[Delacon]

Good points all. My take though from the article is that nuclear power is only economically efficient and competitive when plants operate at maximum power, that France handles this problem by operating at maximum power and then selling off the excess to an available market that we don't currently have. Anyway this article kinda rained on my pro nuke parade.

[HwyChile]

“Anyway this article kinda rained on my pro nuke parade.”

I don't know why that would be the case. Why would we build nuclear plants that produce too much power when we could build the amount that just produces a certain portion of our power and that can run wide open so that no excess need be sold off. France just put too much of its power generation in a non-flexible energy source. If it had only build enough for 50% of its power, it probably would not have a problem.

[DannyTN]

"My take though from the article is that nuclear power is only economically efficient and competitive when plants operate at maximum power"

They made it sound like that, but I don't believe it. I always thought that the fuel costs were minimal and that the real cost of operating a Nuclear plant was the cost of compliance with regulations and up front cost of the facility which also has a lot of compliance load to it. Both of those go down the more you do them. And the more the public is open to the plants.

[Starstruck]

Anyway this article kinda rained on my pro nuke parade.

I think your parade is about an elephant and a clown short of a real parade.

[cdpap]

You could simply use the excess power at off peak times to pressurize huge turbines with compressed air. Then during peak times you draw off this available stored energy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to solve this problem. Anyone raising this as an issue is hard core anti-nuke.