[florimondmanca]

> So even the company with a financial incentive to under-estimate the cost is saying that the electricity it produces will be at best as expensive as wind energy already is.

... And be low-carbon (~10gCO2/kWh). Whereas the £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation, which is at 400gCO2/kWh. Given how wind has a typical load factor of 20-30% max in Western Europe, you’d be using gas at best 70% of the time, meaning an average carbon intensity perhaps around 300gCO2/kWh.

So for the same price (or even double that as a first step - nuclear costs decrease radically with lower risks perceived by investors), nuclear gets you > 30x less carbon in the atmosphere than wind+gas. That is not insignificant.

> they're only used on such days, then the cost per Joule is even worse.

Nuclear isn’t like gas: it is fixed-costs infrastructure, meaning that the more you use it, cheaper it gets. So you want to use it as much as possible. (French nuclear plants oscillate between 75% and 90% load depending on maintenance schedules.) So on a windy day, nuclear load won’t typically change too much, but rather gas and coal usage will go down to let wind electricity match up with demand. This means nuclear gets you less emissions even in that case.

[phaemon]

> £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation

No, they're totally separate things. It's not "wind and gas" as a single entity, it's "wind farms supply power to the grid at £40/MWh and gas plants also provide power to the grid at £40/MWh". In other words, it just means they cost about the same which is half the cost of nuclear. There is no 30/70 split as you imagined.

Which makes sense. Scotland gets around 90% of it's electricity from renewables, of which around 70% is wind power. It couldn't possibly do that if your figures were correct.

[florimondmanca]

Right! My “40 includes wind + gas” was confusing, and if that’s “40 on average”, my bad.

My point was to address the idea that nuclear is too costly as a long term solution, which I think (?) OP was using that cost/MWh comparison to intent.

FTR though, I do appreciate that gas + renewables can be a nice transition strategy (like the UK seems to have done to eradicate coal).

> There is no 30/70 split as you imagined.

It seems you understood I was talking about a 30/70 split in cost. That is not what I said: I was talking about a 30/70 split in usage.

But FTR, even in the sense I intended, you’re right, the number 30/70 is wrong, or at least it can only be valid under specific conditions that I’m not really able to quantify (electricity mix, coverage of demand, etc), and I hadn’t thought it through a lot.

[jnxx]

Using gas backup is a transition technology which is the most effective and available thing we have right now, and it won't stay that way. Demanding zero emissions right now is like to maliciously demand perfection in order to kill of something good.

[florimondmanca]

I do recognize the value of renewables + gas as a transition strategy. :) And do appreciate what the UK has been doing there (using gas + renewables to eradicate coal).

My comment was addressing the pre-conceived idea that nuclear is too costly to be a long term solution. (Which I’m actually not sure the original comment meant, heh...)