Europe has survived 3 energy shocks in 4 years. The only way out is to stop buying power from its enemies | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2026/03/25/europe-3-energy-shocks-in-4-years-what-to-do-next/
Europe has survived 3 energy shocks in 4 years. The only way out is to stop buying power from its enemies | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2026/03/25/europe-3-energy-shocks-in-4-years-what-to-do-next/
Nuclear isn’t a option in the short term at all, simply because you can’t build it fast enough.
It’s also too damn expensive. And please tell where in germany we get the uran and the building materials for nuclear.
Canada. SMRs and uranium.
zu teuer.
True but dont forget. If you will buy it from France, you will leave money locally :) and economy will get this money back
It is much faster to build nuclear power plants that can cover a country’s needs than to fully transition said country to renewable.
It’s expensive upfront. But it is cheap to operate afterwards, and cost efficient to renew. Look at France.
Germany made a major, major mistake when then phased out of nuclear energy.
We have uranium in Europe. We just don’t exploit it. But even if we did not, there is plenty of countries in the world exporting uranium, on all continents. It’s much less of a strategic issue than relying on rare materials for renewable, or on gas/oil.
I present Exhibit A, the new Reactor Flamaville in France. Construction took 17 years and 12 billion Euros.
Exhibit B, solar panels I can mount on my roof for a few thousand that run for 20 years without maintenance.
I rest my case.
EDIT: I did some estimating and figured that instead of building a NPR, France could have supplied around 500.000 households with solar and storage instead. That would be the populations of Lyon, Toulouse and Nice combined. And they would have around 65% of their power for free.
I am not sure if you mean it that way, but I will take this comment as a good joke!
What are you talking about? Building new plants takes decades. Renewables are much faster to build and are even cheaper than keep running existing nuclear plants
No, what are you talking about? A nuclear power plant takes less than a decade to build.
Renewable energy at the scale of a country is impossible to achieve in such a short time in Europe. We dont have huge geothermal taps, which countries having achieved 100% renewable energy have, and we consume a lot more energy.
Cheaper is great, but it’s not continuous, it’s not scaleable in a short period of time, and requires a fuckton more maintainance capability than a dozen nuclear power plants.
I will reiterate: A full renewable energy grid in Europe is impossible with our current tech, especially in a reasonable timeframe. That’s why instead of solar power plants, countries prefer to subsidies local, individual solar panel installations, for instance.
This is demonstrably a lie. The most recent nuclear power plant built in the US took 15 years to complete.
And the power plants in china took 6, with some that took 4 year. You can make nuclear faster if you want to. This is not a technology problem (or at least, not only), but a bureaucratic one. Chinese are building plants based on the AP1000, the same the US are building. It is a US design.
Yes, China is not a magical place. If UAE was able to build a nuclear program from nothing at 8 years for each reactors, then we also can do that. (this time a Korean Design). We just need to understand why they can and we cannot. This is a regulatory problem, not a technology problem
It’s easy to say that, but 15 years ago I thought the US do it too, and I was proven very wrong. I think Europe is a lot more like the US than it is the UAE, in terms of (for example) the ability of anti-nuclear activists to cause delays.
So even with an authoritarian government that can roll over any political opposition or protest, it still takes four-six years at best to build a damn reactor! And in actual democracies, it will take even longer. In functional democracies, people have the power to make sure the reactors are built safe. And they’ve put in regulations to make sure they’re built safe. The best the people of China can do is to simply hope for the best.
Chernobyl was also built cheap and fast. Look how that turned out. “Fast” is the last way I want a nuclear power plant to be built!
Just because is China that does not make it unsafe.
CAP1000 is an incredibly safe 3+ generation design that uses multiple redundant passive safety system. A reactor like that can cool itself without electricity nor human intervention.
The comparison with Chernobyl is laughable. That design had a lot of flaws that do not exists in modern reactors. Just so you know there are still 7 reactor like Chernobyl running in Russia. I would worry more about those instead of one of the safest industrial facility ever designed by humankind.
Yes, you’re quoting the marketing well. I’m sure the platonic ideal of the CAP1000 is perfectly safe. But you’re making the fatal assumption that the plant will be built as designed and properly maintained to maintain that level of safety. It still relies on a massive network of piping that can become clogged or damaged if not properly built and maintained. Your naivety is laughable. Regulatory capture is already a problem in capitalist countries. Now your regulator and construction/operator company are the same people!
