>
France is better known for high taxes than for low energy prices... Maybe there is a connection.
No there isn't actually. The French pay high taxes because of their social services.
If you actually inform yourself you would know that the cost of the nuclear fleet went on the books of the utility, not the French state and has been paid down by the utility for 40+ years now DESPITE the very low energy prices.
> Germany would today be in a much worse position if they had spent what they did on renewables on upgrading their ramshackle old nuke contraptions instead.
Germany was actually one of the best operates of nuclear power. Their reactor had amazing uptime.
> France, notably, imported power through summer.
And the reason is that the Anti-nuclear idiots who were in power in the French state for the last 30 years took cheap green energy for granted and instead of doing the needed maintenance, they forced the utility to invest in solar and support fossil fuel (yes really).
And in fact in 2015 the French state literally basically forced threw a law to turn off large parts of the nuclear fleet in 2025. This lead to even more maintenance not being done.
This is a case of the French state shooting itself in the foot and taking for granted what their fathers gave to them and them treating the fleet like shit and just believing the magical pixies of renewables would reliably produce 10s of GW of power for them within a few years.
Germany is literally spending up to a 500 billion $ on a plan to mitigate all the issues with their energy policy, for that they could literally have built a nuclear fleet 2x the size they needed to be 100% green on nuclear.
No there isn't actually. The French pay high taxes because of their social services.
If you actually inform yourself you would know that the cost of the nuclear fleet went on the books of the utility, not the French state and has been paid down by the utility for 40+ years now DESPITE the very low energy prices.
> Germany would today be in a much worse position if they had spent what they did on renewables on upgrading their ramshackle old nuke contraptions instead.
Germany was actually one of the best operates of nuclear power. Their reactor had amazing uptime.
> France, notably, imported power through summer.
And the reason is that the Anti-nuclear idiots who were in power in the French state for the last 30 years took cheap green energy for granted and instead of doing the needed maintenance, they forced the utility to invest in solar and support fossil fuel (yes really).
And in fact in 2015 the French state literally basically forced threw a law to turn off large parts of the nuclear fleet in 2025. This lead to even more maintenance not being done.
This is a case of the French state shooting itself in the foot and taking for granted what their fathers gave to them and them treating the fleet like shit and just believing the magical pixies of renewables would reliably produce 10s of GW of power for them within a few years.
Germany is literally spending up to a 500 billion $ on a plan to mitigate all the issues with their energy policy, for that they could literally have built a nuclear fleet 2x the size they needed to be 100% green on nuclear.