I'm always tired of the anti-nuclear zealots that make it look like it's an either/or situation.
We can (and should) do both. Even if renewable plus storage ends up being sufficient in some places, it is extremely unlikely that will apply everywhere.
And at the current production rates, it would take multiple decades to transition everything.
Even if we take forever (10 years+) to build new nuclear, as it happens to be right now, it would still be beneficial. And there is no good reason we can't build fast like China manages to do right now.
For example, French nuclear capacity factors are currently rising. One reason, as far as I can tell, is that they can now use intermittent renewables for at least some of the peak load, meaning they don't have to ramp their nuclear plants up and down.
Win win!
Also, PV is absolutely fantastic for hot deserts: lots of sunshine and a lot of load that correlates almost perfectly with that very same sunshine.
French capacity factors are rising because half their fleet was offline [1] in 2022-23 and they are finally getting out of that. But apparently nuclear power is 100% reliable and does not need any backup since that would add to the already unfathomably large costs for new built nuclear power.
In terms of total energy produced France is far off their earlier peaks. [2] They just keep shrinking the nuclear share.
Until March of 2023, decreasing the nuclear share was the law in France. The law said that the nuclear share was to be decreased to below 50%.
In addition, the absolute capacity of nuclear power was not allowed to increase.
So in order to build even just one new nuclear power plant, for example to maintain industrial capacity, they had to shut down two existing plants.
Which generally makes very little sense. And it precluded building nuclear power plants the way we know how to build them quickly and cheaply: multiple units of the same design, slightly overlapping.
So the law forced France to build Flamanville 3 the exact way we know how not to do it.
I think you're ignoring what actually happened. In 2022 half the reactors were down for repair and maintenance. This didn't have anything to do with the French's move to becoming less reliant upon nuclear power[0]. This had to do with scheduled maintenance being delayed due to covid, causing it to all happen at once. Then there was a rush on it due to the war in Ukraine breaking out. France was importing energy from Germany at that time (a rare thing in of itself) but then Germany being highly dependent on natural gas caused a big squeeze for energy all across Europe. Germany being the #2 exporter of electricity in Europe (France typically being #1)[1]
So while I agree with part of your response that ViewTrick is missing, but you are also ignoring a critical part of the reality and that makes it so you don't actually address their comment. You completely missed their first point and why it happened. You also completely miss the big reason for why there's a large increase of nuclear share post 2022. You're instead focusing on one plant which isn't representative of the reality of things. So you're not answering their misunderstandings because you don't actually address the data they are looking at.
[0] Which is a good thing! I want new nuclear power, but I also want a diversified portfolio of energy sources.
> Even if we take forever (10 years+) to build new nuclear, as it happens to be right now, it would still be beneficial.
Why would it be benifical to waste multiples more money on less results taking longer time to delvier? This seems like zeolotry rather than logic speaking.
1. France decarbonized their electricity sector in 15 years. Cost was €228 billion.
2. Germany has been trying and failing to decarbonize their electricity sector for the last 20+ years, the "Energiewende". Cost so far: €700 billion and rising. Specific CO₂ emissions for electricity are 10x worse than France (2024 numbers, 2025 isn't over yet, but so far it looks like little or no change).
Which is faster and cheaper, in your humble opinion: (1) or (2)?
These are typical disingenuous pro-nuclear arguments trying to frame it as a comparison between two non-existent options in 2025 because rooting our future in reality makes your so position untenable that even you can't bring yourself to type it out.
1. We pay 2025 (soon 2026) costs for renewables and storage today. Thus a total sum calculated by adding up costs for 2010 solar subsidies is not applicable.
2. We pay 2025 (soon 2026) costs for nuclear power today. Thus a total sum calculated on half a century old French data is not applicable.
But thanks for the admission that as soon as new built nuclear power costs and construction times face our 2026 reality it becomes economic and opportunity cost lunacy to invest in it, unless you have extraneous motives like military ambitions.
> I'm always tired of the anti-nuclear zealots that make it look like it's an either/or situation.
Same BUT I'm also tired of pro-nuclear zealots doing the same thing. There's a lot of armchair experts on both sides and neither are helping us solve the climate problem. They just cause fighting and ignore the complexities of the situation. It should not be controversial that climate change is one of the most complex problems humanity has ever faced, yet it is. We have tons of issues about the climate, tons of issues about the environment, tons of issues about each technology, tons of issues with manufacturing, and so on. It is mind boggling how complex this all is if you just start to build out the graph of dependencies.
Unfortunately public opinion matters, as every one of these power sources needs government subsides and funding to progress. From direct construction to funding of further research. *That is political*. It shouldn't be, but is because we decide where money gets allocated and with any complex issue it is easy to oversimplify and create malinformation to portray spending as wasteful when it isn't.
I'll make an analogy to programming since we're on HN. People are posting as if they have read all the code their computer is running. There simply isn't anyone that has done that, even the experts. We can only have a narrow understanding and hope that there's an overlap of people who have complete coverage over all the code. So we need to stop arguing "facts" and instead argue "my understanding" as it is just too fucking complex. I mean how many people have even run a very basic weather simulation?
It's totally fine to have opinions. I want people to have opinions! But I want the passion of peoples opinions to be directly proportional to their passion of understanding the things they're talking about. The worst fucking thing we can do is have very strong opinions on things we are not making an integral part to our lives. By having unsupported strong opinions we just drown out the real experts. The opinions that matter the most. For the love of god, it is absolutely apparent with the issue of climate as we're constantly raising voices that have no legitimate experience in the field and calling them experts. We've seen such disinformation campaigns happen for decades! Yet we're still here and we do the same fucking thing with a million topics. I'm just pissed off at everyone having strong opinions about everything. I'm pissed off at everyone wanting to be a know-it-all. Get your passions and dive into them, but recognize your own limits. You're not dumb for not knowing something and your opinion isn't a reflection of you, but rather the information you have. We don't have to waste so much time with all these dumb fights.
I'm always tired of the anti-nuclear zealots that make it look like it's an either/or situation.
We can (and should) do both. Even if renewable plus storage ends up being sufficient in some places, it is extremely unlikely that will apply everywhere. And at the current production rates, it would take multiple decades to transition everything. Even if we take forever (10 years+) to build new nuclear, as it happens to be right now, it would still be beneficial. And there is no good reason we can't build fast like China manages to do right now.