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The electrical grid needs baseload power. In this graph green represents wind production in Sweden each day. A serverhall or steel mill has a fairly constant consumption rate. During During various Dunkelflautes the wind power production has dropped to low single digit percentages of installed capacity.
Some countries like Norway and Iceland are blessed with boundless cheap baseload power from hydro and geothermal. The rest of us need to create it. Nuclear is reliable, not dependent on weather and provides a stable and green electrical grid. There wasn't a single hour in which Germany's electrical grid was greener than France's last year. France bet on nuclear, Germany on fossil fuels with wind when the weather is good.
Too much focus is spent on electricity production and not enough on the grid. A nuclear powerplant 50 km from a city requires a 50 km cable that is operating at an average of 90-95% capacity. Windpower requires multiple power lines that can be a thousand km long to connect the city to various different wind parks, where it might be windy at different times. This is not green, cheap or efficient.
Transmission is under-discussed because most people handwave it, yeah. Our electric co-op is trying to make everyone move to electric heat while already hitting the limits of the undersea cable. So they want to spend another x-million to upgrade that to meet the peak of winter demand, which means it will be used at 20% capacity the rest of the year.
That's an awful lot of expensive copper just sitting in the ocean not earning its keep. Greens always say "oh we'll just build more X" without ever considering the capital costs.
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I understand solar and wind have their shortcomings when in comes to production stability, and that they may have hidden costs. But that it is long stretch from there to concluding nuclear power is generally a worthy complement to them, with aims at minimizing emissions.
As clean and safe and whatever else it may be, there is no way around the price. It consistently ranks among the most costly sources. And budget being the tightest constraint, I cannot imagine it being an important part of the strategy for energy transition - maybe some minor and localized cases, but not more than that.
For a curious layman like me, it is hard to tell serious speech from the noise. But just pointing out that something has a problem does not sell well that nuclear is the best solution.
Nuclear isn't that expensive. France managed to build a majority nuclear grid that has been safe and stable for decades while maintaining sensible electrical prices. The price comes from building one of a kind reactors by companies with little experience while contending with insane levels of regulation.
If you know of a source that demonstrates that and contrasts with alternatives, I would be interested in reading
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As another commenter asked, are you calculating the insane and targeted regulatory burdens as part of this price? Most nuclear plants that have gone up have undergone extreme lawfare designed to put them out of business. Without all of that, do you suppose the cost might go down?
Absolutely that is an important factor for understanding how nuclear weighs against alternatives. I cannot say where we should draw the line between lawfare and necessary checks and rightful disputes, nor can I say what the actual political cost it is to have nuclear powerplants. But would be very interested in reading a source that makes a good case for nuclear power using uo to date data, and its nvironmental and economic effect under different scenarios
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