The Biden Administration and the far Left of the Democratic Party are congenitally opposed to nuclear power, but on February 22nd the Washington Post noted that Canada, France and Sweden have taken a different path from the U.S. and Germany. The very best comparison of these two options is to examine France versus Germany. According to Next Big Future, “France’s nuclear energy spending was 60% of what Germany spent on renewables. France gets about 400 terawatt-hours per year from nuclear, but Germany gets 226 terawatt-hours each year [from renewables]. And 45 Terawatt-hours of Germany’s renewable power comes from burning biomass which generates air pollution.”
Renewable energy advocates in the U.S. like to say America should be a lot more like Germany when it comes to generating more electricity from wind and solar. Their argument is that wind and solar are already less expensive than fossil fuels.
But if renewables are cheaper, why does Germany now have the second highest electricity price, at 52 cents per kilowatt hour? Only a penny less than Denmark. And amazingly, Germany has decommissioned all of its nuclear power stations due to political pressure from that nation’s Greens.
And, again according to Next Big Future: “Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years. The wind farms will need to be rebuilt every 20-25 years. Nuclear plants can last 40-80-plus years. This means that it guarantees that the solar and wind farms will have to be rebuilt in 15-25 years.”
And if Germany’s wind and solar farms are more reliable, why did Germany have to resume burning lignite (brown coal) last winter when the wind stopped blowing, the sun stopped shining and the Germans could no longer import enough natural gas from Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine? Brown coal is 20% water and it generates more CO2 than burning wood.
Plus Next Big Future added:
France completed construction on 76% of its current 58 reactors at an inflation-adjusted cost of $330 billion (€290 billion). The complete buildout of the 58 reactors is less than €400 billion. Germany has spent about €500 billion over the last 20 years to get to 35% renewables. Seven percent of this is burning biomass. France gets almost double the TWh from nuclear than Germany gets from renewables (solar, wind, biomass, hydro). France has gotten about 400 TWh per year from nuclear while all of Germany’s renewables (solar, wind and biomass) amounts to about 220 TWh.
According to Energy Central, “France’s cost was $1 billion to build each terawatt hour per year of clean energy.”
Germany’s cost is $2.5 billion to build each terawatt hour per year of relatively clean energy. The 180 TWh per year of solar and wind is clean but the biomass is not. It generates air pollution. France’s electricity is 41% cheaper for its citizens’ than Germany. Germans now pay 30 euro cents per kwh. while the French pay 18 euro cents per kwh. This was an extra €24 billion per year. Twenty-two years of extra cost is another $500 billion. This is triple the cost of France and does not include the rebuilding expense of solar and wind over the 50-plus years during the expected life of the nuclear reactors.
From 2006 to 2017, Germany increased the cost of electricity for households by 50%. French electricity prices are just 59% of German electricity prices. France produces one tenth the carbon pollution from electricity compared to Germany.
Emmanuel Macron has announced a “renaissance” of the French nuclear industry with a vast programme to build as many as 14 new reactors, arguing that it would help end the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and make France carbon neutral by 2050.
“What our country needs… is the rebirth of France’s nuclear industry,” Macron said in a recent speech.
Atomic energy provides about 70% of French electricity; low-cost nuclear power has been a mainstay of the French economy since the 1970s.
Clearly, France has made far better choices! Its nuclear based approach was far cheaper to install, will last longer and provides electricity at one half the cost. And the Germans veered far off the best course of energy action.
Richard Burcik is the author of two short books, The DNA Lottery and Anatomy of a Lie.
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Don’y know about France.
But- equivalent price of electricity per KWH re this lot- (apparently) is –
Usa 10p
China 6p
UK er, 30p
China builds coal fired power stations for breakfast. They have no problem with climate change as far as their electricity is concerned. I’m not surprised at the cost there but then again I imagine their wages are lower too. We’re basically f*cked in this country as we have no leaders with any real vision other than what they are told. They’re clueless, feckless traitors every man/woman jack of them. It’s all part of the plan. Fill the country with migrants who can’t leave, impoverish the middle classes, put them on rations, jab them, tie them to 15 min cities, take away their transport and watch them riot.
They’re not taking my wood burner though. They’d have to physically fight me for it… to the death.
Iceland a tenth of our cost, using lots of geothermal although for some weird reason have a few wind turbines.
Very few EV’s, roughly 7% by my guesstimate. With cheap electricity they should be leading the world in EV but probably not because they are far too expensive and it’s bloody cold!
Wind turbines for climate change are like masks for CoVid – visual statements of crisis and impending doom. Be afraid! Comply!
So just as every VIP donned their black masks to be filmed/photographed to stress the point, every Country must have some big wind turbines for show, to demonstrate solidarity with the globalist conspiracy.
2021 – when I left France – it was about 11 cents per kWh – 8p depending on exchange rate.
