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Comment by julcol | Hacker News Reader

I always thought nuclear was an all or nothing. Massive thermal inertia and hours days? to fully come online from cold start. Even if it is not coming up form cold start, this type of power balancing is new to me.

This should kill combined cycle role in the electricity mix to counterbalance renewables swings ? am I missing something ?

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France’s nuclear fleet performs load following but it is harder on the steam mechanicals requiring more frequent maintenance. The question is if this operating model is more cost efficient versus lithium and sodium battery storage at scale for buffering generation and load, with battery storage around $52/kWh for fully integrated systems currently (LFP chemistry). They're constantly burning ~1GW of fossil gas that could potentially be replaced with grid forming battery storage, assuming nuclear output is increased.

Besides domestic battery storage, an additional challenge is that they’re transmission constrained and there is too much nuclear and renewables and insufficient battery storage for domestic demand. Additional inteconnector capacity is coming online to Ireland in 2026 though (Celtic Interconnector, 700MW HVDC submarine cable).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44867632 (citations)

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Interconnector

https://auroraer.com/company/press-room/frances-battery-mark...

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/eu-battery-storage-...

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