As a result, France's electricity grid is almost fully decarbonized (and we'd be in a better state if we didn't shut down one reactor for political reasons) while industrialized countries betting only on NREs are still counting the days they don't need to burn coal. So there are good things about it.
It’s a little more complicated as they’re importing and exporting a great deal of electricity. But overall yea it’s been good for the environment, just expensive.
It's not subsidized. In fact, cheap nuclear electricity is used to subsidize other industries.
The entire nuclear industry (construction, operation, support) cost France € 228 billion and produce 11000 TWh (by 2012). That's 2,07 cents/kWh. Not too shabby.
Your numbers are wildly off and not just from ignoring inflation when using poorly sourced numbers from 2012. Quick, how much did they spend on fuel over that timeframe? Well according to that estimate it was 0, so it’s hardly including the operating costs.
To give some perspective: “In March 2023 France's Parliament formally approved the government's nuclear investment plan – by 402 votes in favor and 130 against – which considers the €52 billion construction of six new EPR-2 PWRs at three sites.” That’s not operations that’s just for construction of 6 reactors when they have 56 in operation and that’s interest free unlike US reactor where interest is included with construction costs. One year later that’s already been increased to 67.4 billion euros: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-utility-edf-l....
France operated as a pay as you go system so they didn’t set money aside for the full cost of decommissioning their reactors etc. Last I checked there was some talk in 2017 of them setting aside 27 billion based on some ridiculously optimistic estimates but mostly the plan is just foist the costs onto future taxpayers.
The article explicitly says "overall cost" and "including all expenditures."
"Following the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, the French government requested that the Court of Accounts prepare a report on the overall cost of both public and private investment in the French nuclear power industry from its beginning, including all expenditures.[225] The report estimates that the industry has cost around 228 billion euros for a yearly production of roughly 400 TWh, with a cumulative production of approximately 11,000 TWh. Among the expenses, the Court of Accounts differentiates €55 billion spent on research since 1950 (equivalent to approximately a billion dollars annually) and €121 billion spent on construction, which includes €96 billion on the 58 reactors."
Your quoting estimated future prices does not contradict what has already happened. The new reactors both have higher rated output than what is currently installed and higher capacity factors. Operating costs are small compared to initial investment, and fuel costs are a small part of the operating costs.
Let's math the shit out of this!
Assuming the 1.5 GW output for the EPR2 that's quoted in Wikipedia and a conservative 90% capacity factor, each of these reactors will produce 1.5 * 24 * 365 * 0.9 = 11826 GWh of electricity per year.
80 year running life makes that 11826 * 80 = 946080 GWh of electricity over the lifetime of the plant. Or 946 TWh. That's 946 Trillion Wh, or 946 Billion kWh. If I can sell these 948 Billion kWh for 1 cent / kWh, that's 948 billion cents or € 9.48 billion so close to the estimated cost of constructing each of these plants. So let's assume an extremely unlikely ~100% cost overrun and operating costs that are the same as originally estimated construction costs and we have 3 cents / kWh. Everything after that is profit, even with 100% cost overruns for construction.
Which maybe gives you an idea why, though the French government almost certainly does not like the cost overruns, they don't seem to be nearly as perturbed by them as the anti-nuclear activists.
And neither is the UK government. So nobody is going to claim that Hinkley Point C is going well. Nevertheless, the UK is proceeding with Sizewell C, have just selected a site for an additional pair of reactors and have made it policy to quadruple nuclear output.
Just like neither the Poles nor the Ukrainians let the problems at Vogtle-3/4 keep them from selecting the Westinghouse AP-1000 for 4 reactors each, with site-prep work having started in both countries earlier this year.
From that same Wikipedia article: “The actual cost of generating electricity by nuclear power is not published by EDF or the French government but is estimated to be between €59/MWh and €83/MWh.” that’s using numbers from 2012 in todays money €73/MWh and €103/MWh. What you were quoting was counting “investments” not total costs on an inflation adjusted basis.
