[chickenbig]

> In Europe old paid off nuclear plants are regularly being forced off the markets due to supplying too expensive energy.

This is happening because of subsidies given to renewables (renewable energy certificates, net metering, guaranteed feed in prices, CFD) plus policies at the national and EU level (EU Renewable Energy Directive). Take away these policies and you are left with a low quality (intermittent) energy source that requires far more expensive storage to produce power when it is needed.

[ViewTrick1002]

A study recently found that a nuclear powered grid to be vastly more expensive than a renewable grid when looking at total system cost.

Nuclear power needs to come down by 85% in cost to be equal to the renewable system.

Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of the money simply by building renewables.

> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

Which is confirmed by Sweden continuing its renewable buildout with both the cheapest electricity prices in Europe and no subsidies on the books for new renewable production.

[chickenbig]

> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved

Cost assumptions in table 2

Offshore wind 1.9M EUR/MW, 1.67% O&M, 30 year life at 0.51 capacity factor

Onshore wind 1.03M EUR/MW, 2.51% O&M, 30 year life at 0.37 capacity factor

Solar PV 0.6M EUR/MW, 1.50% O&M, 40 year life at 0.14 capacity factor

So they are claiming nuclear (which has a > 0.9 capacity factor in Finland, and 60 year life) needs to have an investment cost between onshore and offshore wind to make sense.

  Due to energy system constraints, there might be reasons for down regulating the nuclear power stations, thus as an output the capacity factor might be lower than 90%, but never higher. The study allows for nuclear power to be down regulated to 25% of the maximum load in for instance hours with high wind and solar production.

So the authors decided that the non-dispatchable wind/solar has market priority over nuclear. Hence it is important to pack out the high nuclear scenario with renewables. Also note how the all renewables scenario adds biogas (presumably from all the pig slurry) to firm up demand along with 6GW of inter-connectors to friendly neighbours.

By way of contrast, https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Nuclea... Page 5 forecasts a 37% reduction in costs when nuclear is part of the energy mix in California.

Edit :- Closer analysis of the high nuclear with district heating scenario (figure 4, in the supplementary material) reveals a total electrical demand of just under 10,000MW (unflexible + heating + transport). Note that the authors have chosen to represent nuclear as a continuous 6,686MW of power (rather than the nameplate capacity of 7,400MW).

[chickenbig]

> Which is confirmed by Sweden continuing its renewable buildout with both the cheapest electricity prices in Europe and no subsidies on the books for new renewable production.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/09/19/sweden-to-lower-solar...

  The Swedish government raised its subsidy for solar cell installations from 15% to 20% in January 2023. ... The income tax reduction for households and businesses that micro-produce renewable energy was introduced in 2015

[xbmcuser]

Even without subsidies solar and battery are cheaper than nuclear and are getting cheaper by 15-20% a year. So no nuclear is unlikely to be cost competitive any time soon unless they get some new tech for nuclear