They’ve been amazing for us, despite the fact that some of them was recklessly shutdown prematurely by an ignorant political class.
2. Nuclear was built at a time when governments were much more likely to directly invest in energy projects. It didn’t have to compete with Labubus for private dollars.
3. Its current competition didn’t exist, given how much cheaper solar and wind have gotten, and how much cheaper battery tech has gotten with signs all of them will only get even cheaper. And on the non renewable side, natural gas has become incredibly cheaper as well.
2. Once the vote is there(Switzerland is a direct democracy), the public funds will be there. Sweden has recently chosen to invest ~40B Euro.
3. Solar, really? In Switzerland? Many parts of the industrialised world receive very little sun, especially in winter, where coincidentally, energy usage peaks.
And intermittent power generation like wind is no competition to nuclear.
These are very weak arguments. Good luck replacing Oskarshamn with solar panels…
In a world with a lot of oil. How does that evolve when we don't have enough oil anymore?
Feels like renewables are extremely distributed, which sounds like it may be harder to manage without the happy globalisation brought by accessible oil.
To be clear, I believe we also need renewables. But I also believe that we won't remotely replace oil, so we need absolutely everything we can imagine, and that includes nuclear energy.
For the renewables "Fast and cheap" turns out to mean you get the paperwork in the winter and you build a solar farm that summer, it's not quite sowing wheat - teams of competent people building the farm isn't the same thing as just chucking the seeds into the dirt with a machine, but the timeframe isn't so different.
Sweden's nuclear plants seem to have taken maybe 6+ years from breaking ground (not paperwork) to first power, so if you begin today you might have a plant in 2032 at the earliest. I can't see any prices, not even a CfD strike price for Sweden's new proposed plants.
The UK agreed £92.50 strike price (2012 prices) for the new nukes it may never actually receive, but unlike Sweden the UK has never pledged to relinquish nuclear weapons so to some extent having a native "nuclear" capability is relevant to national security.
That nuclear power must take forever is a myth and is only due to dysfunctional politics.
That “you get a permit in the winter and it’s done by summer” is a totally bogus claim. Perhaps for some tiny installation compared to a power plant with 1.5GW output.
https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/o...
It is easy to dream about what could have been half a century ago, but that doesn’t change reality today.
Please do tell me the expected capacity factor of these biomass plants, even if 18 cents per kWh is correct, after renewables, storage, hydro if available and existing nuclear plants with 80 year LTOs do the heavy lifting.
Can you see the difference compared to new built nuclear power which requires that absolutely insane price when running at 100% 24/7 for 40 years?
And you do realize that across such a lifespan essentially the entire nuclear plant except the pressure vessel and outer shell is replaced?
Steam generators, turbines, generators, control systems, piping, valves etc. Everything is replaced. Is that free?
There’s no trouble building renewables with similar lifespans. It is just not done because predicting profitability until the 2100 is absolute lunacy.
"do realize that across such a lifespan essentially the entire nuclear plant except the pressure vessel and outer shell is replaced?" - so you are saying that EDF replaced/will replace all the components except PV of it's plants to reach 60-80y? This sounds ridiculous. Maintenance isn't free but is part of opex of a plant which for existing ones is rather low.
For anyone understanding economics it’s an admission of how far you need to twist the numbers to just make it horrifyingly expensive.
The OPEX calculated in for example Lazard is not including all replacements and maintenance needed for LTO.
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
Lazard doesn't (or at least didn't) estimate the plants to work for 60y either considering all gen 3 are licensed for this period. Lazard also has interesting numbers about LCOE of ren+cheap gas firming. Would be interesting to see the added cost of transmission, considering Germany spends 10x more than France per year on it
Due to renewables having zero fuel cost they win this handily. Which now also extends to when storage from either wind or solar delivers.
Which is what we see in action:
From night to noon: France’s reactors are now bending for European solar
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/05/14/from-night-to-noon-fr...
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-16/edf-warns...
They do. They have a diamond which is Vogtle with a 97% capacity factor and 70 year economic lifespan. Still leading to horrifyingly expensive electricity.
Like I said. It is an admission in how far you need to tilt the numbers to still get it to be horrifyingly expensive.
We have studies like that. But I know people like you desperately try to dismiss them.
Here, a modern article modeling "System LCOE". In other words, the whole grid including transmission backup and everything else.
It starts by giving new built nuclear power the benefit of doubt, having it cost 40% less than Flamanville 3 and 70% less than Hinkley Point C. Since no one would ever be stupid enough to greenlight a project like that again.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...
It finds that for Denmark, a country with very low insolation and awful winters that renewablws are 53% cheaper than the nuclear system.
