We buy sometimes electricity from France on the EEX because it's cheap. Not because we lac electricity. We actually sell more than we buy and that never changed.
France has to sell cheap because they can't shut down their rotting fleet. They HAVE to produce and they HAVE to sell. Even when the price is low. This is just another reason why the company running this hilarious "business" is bankrupt.
Germany has long ago replaced what nuclear has produced.
The only thing we HAVE to buy is gas because we need it for heating. Something nuclear can't replace since we don't even have 5% electrical heating in this country.
For EPR, we're almost over the hump, with the latest projects in Finland and France coming online and becoming fully operational in the near future.
Rosatom has continued pumping out reactors at a decent rate.
Solar + storage of 1-6 hrs can be made economical viable as long as the storage can have 365 discharge cycles each year, assuming prices get high enough each such cycle. Each unit of storage get a return on investment each day, and each are used fully at the point in time when the market price is at peak.
Under those precise circumstances the economics of storage is cheaper than nuclear. The only other cheaper alternative to nuclear is to use renewables when the weather is optimal and fossil fuel when the weather is not optimal, or just use fossil fuels (through that is just a waste of money and the climate).
Naturally this advisor firm could be wrong and someone here could start the world first economical viable operation that uses wind for renewables and then charge a reverse hydro operation. It would make for a nice news item.
There's also little incentive to install storage when solar and wind penetration is low, but as higher percentages of the grid is powered by renewables, then storage quickly becomes far more attractive.
Currently, there are 14.5GW of batteries in development across the US, and this is just a tiny nascent industry. Even as a small industry, this is many times the power capacity of nuclear currently in development.
This biggest challenge with batteries right now is low supply, and competing with demand from EV production, which provides higher margins:
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/how-ba...
This means that hitting the cost peak is really easy for batteries.
As this cheapest form of energy begins to dominate, and the "baseload" generators like coal or combined cycle gas become more expensive than solar, then it becomes less economical to run the "baseload generators because they don't have sufficient price support during the peak solar output times. This will raise the night time prices of energy, as the daytime prices decrease, and eventually storage plus solar becomes cheaper than new "baseload" facilities, and then cheaper than continuing to run existing "baseload" facilities.
I put "baseload" in quotes because on the past baseload meant cheapest energy, in addition to slow and expensive dispatchability. That is all changing.
Yes, if we are talking about hours of capacity then batteries can be very cost competitive to fossil fuels. That is exactly what the financial advisor stated in their report.
In areas where solar + batteries can reliable handle all year round demands for energy, those technologies should just replace fossil fuels. There will likely be some natural gas plants that get subsidies to exist as reserve in case there is a sudden weather change, but nuclear wouldn't be a great option in such places.
Viable locations arent in short supply at all:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-spot-530-000-potenti...
Edit: I was a bit puzzled as there are already pumped-storage plants in Wales and Scotland with more planned.