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Comment by bdauvergne | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you could give numbers because french nuclear industry is completely profitable. If you like numbers like me: there were more subsidies to wind and solar energy the last twenty years in germany than the price of the whole french nuclear program (300 billions) since its inception (250 billions since the 1974).

The reliability of french electricity benefits both France and Europe as a whole. I cannot say the same about what germany is trying to do.

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Why then was EDF nationalized in 2023? A year after making an €18B loss? Why was EDF forced to buy the massively loss-making Areva/Framatome in 2017? How will Flamanville 3 - the latest reactor - at a cost of €24B to deliver 1.6GW ever be profitable, given it will need to earn €138 per MWh over 60 years just to break even? This is over 2.5 times the average wholesale price of the market it will be selling into and twice the €70/MWh state mandated nuclear electricity price cap.

- https://www.powermag.com/flamanville-3-europes-hard-won-nucl...

- https://www.techniques-ingenieur.fr/actualite/articles/epr-d...

It was nationalized to force it build new reactors despite demand not growing enough

The 138€ is under pessimistic assumptions. Min profitability limit on the other hand is 9ct/kwh. But nobody denies fla3 was a failure.

You didn't understand the electric cap in France. It's a cap on profits. If edf sells at certain thresholds above 70€ due to market, the state will take extra profit. It's sort of like double CFDs for renewables except edf has no minimum compensation

> It was nationalized to force it build new reactors despite demand not growing enough

It was nationalized because it had suffered record losses in the previous year and was struggling with a ballooning debt mountain of 65B euro. The French government didn’t need to nationalize it to control its strategic direction - it already owned 84% of it. That was the press release claim in order to present the bailout as “strategic”.

And the point was to address the gp’s claim that nuclear was profitable. Profitable enterprises don’t lose 18B a year or suffer financial instability due to a debt mountain on their balance sheets.

> You didn't understand the electric cap in France.

I don’t see how you drew that conclusion - the reactor needs to earn €138 per MWh (that’s the middle estimate not the worst case which is €180 per MWh). But the most it can earn is €70/MWh due to The cap? You’re just restating what I said. This reactor will be deeply unprofitable for its entire life.

Anything is cheaper when you don't count all the costs.

In January 2017 a parliamentary committee reported: "The cost of decommissioning is likely to be greater than the provisions," the technical feasibility is "not fully assured" and the dismantling work will take "presumably more time than expected."

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

There’s tons of costs associated with coal, oil, and natural gas extraction, processing, and use, which are neither priced into up front costs nor the price that customers pay for the product. If those were priced in, then fossil fuels would have to become more expensive. Those costs currently get diffused into various other areas and paid for by a wide net of payers, including both the customers and non-customers, and a big one is the government (taxpayer).

Just after your quote:

> EdF responded that it "assumes full responsibility for the technical and financial aspects of dismantling its nuclear plants," and noted that it was currently decommissioning nine reactors, so had a good basis of experience. It also pointed out that its funds set aside for decommissioning were audited by the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea the previous month.

And, a little bit earlier, the article author's assesment:

> There are well-developed plans for dismantling these (which have been shut down since 1990 or before) and work is progressing.

Please don't cherry-pick articles.

> The reliability of french electricity

Except for the winter of 2022 when more than half of French reactors were not running, which was especially critical because of the Russian War against the Ukraine. Coal reactors had to be reactivated in Germany so lights didn't turn off in France.

Or summer when reactors have to be shut down because the rivers are too hot or running low.

So many reactors off was a special event of delayed maintenance, things are done so that does not usually happens. And it's not true to say that Germany reactivated coal reactors for French lights.

Germany activated coal to reduce dependance on gas, and Germany exported energy to France because of the maintainances ; you know, the old correlation =/= causation.

That one occurence over 4 decades, I would say we can dare to call it pretty reliable

There were also issues recently where low river water levels forced reactors to reduce output and even shut down.

This has been happening for decades. It's pretty common in summer, which used not to be an issue since peak use is during winter.

This may come as an issue if air con develops fast, though.

Check out data this summer and tell me how many hours or minuts did France NET import power in all 3 months?

France net exported power this summer every single day and hour.

France net imported in 2022 less vs Germany net imported in 2024 in business as usual situation

Edf also announced yo add cooling towers to bypass old environmental laws, especially for Golfech

> Or summer when reactors have to be shut down because the rivers are too hot or running low.

Palo Verde is right next to the Sonoran Desert and has been running for forty years in Arizona heat:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...

There's no technical reason why nuclear plants can't run in low/hot water situations.

Until the rivers run low.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...

> Nuclear plants along the Danube river in Hungary and Romania were forced to cut output this week and could be shut down completely in the coming days due to record low water levels.

You know when rivers run not-low? In winter when we need to heat all those freezing homes. Crazy how that works. Yup, it's not ideal in a summer heat wave... but that's precisely when solar can shine.

We need both until we've solved storage. There's no need for more false dichotomies and FUD.

> We need both until we've solved storage. There's no need for more false dichotomies and FUD.

"Solar and nuclear are the only two options" is a false dichotomy, lol.

Of course it becomes a dichotomy if you add "only"

“We need both” implies both are needed, yes? That no other options satisfy said need?

Hungary and Romania made a mistake by not diverting earlier more river flow. France net exported every single day of summer

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