Nuclear is more flexible than coal and on par with some gas plants. BWR's are even faster. Your second link about french modulation proves that. Or you can check directly on RTE website
EDF is crying because ren get CFD's and curtailment payments while EDF does not.
The paper you posted is so funny. The author is also the chief editor of the journal the paper was published. He is also one of the founders of DK antinuclear movement which resulted in DK becoming one of the largest coal consumers at that time. His previous paper was subject to correction due to favorably "omitted details". His current paper still assumes for some reason dirt cheap hydrogen firming for renewables. Shall we check the cost of pure H2 firming per Lazard?
Not only DK has worse emissions than France - it also managed to piss off Norway and Sweden https://montelnews.com/news/0138d712-3afd-4590-883e-4b9221fd...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-pauses-plans-...
Followed by attacking the author rather than the context, followed by a "what about".
You truly lost the plot here. You do realize that right?
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
It's not an attack on the author. What I've written can be easily verified. The author IS the chief editor of the journal the paper was published in. The author is one of the founding members of DK antinuclear movement. His previous paper was subject to correction due to details that were omitted which skewed the final results. The paper does assume dirt cheap H2 firming which is not bounded to reality in any sense whatsoever. Nuclear ban in DK DID led to it becoming one of the largest coal consumers at that time.
You don't need to ask this stupid question at each post. It'll not change the simple fact that DK and DE have far worse emissions than France and Sweden. It'll not change the fact Germany plans gas expansion for firming renewables.
Maybe I should ask you the question why are you so afraid of nuclear combined with renewables when history proved this pathway gives the best results? I can't think of anything more than blind hate
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...
Yes. That is the issue. How do you suggest the nuclear plants will survive in such an environment when they are already today, early in the renewable disruption, facing headwinds?
Then more just attacking the author. Then trying to discredit this paper by an old one, and you clearly haven't read the criticism.
The criticism said:
1. Assuming new built nuclear power is cheap and fast to build then you are wrong!!!!
But you never read further than the headline did you?
Then you go on to mindless complaining. Yes, it would have been amazing if Denmark and Germany built nuclear power half a century ago and decarbonized their grids.
But we live in 2026 and there's no point crying over spilled milk.
> nuclear combined with renewables when history proved this pathway gives the best results?
Which is revionist history. As shown by the French nuclear plants struggling to cope with an increasingly renewable grid. Same with the Swedish ones where 4 reactors has shut down due to market conditions in recent years. They were hemorrhaging money.
You are looking at an incredibly short period of time where half a century old paid off plants are still around and renewables haven't completely disrupted the French grid yet.
Please do explain how you would fit a nuclear plant into this grid mix:
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&...
That is where all grids globally are headed in less than 10 years time. Before a single nuclear projected started today is completed.
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? Is your income dependent on the nuclear industry?
It is a hard sell when you have to front a good chunk of money, without a track record of successful build ups. It applies to other infrastructure stuff like HSR.
Let’s hope Switzerland takes the lead here, Sweden are already building.
The political will is there. Let’s do it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France
The electricity sector in France is dominated by its nuclear power, which accounted for 71.7% of total production in 2018, while renewables and fossil fuels accounted for 21.3% and 7.1%, respectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
SVT or SR has never shown me this, wonder why...
And what is crazy is we, in Europe, act and talk as if we cannot do anything without sucking up to USA or China.
We also have massive Hydro in Sweden. We can see what is currently giving us electricity.
https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
oh and dont get us started on the electricity zones and germany...
Turn on Barsebäck again... absolute asenine they shut it down. Will never happen, been too long, also owned by Uniper... (Germans)
And sadly S+MP+V will win this election it looks like. Say goodbye to any new nuclear power. Also it will be 2015 all over again but that is off topic...
After the accidents showed that these designs where just not quite safe enough, redundancy in the safety systems were added. The thing is; as soon as those reactor designs got a bit more safe, they got much more expensive quite quickly. Just look at France's history of nuclear reactor development.CP0, CP1 and CP2 were somewhat cheap and they were able to churn out the things in quite a number.P4 and P'4 were already much more complex, more expensive and it just wasn't possible to mass produce these things like before. By N4 the economy of scale had broken down almost completely.
That's the problem with nuclear reactors. They are simple in principle, but fiendishly difficult in practice and enormously complex. So complex indeed that the learning curve doesn't yield any compounding returns. That's what we've seen play out in the last 50 years.
I don't know how things evolved in Sweden, but I assume that Swedish reactors don't have all the safety features of modern reactors. I guess that's what made them cheap, just like the CP-series in France.
It's not about safety but features and wishes to have. French reactors were cheap even at P4 level but the demand hasn't increased as planned and electrification was not great, so construction stopped. EPR is a complicated mess trying to cater to all regulations at once, especially the harsh german ones. That's why EPR2 has some stuff stripped apart