🔋C’est La Vie
France's high energy prices during the European energy crisis are a product of their own creation, and don't disprove nuclear energy's utility in a prosperous decarbonization.
Press the heart button on this article, yes you! I would greatly appreciate it :)
I have mentioned before that I think nuclear energy is a good option for energy generation because it is more energy dense than fossil fuels or renewables, has no greenhouse gas emissions, and waste/safety issues are exaggerated.
The safety issues due to large meltdowns (Chernobyl, Fukushima) are much less likely to occur now with better engineering and safety measures. As far as waste is concerned, not only is there places where you can visit the nuclear waste, but the volume of nuclear waste is rather small in the grand scheme of things. From the Nuclear Energy Institute,
The entire amount of waste created in the United States would fill one football field, 10 yards deep. By comparison, a single coal plant generates as much waste by volume in one hour as nuclear power has during its entire history.
A big problem is that France, the worlds leader in nuclear generation percentage, is struggling from the current European energy crisis just as bad as the rest of Europe.
France
France has a total of 56 operable nuclear plants, with a big push for construction starting in the 70s. Today, the average age of the existing fleet is 37 years old.
EDF (Électricité de France) is the mostly state owned primary electricity utility company in France. Nuclear provides 70% of the electricity for France who exports much of its energy. In fact, 1/5th of the EU’s (European Union) electricity came from France’s nuclear plants in 2018, and they are the largest net electricity exporter in the world.
In total, nuclear provides a outsized share of the total energy generation for the country, boasting a higher percentage than any other country. Most of the nuclear energy goes to electricity generation domestically and abroad.
The large percentage of nuclear generation means that France has very low greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to the UK and major countries across various continents, France has lower carbon intensity of energy production. Even though France has neglected renewables and been dinged for not hitting the 2020 renewables targets, their nuclear fleet has and continued to provide them cleaner energy than other major countries.
Prices
Just as we can look at Germany as a case study for current renewables deployment, we can look at France as a case study for Nuclear deployment. The energy crisis in Europe is heavily effecting electricity prices in Germany and showing their reliance on Russian oil and gas, is also effecting France. Electricity prices in France are even higher than in Germany right now and going parabolic compared to years prior.
High prices? “that’s life.”
Prices rise when demand increases, supply decreases, or a mixture of both. Coming out of the pandemic, energy demand obviously increased. In addition many countries are facing the reality of many years of underinvestment in natural resources like oil and gas. Even though renewables projects are increasing and many countries are trying to transition away from fossil fuels, the world at large is facing a supply shortage of energy that has not been made up by renewables. These factors mixed with geopolitical conflicts cause prices to increase.
If nuclear is such a good option why are things in France so bad? Does this prove that nuclear is not actually a solution to decarbonize and provide energy security? Lets dig deeper.
What Went Wrong?
I don’t believe there is anything wrong with increasing the amount of renewable energy generation, but the way it was done in France was deleterious to the nuclear industry which will be discussed later. The country also announced an arbitrary goal to have 33% renewables by 2030. Renewables primarily serve as an electricity generation source, so it is odd that France would really care since they have the cleanest energy generation in the world. It turns out less than 10% of electricity generation in France is from fossil fuels.
As far as total fossil fuel use, some is still used for residential heating, but most of the petroleum is used for transportation and non-energy uses. Therefore to fully eliminate fossil fuels for energy in France, there is the remaining sliver of electricity generation, the transportation sector, non-energy use, and some industrial and agricultural sectors. Many petroleum uses are impossible or very difficult to replace, leaving the renewables to replace nuclear energy as part of the mix. My point is these arbitrary centrally planned targets many times don’t actually serve the intended purpose which is to reduce emissions. In the case of France, they are just trading one clean source to another.
Critics to the energy transition as is point to French policies as an explanation to the arising consequences. Brian points to this switch from nuclear to renewables and the delayed maintenance and investment in nuclear as a key reason for the price increases.
Furthermore, Mark Nelson and Chris Keefer discuss what went wrong with France’s nuclear fleet here, highlights below.
Poor maintenance/operation, no renovations/improvements seen in other reactors around the world. Production is falling.
Policies to shut down and reduce revenues from nuclear power. Anti-nuclear politicians have gained a large influence and want to switch to wind/solar and fossil fuels.
EDF is bled to support other programs. There is a tax on EDF to subsidize wind/solar investments, must maintain large debt to make sure they can fund obligations.
Have not made any capital improvements or repairs to make their fleet better.
Ideological thinking among engineers and leaders - think the reactors need to be shut down because they are old, but many similar reactors are updated and working just as good around the world.
Tried to make a market for nuclear contracts instead of just state controlled electricity. This ended up driving the price up and not affecting where the electricity actually comes from.
EDF is required to offer electricity at a fixed rate to retailers, so when prices are high they are not making as much money, then when prices are low, the retailers don’t have to buy the contracts. Lower revenues mean no further investment in improvements/renovations/new reactors.
Design changes which causes newer models to be of cheaper quality. Older reactors operating better than many of the newer ones. Older ones shut down because it was assumed the old would need to be shut down first.
Overall, it makes little sense that France would phase out their existing nuclear energy for renewables other than that they prefer renewables over nuclear. Unfortunately, I fear this will not be a beneficial strategy for them. Nuclear powered electricity has yielded France energy security, cheap electricity, and a stable export for the country for decades. It has been a staple in providing the cleanest energy of any major country as well. Recent malinvestment, malfeasance, and ideology are causing the nuclear reactors to deteriorate and unable to be renovated, leaving France in the unfortunate position it is in today.
Hope you enjoyed this weeks article, be back next week.
-Grayson
Leave a like and let me know what you think!
If you haven’t already, follow me at twitter @graysonhoteling and check out my latest posts.
Let someone know about Better Batteries and spread the word!
Socials
Twitter - @graysonhoteling
LinkedIn - Grayson Hoteling
Email - betterbatteries.substack@gmail.com
Archive - https://betterbatteries.substack.com/archive
Subscribe to Better Batteries
Please like and comment to let me know what you think. Join me by signing up below.