France had to nationalize EDF due to the exorbitant cost of their nuclear fleet, and they cannot get a reactor built within reasonable capital costs. Spain plans to deprecate their remaining nuclear for renewables for similar reasons. California will achieve a low carbon generation profile for far cheaper than it cost France (refer to the Lazard LCOE data product I've cited in my other comment in this thread).
Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 15.45% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)
The reason EDF had to be nationalized is because the government used the company as a "price shield" to protect consumer against energy price rise on the European market in 2022 with a mechanism named TRV (Tarif Régulé vente). That digged up EDF dept tremendously.
> Spain plans to deprecate their remaining nuclear for renewables for similar reasons
Span deprecated their nuclear government because their current Socialist government is aligned with Ecologists that are, like everywhere in Europe, antinuclear.
Additionally, the lack of spinning generator in Spain is currently partially what caused the Blackout in Spain in 2025 due to a lack of inertia in the system.
> EDF fleet upkeep will cost over 100 billion euros by 2035, court of auditors says
This is over 25 years and will prolong-ate the lifetime of the 56 reactors by 20 more years. These produce 70% of the country need in electricity.
In comparison, the German energiewende cost 400 billions for 37% of electricity of 2025 produced by solar and wind. With production medium that will need to be entirely renewed in 20 years.
> California will achieve a low carbon generation profile for far cheaper than it cost France (refer to the Lazard LCOE
That is also wrong.
Because LCOE calculation does not take into consideration the price of the grid consolidating necessary for renewable nor the necessity of backup generation in case of dunkleflaute.
>> France had to nationalize EDF due to the exorbitant cost of their nuclear fleet
>That's just wrong.
No, it's correct, the total costs of the 2022 bailout was almost 10bn, and that was to get control over a company that had over 50bn in debt.
Furthermore it was discovered that the plants had neglected maintenance that had to be undertaken rightaway, that had nothing to do with the TRV.
Of course, the TRV didn't help, it caused a loss of 18bn in 2022 on top of everything else, but things were bad already.
So even if the mentioned 5 bn export now was pure profit - which is isn't - it would take 15-20 years to cover the bailout that has already taken place. The 100 billion of investments until 2035 is in addition to that.
And they will have to sell their power on markets that will increasingly often have free electricity from solar and wind. How do you pay 1000 educated plant operators when electricity prices are negative?
Unfortunately nuclear power isn't the kind of thing you can try and then walk away from when it turns out to be a bad idea. Which is likely the main reason it's still around.
> No, it's correct, the total costs of the 2022 bailout was almost 10bn, and that was to get control over a company that had over 50bn in debt.
Bailout of 2022 alone was around 22bn€, which was added on top of it the historical debt.
Revenue of EDF in 2025 is over 100bn€ to put things into perspective.
> Furthermore it was discovered that the plants had neglected maintenance that had to be undertaken rightaway, that had nothing to do with the TRV.
That is also wrong. The immediate maintenance in 2022 was related to "corrosion sous contrainte" which has nothing to do with carelessness. It was mainly the French nuclear regulator (ASN) over-reacting to some non-critical cracks find in some pipes. They have themselves said afterward that the immediate actions were not necessary. The actions were overreactive (from EDF side) and the calendar was very unfortunate.
> So even if the mentioned 5 bn export now was pure profit - which is isn't -
Indeed. Profits in 2025 were currently over 8bn€, so well over 5bn€.
5bn€ just concern the profit made by the exports.
This is not hard to understand: Making a profit by selling valuable nuclear energy during evening peak consumption while buying cheap intermittent solar during low consumption time is an easy game.
People generally do not understand that Nuclear is a CAPEX game, not an OPEX one.
> And they will have to sell their power on markets that will increasingly often have free electricity from solar and wind. How do you pay 1000 educated plant operators when electricity prices are negative?
By selling nuclear electricity at 180€/MWh every night when the sun do not shine.
(This is the average price, every evening peak this month)
Meaning-while, the profitability of solar operators will sink to the ground due to the overcapacity causing negative price during the day as soon as the sun shine. Many of them will die if not state subsidized with public money.
