Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Gwypaas 1284 days ago
Half of France's nuclear fleet is offline due to maintenance issues. They've gone from an electricity exporter to importer when it is most needed.

Have a look at Flamanville 3 and try to sell another 50 of those to the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

1 comments

And yet... no major safety events and still generating a significant amount of electricity.

Obviously, as you point out, it could be better. But I'll take France, issues and all, over coal plants every day of the week.

I expect France will get their act together.

Re: net importer, their amount of import is basically a rounding error, on the order of 0.1% of their energy usage. They are energy neutral.

The great thing is that the alternative is not coal plants anymore, it is renewables.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

LCOE is unrelated to systems costs of large decarbonized grid because it leaves out the costs of long-term backup, increased transmission, overcapacity needed to fill the night batteries, and more.