In 2012 published results for ongoing costs at “The court expects EDF's projected investment programme in existing plant, including post Fukushima safety improvements, will add between 9.5% and 14.5% to generation costs, taking costs to between 37.9 and 54.2 EUR/MWh” (Note that’s annual costs excluding construction and decommissioning.) Your investment number included R&D subsidies that aren’t part of that 47 to 67 EUR/MWh in today’s money. If you wonder how these could be so wildly different it’s because France isn’t just adding up total costs and adjusting for inflation they simply don’t want to admit how large the subsidies have been because it’s so dam expensive.
France nuclear power plants don’t hit 90% capacity factors. If your generate 30% of power from nuclear you can have capacity factors that high but France ran past that and ran into the fundamental issue that people want less power on nights, weekends, and spring/fall when they don’t need heat or AC.
How about some real world numbers. From 61.4 GW of generating capacity In 2022 France produced 282 TWh, in 2023 it hit 320 TWh that’s (282 + 320)/2 / 365 / 24 * 1000 / 61.4 = 56% capacity factor.
“80 year running life” you know France is having troubles keeping a ~40 year old fleet operating, I’m sure they will have zero problems trying to hit 80 years.
There’s an art to it, but civility isn’t about avoiding all conflict. A prosecutor can have a perfectly civil conversation where they threaten someone with execution if they don’t accept a plea deal. A few mocking jabs about how incorrect someone’s statement was is fine as long as you’re mocking what was said and not their person, manor of speech, accent, speech impediment, etc.
Operating costs for nuclear power plants are low and consistent over time. The bulk of the cost is the initial investment, and of that the bulk is financing, i.e. interest.
This has a graph of operating costs for French nuclear plants over time on page 10. After an initial high cost of 40 centimes / kWh it settles down to slightly above 10 centimes / kWh in around 1984 and then stays flat until 2000, where the graph ends. Let's call that 12 centimes. The French franc was converted to € at a rate of 6.55 : 1 so that's slightly less than 2 euro-cents per kWh.
2. Capacity factors
Current French nuclear plants are old designs and there was significant overbuild. Modern plants easily hit > 90% capacity factors, heck, the EPR even has 4 independent cooling systems so that they can keep the plant running while doing maintenance on the cooling system! Alas, that's one of the reasons it is so difficult to build.
For the US: "Nuclear has the highest capacity factor of any other energy source—producing reliable, carbon-free power more than 92% of the time in 2021."
France is also adding renewables so the nuclear plants don't have to buffer all the variability in demand. Right now they have nuclear plants that they just shut down on weekends.
So let's low-ball this and say the capacity factor of these new plants will only be 80%. How much does this affect the calculations?
1.5 * 24 * 365 * 0.8 * 80 = 840960
So instead of producing 946 TWh over its lifetime, the plant will produce 840 TWh or 840 billion kWh. That doesn't really affect the calculations much. At 1 cent / kWh that's € 8.4 billion, which is still pretty close to the construction costs. At 2 cents / kWh we are looking at € 16.8 billion. Add another 2 cents for operating costs and we are at a total of 4 cents / kWh.
4 cents / kWh.
Now this is obviously not a perfect calculation, if such a thing can even be made. But it is very much in the right ballpark.
The claims of 20 cents / kWh or more by anti-nuclear lobbyists are not in the right ballpark. And unsurprisingly, their source for those kinds of numbers is "trust me, bro". Or Lazard, which is arguably worse than "trust me, bro".
3. Lifetime
Yes, I believe 80 years is extremely realistic, particularly for these newer reactors that were specifically designed for long operation, with lessons learned from older designs. Probably more of a lower bound than an upper bound.
"There are no technical barriers to running some nuclear plants for up to 80 years, ..."
"There are two research programs addressing the five main challenges to long-term operation: primary system metals and piping; concrete and containment structures; electrical cables; reactor pressure vessel and buried piping. “These programs have not uncovered any technical show-stoppers that would prevent the renewal of licenses from 60 to 80 years,” the study authors wrote, adding that more research is needed."
"... a majority of executives say that it is very likely their plants will operate for 80 years or longer. It is a fairly natural progression, according to Was.
