Nuclear can dial down/up 80% on hourly basis

https://www.ft.com/content/22a594a0-39a4-4f4e-9f4f-e32c4905119d

9•julcol•5mo ago

Comments

julcol•5mo ago

I always thought nuclear was an all or nothing. Massive thermal inertia and hours days? to fully come online from cold start. Even if it is not coming up form cold start, this type of power balancing is new to me.

This should kill combined cycle role in the electricity mix to counterbalance renewables swings ? am I missing something ?

toomuchtodo•5mo ago

France’s nuclear fleet performs load following but it is harder on the steam mechanicals requiring more frequent maintenance. The question is if this operating model is more cost efficient versus lithium and sodium battery storage at scale for buffering generation and load, with battery storage around $52/kWh for fully integrated systems currently (LFP chemistry). They're constantly burning ~1GW of fossil gas that could potentially be replaced with grid forming battery storage, assuming nuclear output is increased.

Besides domestic battery storage, an additional challenge is that they’re transmission constrained and there is too much nuclear and renewables and insufficient battery storage for domestic demand. Additional inteconnector capacity is coming online to Ireland in 2026 though (Celtic Interconnector, 700MW HVDC submarine cable).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44867632 (citations)

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Interconnector

https://auroraer.com/company/press-room/frances-battery-mark...

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/eu-battery-storage-...

julcol•5mo ago

https://archive.is/mMANE

londons_explore•5mo ago

Isn't the point that it makes no financial sense to ever turn it down?

You still need the same number of staff supervising. Still the same interest costs on the huge bank loan to build it. Still the same maintenance intervals, etc.

Might as well leave it at full power if there is any use whatsoever for the produced energy. Even if there isn't, using the energy to warm up the ocean avoids thermal cycling of the reactor core and therefore reduces maintenance.

toomuchtodo•5mo ago

If you sell power into the power market at 0 or negative prices, you’re not only paying the fixed costs, you’re paying someone to take the power. Renewables can easily curtail, they simply stop producing power when commanded to (typically based on market pricing signals).

Eight More Months of Agents

From Human Thought to Machine Coordination

The new X API pricing must be a joke

Show HN: RMA Dashboard fast SAST results for monorepos (SARIF and triage)

Show HN: Source code graphRAG for Java/Kotlin development based on jQAssistant

Python Only Has One Real Competitor

Tmux to Zellij (and Back)

Ask HN: How are you using specialized agents to accelerate your work?

Passing user_id through 6 services? OTel Baggage fixes this

DavMail Pop/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP Exchange Gateway

Visual data modelling in the browser (open source)

Show HN: Tharos – CLI to find and autofix security bugs using local LLMs

Oddly Simple GUI Programs

The New Playbook for Leaders [pdf]

Interactive Unboxing of J Dilla's Donuts

OneCourt helps blind and low-vision fans to track Super Bowl live

Rudolf Vrba

Autism Incidence in Girls and Boys May Be Nearly Equal, Study Suggests

Wellness Hotels Discovery Application

NASA delays moon rocket launch by a month after fuel leaks during test

Sebastian Galiani on the Marginal Revolution

Ask HN: Are we at the point where software can improve itself?

Binance Gives Trump Family's Crypto Firm a Leg Up

Reverse engineering Chinese 'shit-program' for absolute glory: R/ClaudeCode

Indian Culture

Show HN: Maravel-Framework 10.61 prevents circular dependency

The age of a treacherous, falling dollar

Ask HN: AI Generated Diagrams

Microsoft Account bugs locked me out of Notepad – are Thin Clients ruining PCs?

Show HN: A delightful Mac app to vibe code beautiful iOS apps