[unFou]

I'm not sure whether nuclear is better, and renewables definitely is a good thing to have in the mix. But comparing the carbon emissions of Germany and France, and the cost of electricity in both countries would suggest that at least currently, renewables without nuclear isn't as effective for supplying our power needs as renewables with nuclear.

If I've misunderstood this somewhere, I would love to learn more.

[pfdietz]

You're making an invalid argument there. The current generation mix in France and Germany reflects decisions made up to decades in the past, when relative prices were very different from what they are now. Back in the 20th century when France was building reactors, renewables were much more expensive. What was the low cost option then is not what it is now.

Going forward, even France is having a very hard time building reactors, and is finding renewables are cheaper. This is one reason why France's nuclear industry is in such trouble.

Germany deliberately pushed renewables in order to send them down their experience curves. This was spectacularly successful, but it has come at a high price to their consumers, who are still paying that down. The rest of us have reaped the benefit of far lower renewable costs.

[yongjik]

Okay, then let's look at Japan, which pretty much shut down nuclear in 2011. And this is the result:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan#/media/File:Ja...

Japan, one of the most technologically developed place in the world, cannot use renewables when they shut down nuclear. Instead they turn back to coal.

I'm not saying renewables are always inferior - e.g., California would be a perfect place for solar. But in every story I've heard of, when nuclear power is turned off fossil fuels pick up the slack.

[pfdietz]

Sigh.

First, 2011 is nine years ago. Utility scale solar has declined in cost by a factor of about 5 in the last decade. Decisions made even then do not say anything about how solar would compete today. Wind has also declined considerably in cost in that decade, although not as steeply.

Second, the argument I was making was that renewables beat new nuclear. I wasn't arguing that renewables beat fossil fuels unencumbered by CO2 charges, or even necessarily existing nuclear plants in which the construction and financing costs are sunk. So your observation is irrelevant to the claim I made.

I have to wonder why you guys never notice that the anti-renewables arguments you make are such non sequiturs. Myself, if I found defending my position required I resort to bogus logic, would reevaluate whether what I believed was actually true.

[yongjik]

Germany and Japan had nuclear plants back when global warming was nobody's priority. It was competitive with fossil fuels then.

Now that nuclear power is fallen out of favor, they went back to fossil fuels, instead of renewables, because it's cheaper for them.

So apparently the advances in renewables didn't just make renewables cheaper: it also made nuclear more expensive than fossil fuels!

Or, maybe, nuclear is now considered "more expensive" largely thanks to the huge negative PR.

[pfdietz]

Continuing to operate their existing reactors would certainly have been cheaper for Japan. So the decision to replace them with fossil fuels (now LNG + CC, not the fossil fuels of decades ago) wasn't driven by economics.

[fomine3]

After 2011, nuclear plants in Japan need to be audited that means plants must be stopped near the future. It causes massive power supply crisis so power companies built power plant as fast as possible. IIRC LNG power plant is said fastest plant to build and start operating.

[unFou]

Sure, so that partly explains why electricity costs so much more in Germany than France. But for a lay person (ie me), I can't help but compare the carbon emissions and air quality between the two countries, and attribute the difference to fossil-fuel vs nuclear power plants?

Also, I always assumed the lower renewable costs have come from economies of scale due mainly to China exploding it's energy production (which renewables makes a decent chunk of)

[pfdietz]

China certainly invested to drive down costs, but Germany provided a market for several critical years about a decade ago, to get that ball rolling.

[simonh]

Germany jumped the gun. They started investing heavily in renewables when they were still very costly and storage technologies weren’t practical. Things have changed a lot in the last 30 years.

[g8oz]

It’s been argued that their “premature” investment primed the pump for renewables globally.