And again, you’ve completely ignored the ‘problem’ of democracy. The CCP can simply decree something and it will happen. There’s no opportunity for local feedback. The opinions of the locals are irrelevant. There’s no environmental review. You simply build it.
But ultimately, you completely missed the point of my comment. Democracies demand a certain level of process and accountability. (Yes, the US’s present leadership is making a mockery of that, but Trump is an authoritarian.) In functioning democracies, you have to work to build popular legitimacy and build support for any major project. Dictatorships can just decree something to happen. Democracy itself makes nuclear power plants expensive to build. You need to work really hard to convince people that what you’re building is safe, as you’re building a damn nuclear reactor. I know technofascists find the idea of having to convince the common rabble to go along with their grand visions abhorrent, but I’m in favor of lynching technofascists, so fuck it.
I agree with @[email protected], everything about nuclear technology involves cost and time overruns. A nuclear power plant would ultimately take a decade or more to complete. Even the newer developments of SMRs or Thorium require real world experience and expertise that limit the number of countries who can explore this technology.
While countries are quick to make claims that they unlocked commercial thorium reactors, I’d say the only superpower realistically on track is China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
Is nuclear really cheaper than renewables + batteries nowadays? I wonder if there are recent studies looking into it
Quick search points to this:
Source: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Power-Play-The-Economics-Of-Nuclear-Vs-Renewables
[Caveat: Below numbers are most likely not using LCOE]:
Source: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage-costs-hit-record-lows-as-costs-of-other-clean-power-technologies-increased-bloombergnef/
If we aren’t there yet, I still think we might see renewables + batteries as cheaper options in the short term.
I’d really like to see an LCOE analysis including batteries. If we naively assume LCOE costs for PV+batteries is the same as PV, we might already be there
My focus isn’t on which type of energy is cheapest. An energy grid that is not predictable is worthless. Wiknd power, solar power, are great complements, but a grid using only those is not viable. Hydroelectric is great, but limited. Geothermal is not really viable in mainland Europe.
I’m worried about a realistic transition from fossile fuels to non fossile fuels. Nuclear is realistic, renewable as a main source in Europe is utopic and unrealistic.
You must hate nuclear then, it has awful synergy with renewables since you can’t turn it off and on again quickly. Just overproducing with renewables and using batteries + gas plants for the few days the wind doesn’t blow enough is much more realistic.
This is just…wrong. an unpredictable grid is perfectly fine for almost everything we currenty use it for, it just requires a very small amount of moving usage around and feedback on pricing/demand.
I’m not sure we define unpredictable in the same way. I mean not being able to rely on a continuous source of power (batteries mitigate but don’t solve this issue) is problematic.
Nuclear power plants have to turn off if the weather gets too hot. They have to dump their waste heat in rivers or other bodies of water. To keep them from cooking the local wildlife, countries have to limit the amount of heat they’re allowed to dump into the river. When the temperature of the river increases due to warm weather, the amount the reactor can dispose of in the river decreases. Rivers are not the infinite cold reservoirs your thermodynamics class taught you.
Predictability of renewables can be minimized via national grid interconnection. Even if it’s cloudy and the wind is stagnant in one location, odds are that’s not the case 500-1,000 miles / km away. The larger the grid, the more predictable renewables becomes.
Also, most Lithium-based BESS storage can discharge power to accommodate unpredictable renewables for up to as long as 4 hours, which can be enough to bridge the gap. If storage can’t do it, the grid will.
And let’s not forget other types of renewables + storage that don’t care about clouds or the wind: run-of-the-river hydro (not reservoir hydro), pumped storage hydro, tidal, solar thermal, even wave although I highly doubt wave power will take off, etc.
The more diverse our power generation, both in type and location, the more predictable our grid will be. Diversity is key.
Edit: let’s not forget about the other end of the power equation from generation: utilization. Energy efficiency and conservation through Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) are another tool to help the grid manage unpredictable renewables.
Tell that to Georgia Power. And while you’re at it, pay my electric bill for me if it’s so damn cheap!