| > molten salt reactor will have zero impact in the next three decades. There is no market offering and no buyer. No one is investing in yet another fuel cycle and nuclear technology. There are no reactors of scale and there is no industry surrounding it. > Germany's plant were not as flexible as France's Germany had a few flexible nuclear plants. But all old. > a variation of 10GW of nuclear production in a few hours. The result is that France has invested very little in renewable energy in the last decades and created a very inefficient and state owned energy system. France's centralized nuclear state owned energy system and distributed multi-producer/owner renewable energy are largely incompatible systems. Proof: the lack of investments into renewable in the last decades in France. The main question is this: where are CURRENT investments going. Not nuclear, but renewable. This future had been made possible by investments like the German Energiewende, while other countries did invest in mostly nothing. They even failed to bring nuclear forward (-> US). The US sits on a bunch of outdated reactors and not much idea how to replace them economically with newer and better ones. |
Natural gas had the big advantage of being burned in combustion turbines, which are cheaper than other thermal cycles. Heat exchangers are costly, but a simple cycle turbine doesn't need any (if it doesn't have a regenerator).
The biggest nuclear operator here (Exelon) is shit talking new nuclear, putting their investment into CO2 capture, renewables, and storage.