Apply the same question to the UK. HMT told gge Thatcher government that nuclear was expensive and the greens everywhere said it was dangerous. Both were wrong but the political class just loves to adopt fashionable policies, especially if they avoid near term thinking.
Thatcher wanted rid of coal and saw Nuclear as the answer and was vilified. ——But wind on 40 years and coal is now the devil incarnate and governments are finally scrambling about trying to build some Nuclear plants because they are realising that wind and sun will mean BLACKOUTS. ——All except the silly Germans who got rid of their after Fukushima. But that accident was caused by an earthqauke, but Germany is not on a fault line.
You’ve got to give it to the French, they’re much better at giving two fingers to the ‘current thing’ than the rest of us, especially the virtue signallers-in-chief UK and Germany. Who knows, their civilisation might even survive the next 50 years (whereas us and the Germans are surely doomed).
Which is an incredible statistic. They would therefore need about 4 reactors in each state to power the ENTIRE country. Electricity needs have obviously risen dramatically since then, but then so has power plant technology.
Nuclear power is surely one of the great inventions of the 20th century. We need to focus our resources and manpower in making it as safe and efficient as possible, but what do our A*hole politicians do instead? Ignore middle class Brits, and pander to Greta, Tarquin and Lizzy (you know, the ones who sit on motorways, and throw paint at artworks in museums), condemning nuclear power in the process.
The governments of the UK and Germany are destroying their own civilisations. We get the governments that we deserve, so it must be a reflection of us. One only needs to read a UK ‘newspaper’, or watch the latest demented nonsense on TV (Celeb Big Bro!), to see what idiots we’ve become. And if you think we’re bad, just wait until the next generation takes the reins (you know, the Jadons, La’Toyas, Mohammeds, Jordans etc). It’s going to be a rapid, and spectacular, collapse.
Nuclear is already the safest. ——At Fukushima the 16,000 who died were not killed by radiation but by the tidal wave. ——Practicality and common sense don’t come into energy policy when socialists are involved. They don’t want cheap energy for political purposes and they will rant on about a phony climate crisis etc, but that kind of thing is just an excuse. They are anti capitalist, and cheap energy gives fuel to the capitalism. —–That is what it is really about.
Coal works better, is cheaper.
The left don’t like cheap energy period. They come away with all manner of excuses like climate change for cheap fossil fuels, and Chernobyl for Nuclear, but these are just their feeble excuses. They are ideologically opposed to cheap energy because it is the driver of Industrial Capitalism. —–However despite Democrats being in charge in the USA their electricity prices are still 3 times lower then ours. ——-Then here even with a so called conservative government for the last 14 years we have adopted eco socialist policies that have driven energy prices so high that millions are forced into energy poverty and manufactures cannot compete when their costs alone for energy are much higher, and all so we can pretend to save the planet. —-Climate Change and Net Zero is nothing more than a socialist scam emanating from the UN and our own lackey parasite politicians pander to that instead of to their own citizens. —-We saw a Chancellor yesterday fiddle about with 2p off this and 1p off that as if any of that will make the slightest difference while Net Zero is costing us all in the trillions and probably tens of thousands each.
We are at this very moment importing 7% of our needs from France at great cost and 7% from our own nuclear while wind is in the doldrums. Gas is always being demanded to “balance the books” without which we are stuffed.
“What our country needs… is the rebirth of France’s nuclear industry,” Macron said in a recent speech.
And yet pre-Macron the plan was to decommission up to half the fleet to be replaced by wind power. Why?
80% of France’s electricity is from nuclear, and its capacity significantly exceeds demand which is why France is a net exporter of electricity.
But for more than a decade the population has been badgered – like here – to use less and less electricity ‘to save the Planet’, subsidies for wind and solar were plentiful. Why?
Why are there wind turbines ruining some of the most beautiful landscape?
Doesn’t this confirm the Net Zero malarkey has nothing to do with reducing CO2 emissions or ‘stopping’ climate change, it is a power grabbing, money-making scam and the obsession of misanthropic psychopaths?
Net Zero is about many things with so many feeding at the trough and ideology trumping common sense. It is also about the world government in waiting at the UN getting control over the worlds wealth and resources and a Malthusian approach that thinks there are too many people seeking to use finite resources in the ground, with the idea being that western wealthy countries who became prosperous using those fuels should stop using them because we have used up more than our fair share. Our own politicians seem happy to oblige in that regard by spending about 3 trillion of our money on decarbonising knowing full well that the developing world is not doing that. A kind of eco socialism if you will.—-The last thing Net Zero is about is the climate.
Only 14 comments ———The entire country is sitting there like a bunch of wimps and letting governments walk over us with their phony climate change crap. ——-The most important commodity for our welfare health and prosperity is ENERGY. ——-Cheap abundant energy is what gave us the standard of living and long life spans we now have. We are allowing governments to take all of that away with our apathy.