"If they last till 60, maybe they can last to 80," Was said. "Heck, maybe 100?"
> Operating costs for nuclear power plants are low and consistent over time.
CRE‘s current cost estimates for operating existing nuclear reactors (Ie zero profit, and excluding all costs associated with construction, risk, and decommissioning) is ~€57.8/MWh. Some of that is age, but even with an already paid off power plant, and zero money set aside for decommissioning, and the government talking 100% of the risks of a major accident, and no need for profit, it’s still 3x the current total cost of solar per kWh.
Further that’s their optimistic estimate. I get you want to crunch some numbers here, but they just aren’t matching up.
> 2. Capacity factors
> Modern plants easily hit > 90% capacity factors
In other countries sure, in France reactors are more limited by Curtailment than just technical issues.
If nobody wants to use electricity from your reactor you must shut it down or damage the electric grid. If France had 32 GW of Nuclear they could have ~90% capacity factors but they have 62 GW and nobody wants that much power on nights and weekends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity)
Now if you’re projecting France to have far less nuclear in 2070 then at first 90% seems reasonable. Except ultra cheap wind and solar is what’s going to replace nuclear and that makes things worse for nuclear with regular oversupply at zero marginal costs vs nuclear non zero fuel costs.
CRE is also having other issues, but I don’t think we can know there will be equal levels of mismanagement and incompetence in 70 years. So I’m mostly ignoring their recent issues.
> 3. Lifetime
Again not purely a technical issue. Power plants cost more to maintain over time and increased maintenance means lower capacity factors. You still pay ~€10/MWh for enriched uranium, and you still need a huge workforce, but most pumps etc last 10+ years, they don’t last 80. And you can’t replace a critical pump during normal operations so you end up with more downtime. Eventually concrete and steal will fail and there’s no cheap way to replace a steel pipe embedded in several feet of concrete.
Thus the 40-50 year lifespan, roughly when replacement + decomisioning costs less than maintenance. Ideally you line things need replacing on different years so you can fix em during refueling, and then have a bunch of equipment need replacing right after you shut things down. However France extended the plants lifespans so in effect they were hit with a maintenance backlog.
> own cost estimates for operating existing nuclear reactors (Ie zero profit, and excluding all costs associated with construction, risk, and decommissioning) is ~€57.8/MWh.
You are 100% incorrect. This is "the complete production cost of France’s existing nuclear fleet". And yes, I put that in quotes because it is a direct quote from the article you cite to claim the opposite. It's in the first sentence, difficult to miss. Furthermore, this is an estimate for the future total cost between 2026-2040.
And 5.7 Cents / kWh total cost for dispatchable, reliable and CO₂ free energy is very good.
Which is why France is investing heavily in nuclear again.
> Curtailment
"Nuclear power in France has a total capacity factor of around 77%, which is low compared to nuclear power plants in other countries due to load following."
So 77%, not the 50% you wrote. And they are increasing the share of other electricity sources therefore lowering the total share of nuclear (which was overbuilt during the time of the Messmer Plan). So curtailment of nuclear will decrease and capacity factors can only go up from the 77% they have.
Unless you give priority to variable renewables. Which you can do, but it's a stupid idea.
Given that, 80% total seems entirely realistic for France, and for the new plants they can go higher than that. Curtail the older plants that are already paid off. However, the key point is that this is a choice they can make. With variable renewables, you get average capacity factors in the 20-30% range, if you're lucky, and you do not get to choose.
Anyway, even at the completely unrealistic 50% you assume, the cost would be around 6-7 cents per kWh, which still seems fine given retail electricity prices of around 25 cents / kWh in France and above 35 cent / kWh in Germany. And of course it is nowhere near the 20+ cents anti-nuclear lobbyists claim with no evidence whatsoever.
> Thus the 40-50 year lifespan, roughly when a replacement costs less than maintenance.
Sorry, the actual experts on this + the owners of the plants disagree with your off-the-cuff speculation, and they are extending the lifetime even of their existing plants to 80 years and possibly beyond.
