Why are countries who invested in nuclear enjoying the cheapest and cleanest electricity then ? The "economics" seem to work very well for them.

Why do I pay 47ct/kwh in Germany while my parents pay 13ct/kwh in France ?

Electricity is less expensive in France than in Germany because the French taxpayer pays a higher share of the energy system.

https://data.oecd.org/chart/7eRr

Because France already has a ton of installed nuclear capacity and Germany stupidly got rid of it. But as alternatives get better and better it makes less sense to start a 20 year process to install new nuclear.

Call me when Germany's electricity is clean and cheap then, I bet we'll be in the same place in 25 years, in the meantime it's reality VS sci-fi, and so far reality is harsh

In France fossil fuels produce ~65% of final energy, and the project aiming at building the first instance of a series of reactors (EPR) planned in 2004 is a failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...

Germany generates more and more clean electricity while not loosing too much of its industrial sector, with a higher GDP and while getting rid of its nuclear: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/low-carbon-electricity?ta...

France emits less partly thanks to the dramatic reduction of its industrial sector: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...

The net difference between France and Germany isn't as high as sometimes claimed: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

> The net difference between France and Germany isn't as high as sometimes claimed: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

How can you say it's not massive? Germany hasn't even reached the 90s levels of France yet..

The major factors are: France was massively less industrial than Germany, its industrial sector is way less developed than 30 years ago (not emitting is easy when you buy more imported goods), its GDP is quite lower, its climate warmer.

Maybe it's also due to the fact that France has 40% electric heating and in Germany it's something like 5%...

Why do I pay eye watering rents to live in a shoebox while my parents pay 0 rent to live in a massive house?

France's electricity prices will either sky rocket when their paid off 70s nuclear plants finally age out or they will keep running them and open up an exciting new world of nuclear disaster risks.

Germany, meanwhile, will be sitting pretty once it has paid off the capex on its far cheaper green energy.

> Germany, meanwhile, will be sitting pretty once it has paid off the capex on its far cheaper green energy.

Well no, not really. what's preventing that is the low lifespan of renewables.

They are close to 0% of the way of their 2050 goals and will understand the meaning of exponential installation pretty soon.

This is just wrong. They produce roughly 50% from renewables.

The lifespan is baked into LCOE - the measure where nuclear power is 5x as expensive.

That's exactly what I said yes, everything (or very close to) will be decommissioned by 2050.

If you have 50GW of renewables installed and you have a goal of 100GW, you need to install ... 100GW.

The renewables they have right now of course count towards their 2050 goals, that they need to get replaced eventually is a given but doesn't zero out their current contribution towards that goal.

No they don't for the most majority since they have to be decommissioned.

They have to install renewables every month just to keep the existing capacity running, not even talking about expanding it.

You can just look at the data to see they're constantly expanding so I'm not sure where you got this from?

The data is going the exact same way as I'm saying, they are planning an exponential install curve to counter the low lifespan effect. Next year, they double the solar installation rate compared to last year, then by 2025, they almost double it again.

The install curve has been exponential since the beginning.

The thing I responded to wasn't really that though, it was your peculiar conclusion they had come nowhere, 0% as you called it, towards their 2050 goals. And the reason for that was the EOL renewables that needed to be reinstalled.

I didn't say that they have come nowhere, just that they'll have to do it all over again by 2050 which is often forgotten.

The projected lifetime of these assets is baked into the LCOE and the LCOE is still 5x lower.

Theres also very little risk to continuing to run solar panels or wind turbines past their projected lifespans whereas if you do that with a nuclear plant the risks of disaster start increasing exponentially. Germany will probably find that a lot of their green energy built today will last a lot longer than projected and this will reduce their electricity prices.

That debate is moot, the renewables cant sustain the load by itself unlike nuclear anyways. So you need both, you need to replace them as they break down every year AND build additional backups, in case of Germany they chose gas and coal.

Because you chose the most expensive energy provider? I pay significantly less than 47ct/kWh in Germany.