> nuclear power isn't the kind of thing you can try and then walk away from when it turns out to be a bad idea
It is currently the best low-carbon energy around.
And will continue to be for the next 2 decades.
The current Co2/kwh emission of France is 27g/kwh.
The comparison with country like Germany (397g/kwh) or state like California (190g/kwh) that spend >100Bn$ on renewable speak for itself.
I can safely bet that in 15y from now, the French grid will still be greener than the German one.
> making a profit by selling valuable nuclear energy
EDF adjusted economic debt at the beginning of 2026: €81.7 billion
After decades of massive help (nationalisations building it, monopoly, gift-loans, debt cancellation...
> the profitability of solar operators will sink to the ground due to the overcapacity causing negative price
Wait for storage (V2G...) and hydrogen to kick in.
> France
> Germany
France's transition to nuclear power began in 1963 and is now complete.
In other countries (Germany...), transitions to renewables began with the advent of their industrial versions, around 2005. The current context makes these transitions more challenging, and they are still underway.
Therefore, any comparison of their results, for example, greenhouse gas emissions, must be based not on snapshots (which currently favor France since its transition is complete), but on their progress: speed, costs, impacts, etc.
> decades of massive help (nationalisations building it, monopoly, gift-loans, debt cancellation...
I start seriously question your intellectual honesty here.
- For the last 2 decades, EDF was privatised and give back to the state an average of 2bn€ per year in dividende [1]. That is currently EDF giving to the state, not the opposite.
- The monopoly situation in France was ended in 2007. The loi NOME in 2010 even offred to the competitor of EDF an access to nuclear energy at fixed low price [2].
Worth to note that when the Energy crisis spiked in 2022, the same 'competitors' sent back their customers to EDF because they massively increased their price and did not want to follow the TRV.
> hydrogen to kick in.
Nobody sane of mind and reasonable take hydrogen and Power2Gas seriously in the energy sector: The law of physics simply play against it.
The general efficient is low (practically around 50%), the electrolizers strongly hate the spike style usage pattern necessary for a coupling with intermittent energy, and no installations of the required scale has even been tried.
The only reason this is still on the table is because it gives the gaz industry a reason to drain public subsidies and some hope to stay relevant.
> France's transition to nuclear power began in 1963 and is now complete.
Thats also wrong.
The Messner plan started in 1974 and France was other 55% of electricity production provided by Nuclear in 1985. It finishes with over 50 reactors in 15 years to cover up more than 70% of the electricity generated [3]
The cost of the plan Messmer was estimated at 100bn€ in 2012 money.
Germany started their energiewende in 2005 and 20 years later and 400Bn€ burned, they still do have a CO2/kwh intensity 4x higher than France in the 80s.
The results are so bad that Germany started to subsidies its own industry to protect them against electricity price increase [4]
>This is not hard to understand: Making a profit by selling valuable nuclear energy during evening peak consumption while buying cheap intermittent solar during low consumption time is an easy game.
It is also easy to understand that the nuclear plant costs money even as you are buying cheap solar, because you can't just shut them down. This is a problem already, and we already have solar plants that generate energy 24/7.
They are small, sure but many, and the number is increasing very fast.
There is also tech in the pipeline that will accelerate this. Very cheap batteries among them.
Technology is already being deployed that will have electricity trend towards being free or almost free, 24/7. Pretty soon value will not be generated by selling electricity, instead you will have to generate value from consuming almost free electricity.
When does a nuclear plant generate profits then? They will inevitably have to close, and unfortunately for France, nuclear plants cost money even after they have closed.
This is complete baloney and revisionist history. I followed that topic at the time pretty in depth. It took months and months and delay upon delay to get the plants back up and running. The spot prices in France at times in 2022 went over 1500 euros per MWh. If it was just "an overreaction" there would've been tremendous political pressure to just put the plants back online. The government and EDF are intertwined to the point any talk of new construction etc. always goes through Macron.
> I followed that topic at the time pretty in depth
You apparently did not. because you are the revisionnist here.
