Nuclear is just as bad in terms of following demand the capacity factor is at best 90% but involves weeks of downtime for refueling etc. Worse the economics only work out when production is kept close to 100% when available limiting adoption in a wider electric grid. France dealt with sub 70% capacity factors even with massive exports that’s roughly a 0.9/0.7 = 30% price hike per kWh.
You can use batteries to level our wind but you really need multiple nuclear power plants operating in concert which gets you back into the 10’s of billion dollar range for dependable nuclear power. However, even that few billion dollars is still massively excessive for a small island. The European grid is large enough that the unit cost isn’t a big deal, but the minimal scale of nuclear still results in various inefficiencies from transmission losses etc.
A much larger problem is simply the cost per GWh, building nuclear today means estimating it’s still going to be cost competitive in 40 years which really doesn’t seem to be the case. Even back in 2000 people where looking at various long term estimates and the required subsidies to make Nuclear cost competitive didn’t seem worth it.
>Also, nuclear power was never subsidized in Germany:
Haha, that's a good joke.
>Direct and indirect German government subsidies alone, including research grants and tax credits, since the mid-1950s have added up to €287bn, FÖS has calculated. Another €9bn were spent on other costs for the state, such as police operations during anti-nuclear protests, or follow-up costs from nuclear operations in former Eastern Germany.
“Great part of these costs never had been included in the electricity price, which is why atomic energy wrongly was considered as a cheap power source,”
Nuclear “Load following“ doesn’t reduce the number of workers needed, capital investment etc. It’s like turning off wind turbines you don’t really save money, it’s just useful to help balance the grid. In effect every time you do this with Nuclear, Wind, or Solar you end up increasing the cost per kWh produced.
In 1998 the Atomic Energy Act established the maximum insurance liability of nuclear insurer at about €2.5 billion; for damages above that cap the Federal Government is liable according to § 34 of the Atomic Energy Act. That’s a German nuclear subsidy, they have a few.
> Also, nuclear power was never subsidized in Germany
The German government took over responsibility for managing final storage of nuclear waste for something like 20bn EUR from the industry but is already projecting that it might cost more like 50bn EUR to actually find such a place.
Nuclear's price will still haunt tax payers long down the road.
You can use batteries to level our wind but you really need multiple nuclear power plants operating in concert which gets you back into the 10’s of billion dollar range for dependable nuclear power. However, even that few billion dollars is still massively excessive for a small island. The European grid is large enough that the unit cost isn’t a big deal, but the minimal scale of nuclear still results in various inefficiencies from transmission losses etc.
A much larger problem is simply the cost per GWh, building nuclear today means estimating it’s still going to be cost competitive in 40 years which really doesn’t seem to be the case. Even back in 2000 people where looking at various long term estimates and the required subsidies to make Nuclear cost competitive didn’t seem worth it.