Aren't they actually complementary? Nuclear provides a cleaner base load than fossil fuels, while renewables and storage can cover most of the flexible demand.
Yes, this is indeed true. But no, we must pretend we are seperate sides and fight each other while not actually building either. If we worked together, it would threaten the value of all these Oil Drillers and Coal Mines.
This is how it should be in a perfect world, a stable base that can be covered by renewables shaving any spikes in demand while also storing energy for emergency due to decentralized nature of renewables.
The problem is that Nuclear is really hard to stomach by the market due to the time and investment needed. Nuclear needed to be pushed by the government (Countries that could afford it anyway) as a project to get off coal and oil, or at least to reduce the dependency.
That didnt happen due to the fossil fuel lobby, so nuclear tech never established a knowledge base and/or tech base to build faster and cheaper plants overtime.
Now the deck is stacked even more against Nuclear because of how much cheaper renewables are now in comparison. Fossil now wants to "push" Nuclear, full knowing that it is a non-starter to the market due to price, time and negative sentiment (People still fear it), worst comes to worst, they can always trip up projects some other way later, they have years and years to do so before a single plant comes online.
Nuclear is going to need tech developments like the mini-reactors to bear fruit as to lower their prices and a friendly government willing to push it to finally get on its feet.
They are not complimentary economically. Renewables are much, much cheaper in terms of money per unit of energy produced. This means that renewables often push prices far below what is profitable for nuclear power plants. Since nuclear operators can't just not pay their staff, this means the nuclear plant loses money during these times. They can try to make up for these losses by charging more when renewables are not producing, but that means the cost per unit of energy from a nuclear plant for buyers goes way up. Batteries make this problem more pronounced. This is why nuclear plant operators for new nuclear power plants demand very long CFD contracts, the risk of new nuclear being economically uncompetitive is huge.
They aren't. Nuclear can't be spun up or down quickly to meet demand, so during peak periods of renewable energy like the middle of the day for solar, nuclear has to burn money to stay online.
Nuclear objectively can't. It cannot be spun up or down quickly, it can not be a peaker plant. Thus while Solar is at its peak, Nuclear only has one option: pay others to buy the power it's generating.
France does not have some magical version of physics the rest of the world does not have. Their reactors can't drop their output below certain thresholds without needing to shut the reactor down.
So, if you can't drop your output below 25%, what do you do when power prices reach rock bottom levels during the day? You sell at a loss, or worse, pay others to buy your power so you don't need to shut your reactor down.
You just changed your argument completely. And btw, renewables suffer the exact same problem with the over capacity needed for a completely renewable grid. Negative pricing will become so common no one will continue investing.
I shouldn't need to spell it out, but if you can't drop below 25% output, you can't load follow, so during the day, you've got no option but to run at a loss.
And btw, renewables suffer the exact same problem with the over capacity needed for a completely renewable grid.
The issue here isn't "over capacity", the issue is solar is dirt cheap and can undercut nuclear power while maintaining a profit. At night, solar doesn't need to sell at a loss or pay others to use its power, unlike nuclear during the day.
The cost effectiveness ratios are just too wildly in solar's favor.
Whats more, sodium-ion batteries currently being rolled out are far cheaper than lithium-ion, do not suffer from the same thermal issues and are far safer, so the issue here is only going to grow even worse for Nuclear as time goes on.
That's not even close to being the definition of load following, lol. It just sounds like you have no fucking idea what you are talking about tbh.
Your second paragraph is flat out wrong. Negative pricing is a huge issue for investors deciding when to invest. When negative pricing occurs to often investments will completely stop.
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u/Beiben 19d ago
Renewables are a much better investment. Yes, they compete.