65 billions in debt and having to be saved by the state means you are not profitable. It doesn't matter where the costs come from in this case, they are not covered by the money EDF has accumulated from selling power, which was the point.
This debt is already a reality - and growing with interest rates if nothing else - and we haven't even gotten to the many billions more that have to be invested in the beat-up old plants to keep them running.
We also don't know how many billions more that have to be paid to decommission them and for storing the waste. Nobody knows this yet.
Nuclear power has always been a strategic choice, with extensive international treaties and special conditions in place to make it a reality despite it not being financially viable in the traditional sense. The costs have been socialised and pushed to future generations, deliberately.
Now that several decades have passed, we are the generations that have to start paying.
> It doesn't matter where the costs come from in this case, they are not covered by the money EDF has accumulated from selling power, which was the point.
That by itself isn't an issue. Plenty of companies take on debt to invest, for instance. My company intends to take €40bn of new debt in the next decade or so, and our investors don't see it as an issue.
That's why unit costs are important, that's what dictates whether the activity is reasonable, and how much debt can be supported by it.
> We also don't know how many billions more that have to be paid to decommission them and for storing the waste. Nobody knows this yet.
Plants have been decomissioned in the past already. Because of that, we have pretty reasonable estimates of how much dismantling costs. If you have specific points about why past dismantled structures are different from future ones, feel free to expose them. Otherwise, the "we don't know" discourse is basically FUD.
>That by itself isn't an issue. Plenty of companies take on debt to invest, for instance. My company intends to take €40bn of new debt in the next decade or so, and our investors don't see it as an issue.
But that isn't the case here. When the debt causes you to be bailed out by the government, is is an issue, wouldn't you agree?
EDF isn't a car maker that has to invest in a transition to electric cars (or whatever), they are basically bankrupt. EDF needs _additional_ billions in order to invest in the future, separate from the billions of debt it already accumulated. Since the organisation is nationalised, that money will come from the taxpayers.
>Plants have been decomissioned in the past already. Because of that, we have pretty reasonable estimates of how much dismantling costs.
Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?
Most decommissioned reactors are part of plants that have other active reactors, so they are not actually dismantled. EDF has postponed final decommissioning for several of its closed reactors by 50 years, Berkeley in the UK is still ongoing, Vandellos 1 in Spain (closed since 1990) will commence final phase in 2028, Rancho Seco in California, closed in '89 still costs money today, and so on.
Apart from that, the "end result" for decommissioning projects are always "and then the federal government takes over from here". Meaning that the true costs are unknown even when the projects are actually completed.
This is not FUD, it's reasonable concerns based on observed realities. A discussion can be had about nuclear power anyway - it has merits too of course - but the concerns can't simply be brushed aside and ignored. They are based on reality.
> But that isn't the case here. When the debt causes you to be bailed out by the government, is is an issue, wouldn't you agree?
EDF's current situation is an issue. My point, however, is that this is not related to electricity pricing, nuclear or not.
> Since the organisation is nationalised, that money will come from the taxpayers.
Yes, so what? France's general budget received tens of billions in dividends from EDF in recent years, would you say EDF saved as much for the taxpayer?
> Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?
maine Yankee, for instance.
> Apart from that, the "end result" for decommissioning projects are always "and then the federal government takes over from here".
That's unrelated to dismantling. This issue is about waste storage in the US.
>France's general budget received tens of billions in dividends from EDF in recent years, would you say EDF saved as much for the taxpayer?
Of course, my point is only that it's true to say that EDF sold the power too cheaply, otherwise they would have been profitable and debt-free.
The question that has to be answered is whether nuclear can provide power at a competitive price once all the costs are counted. Currently all the costs are not counted, and we keep discovering that the costs are way higher than any estimates have previously shown.
>> Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?
>maine Yankee, for instance.
Yankee costs 10 million USD per year still to this day with no end in sight.
"Securing these remnants of nuclear energy generation is an ongoing task that requires armed guards around the clock and costs Maine Yankee’s owners some $10 million per year, which is being paid for with money from the government."
This means that every year, at least 10 million USD has to retroactively be added to the actual cost of electricity generated by that plant.
Then some day the spent fuel has to be moved, and the current container structure has to be dismantled. Why doesn't that count as being part of the decommissioning costs?
To say that nobody knows what it actually costs is quite fair IMO.
> Of course, my point is only that it's true to say that EDF sold the power too cheaply, otherwise they would have been profitable and debt-free.
They have been profitable for decades.
As for the debt, part of the debt is logical for such a group to have (i.e. amortizing the expense that was or is being made to extend the plants' lifetime).
Part of it is due to being required by the government to make bad decisions (e.g. buying and recapitalizing Areva, giving 8 billions worth of electricity to their competitors this winter, ...). This debt is unrelated to EDF's operations.
> Yankee costs 10 million USD per year still to this day with no end in sight.
That is related to long term storage, not dismantling. There's no reason for that to cost billions in France, where a storage site is on the rails.
> Why doesn't that count as being part of the decommissioning costs?
Decomissioning a plant has two parts: dismantling, which is a one-time cost, and long-term storage, which is an ongoing cost. The specific issue with the US govt. is that, when the plants were being built, it guaranted that a storage solution would be built, but didn't deliver. That's why the government currently pays for storage. There is no technical reason for this to happen.
> This means that every year, at least 10 million USD has to retroactively be added to the actual cost of electricity generated by that plant. [...] To say that nobody knows what it actually costs is quite fair IMO
By that same logic, it's impossible to know the cost of anything. Maybe future politicians will force people to recycle their solar panels at outrageous cost?
The only logical decision is to separate the cost of decomissioning (dismantling, a reasonable duration of dry-cask storage and the cost of a long-term storage site) and the cost of political decisions.
This debt is already a reality - and growing with interest rates if nothing else - and we haven't even gotten to the many billions more that have to be invested in the beat-up old plants to keep them running.
We also don't know how many billions more that have to be paid to decommission them and for storing the waste. Nobody knows this yet.
Nuclear power has always been a strategic choice, with extensive international treaties and special conditions in place to make it a reality despite it not being financially viable in the traditional sense. The costs have been socialised and pushed to future generations, deliberately.
Now that several decades have passed, we are the generations that have to start paying.