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Hydro still growing too despite the occasional dam removal project: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61883
But the reason wind and solar are winning is that they're so, so much easier to deploy. More countries should legalize balcony solar, too.
They make it really hard to link to specific graph configurations though
[0] https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/07/13/frances-nuclear-po...
In the UK that would mean 48GW of total capacity. Worst case Nuclear capacity (when plants are offline etc) currently generated by the 5.6GW peak is about 3.8GW (95% of the time nuclear generated more than 3GW, 85% at least 3.7GW)
So that would mean 13 times as much nuclear production in the UK as it currently has to reach 100% use.
Which would generate about 500TWh per year, for a demand of about 250TWh per year, and a peak amount of about 73GW of capacity.
That means the real cost of a nuclear only grid would be twice as much as nuclear currently costs per MWh. Given that nuclear isn't economical today that doesn't really sound sensible.
As both Nuclear and Renewable thus both need "peaker plants" to flex the grid, the "baseload" argument is rather meaningless.
Also nuclear is a non-renewable just a long, nearly impossible to empty one, especially with the longer isotopes of thorium and uranium.
You then supply all power needs above what can be provided by your cheapest power with dispatchable supply. If your base supply is intermittent, that means your dispatchable supply has to be able to supply 100% of peak.
Nuclear plants can load follow at around 3-5% full power per minute. They choose not to due to current market conditions that do not value their ability to provide 24/7 clean heat and electricity, but markets could be changed.
How will you force me with solar panels and a battery to take your extremely expensive nuclear power off your hands?
We are already seeing old paid off nuclear plants being forced off the grid because no one wants their electricity. Let alone insanely expensive new builds.
And new built western nuclear power requires yearly average prices of 18-20 cents/kWh.
Neither technology, nor economic systems can fix that. Nobody has a repeatable recipe for success.
Decommissioning nuclear is paid for by a decommissioning trust fund that is paid into by law by rate payers during operation of the plant.
The recipe is sort of understood though: choose a good enough tried-and-true reactor and serialize production of it. This is how France built 50 reactors in 15 years. It's how China is now building several dozen.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
Compared to China’s grid size they are barely investing in nuclear power.
Likely landing around 3% nuclear power in their electricity mix given the average of 4-5 construction starts per year since 2020.
The shift from fossil fuel is mostly towards wind and solar. That's the news.
Now sure the best time to have invested heavily in nuclear reactors was 30-40 years ago, but we still could today. The payoff won't be for 5-10 years, but wind & sun are never going to have continuous availability until we figure out space solar, after all.
There's two different ways for wind and sun to be available continuously:
While I like the idea of a global* power grid, and have in fact done the maths on it working just fine and not being silly cost or ridiculously long periods of global aluminium production, geopolitical realities prevent it.
Storage is the other. The storage requirements for electrified personal transport are so large, several dozen kWh even for a small family car and much more for professional vehicles, that mere normal electrical usage is something you can do with spare capacity.
* Regional grids also help reduce the influence and severity of Dunkellaufe, but the models I've seen for dealing with these cost-effectively is "overbuild capacity by a few hundred percent because it's cheap, then add a few days worth of batteries because they're relatively pricy", so I count that as primarily option #2, storage.
No, it isn't. The CSU ran with nuclear revival as one of their campaign promises and there seems to be some support for it among the population but it's nowhere to be found in the coalition agreement between CDU/CSU and SPD. Söder (the leader of the CSU) already backpaddled as well.
Really the only possibility for a nuclear revival in Germany would be a coalition between the climate-change-downplaying CDU/CSU and the straight-up-climate-change-denying AfD and I doubt that would be good for Germany's fight against climate change.
Oil has in all but name stopped being used as an energy source. There is no inherent need for nuclear power, especially not at modern western new build costs of 18-20 cents/kWh.
What you are saying is that renewables and storage will at their most strained be able to handle the peaking load. In California the base load is ~15 GW and peak load 50 GW.
So with your logic the renewables can when they deliver the least handle 35 GW of peak load.
Why would we use extremely expensive nuclear power for "baseload" when the way cheaper and more effective technology literally handles 2x the power when it the most strained?
America might get a sizeable portion of it's clean electricity from nuclear, but the rest of the world certainly doesn't.
Because two nuclear reactors came online in the last two years (after massive delays and cost overruns). In the last 29 years the US built three new nuclear reactors (the construction of two more was cancelled). How many watts of nuclear were shut down in that time span?
> and more coming with uprates and massive demand from hyperscalers
I'll believe it when I see it.
> The goal here isn't wind and solar. It's clean energy in general.
I agree. I don't think nuclear is bad. I'm just describing what is happening in the US: Solar and wind are growing fast, nuclear is struggling.