick because of it.
Solar production facility can have chemical spills that are comparable to Three Mile Island in terms of effect.
Compare a nuclear civilization against a solar one and you will see that waste management of nuclear is far smaller.
Overall less then 2000 people died from these 3 disasters and essentially all of them because Chernobyl that uses a technology that we don't use in the west.
Source? Electronics associated with solar panels might be an issue but modern inverters use less and less toxic elements (and are definitely RoHS compliant).
As for solar panels themselves, 99% by weight consists of glass (75%), plastics (10%), aluminum (9%) and silicon (5%) which can all be recycled.
http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-h...
The problem was that it turned into an absolute shitshow from a regulator perspective, process perspective, utility regulation perspective, political perspective and so on that. There were 100 plants in construction and all of them go canceled.
Large part of the nuclear industry when bankrupt and so on.
Since then regulation has prevented most progress on any of these issues. Nuclear startups all move to Canada, China or some other place because the US is simply not good place to work on nuclear.
The actual changes that would have been needed after Three Mile Island were mostly about the human to reactor interaction, ie. UI. Why that should destroy and industry make the cost 10x higher is quite hard to understand.
An airplane is also more expensive than a bike, and takes longer to assemble. This doesn't mean it has no use.
See Lazard's 2017 numbers[1], which put the low price of nuclear power at $112/MWh. Only rooftop residential is more expensive ($187/MWh), Diesel generators ($197/MWh) and gas peaking ($156/MWh) are more expensive.
Utility solar is as low as $43/MWh, wind is $30/MWh
If you think there is going to be some magical world where people get rid of safety regulations for nuclear power, after the Fukushima nuclear accident I think you need to reconsider. Nuclear power advocate's excuse for that one was that they had lax safety standards, so dropping them further seems unlikely.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
Many of those are still running and they are safe.
Understanding why the cost has gone up 10x can not be explained simply by 'slightly higher security regulation'.
Something else went wrong in the whole process and the regulated utility market.
> If you think there is going to be some magical world where people get rid of safety regulations for nuclear power, after the Fukushima nuclear accident I think you need to reconsider.
Nobody wants to 'get rid' of safety regulation. However talk to any expert on nuclear energy and you will see that the current way to to regulation is highly ineffective and damages the industry.