CSC (corrosion sous contrainte) is a well documented topic with accessible reports from the ASN (the french nuclear agency) [1], the court des comptes (French accounting court) and EDF itself.
The source of the problem is a phenomena that affect mainly the N4 (1400MW) series of the French reactor. It has been detected in 2021, so before the 2022.
Some pipe in some specific part of the circuit (secondary circuit) presented some unexpected cracks under inspection in one specific reactor.
And EDF chose the stop all the potentially affected reactor and disassembly all the potentially affected pipe to scan them with X ray and triple check that the corrosion phenomena is not widespread.
Where they over-reacted, is that they also disassembled the different serie 900Mw reactor 'just in case', at the worst time.... meaning right before Vladmir Putin attacked Ukrain.
> If it was just "an overreaction" there would've been tremendous political pressure to just put the plants back online
Sure. They should have just emergency duck tape the pipe without following any safety protocol, in a nuclear installation, just to please some politicians and because Putin dreamed of cold war again #sarcasm.
You seem to have very little clue of about the nuclear industry internals and its associated safety processes.... It of course took time.
The only thing you are correct on is that, indeed, it took longer than expected and caused delays.
The cost of the energy transition in Germany is sometimes cited as €300 billion, €500 billion, or even €1.5 trillion.
These figures are worthless because no reputable source publishes a specific figure along with the scope of the project (some aspects of the investments needed for the electricity grid are independent of the energy source) and at least a timeframe.
These figures are actually projections published by various sources, covering distant deadlines (2050, etc.) and the entire electricity system, including non-renewable energy sources (whose additional costs are often overestimated).
> EDF nuclear fleet is highly profitable with around 92TWh exported in 2025
Nope. Electricity exports are officially exported at a loss, since the average price per MWh exported is generally slightly lower than the average French spot price ( https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2025-04/2025-04-09... , page 87). According to the sound approach established by Mr. Boiteux, this price must compensate for production costs as well as investments.
The average market price is decreasing because the renewable energy sector is expanding across the continent, thus supplying more and more electricity at a production cost that is increasingly lower than that of nuclear power.
According to RTE, France will export 92.3 TWh in 2025 (page 75), paid €5.4 billion (page 15), meaning that the average price per MWh will be €58.7. However, this renewable energy sector (considered fully amortized) will produce electricity at a cost of €60.3 according to the CRE (which considers it fully amortized and therefore neglects the bulk of the investment), and at around €78 according to EDF ( https://www.edf.fr/sites/groupe/files/epresspack/6300/CP_Con... ), which wants to build EPR2 reactors and therefore needs to have the necessary funds.
In short, France is exporting at €58.70 a year when it needs to sell for at least €78 to finance its future reactors, thus "using up" its current fleet without setting aside enough money to replace it.
Worse still: if the costs of the EPR2 reactors exceed forecasts, as all EPR construction projects (Finland, France, China, and the UK) have done, the deficit will increase even further.
Fixed costs (investments, maintenance, depreciation of the EPR alone, etc.) are by definition paid whether the fleet produces or not. Therefore, exporting at a price higher than the variable costs (paid only if the plant produces) is a lesser evil because the difference covers a portion of the fixed costs: it is less expensive to export at a slight loss than not to produce and lose more (in technical terms: the gross margin helps cover fixed costs).
However, claiming that nuclear power is profitable simply because of electricity exports is misleading, and the ideal solution would be to produce electricity at the lowest possible cost, therefore using renewable energy sources.
Furthermore, a portion of France's electricity is generated from renewables, so attributing exports solely to nuclear power is misleading.
EDF fleet upkeep will cost over 100 billion euros by 2035, court of auditors says - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-fleet-upkeep-wil... - November 17th, 2025
French utility EDF lifts cost estimate for new reactors to 67 billion euros - Les Echos - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-utility-edf-l... - March 4th, 2024
Explainer-Why a French plan to take full control of EDF is no cure-all - https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/07/07/edf-nationalistion - July 7th, 2022
Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 15.45% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)