франция, 95% электричества

[juan_gandhi]

 I've just learned that in 2024 95% of electricity produced in France is carbon-free. It's nuclear, fyi.

Comments

[ichthuss]

Actually it's even somewhat worse than in comment above.

Nuclear plants aren't designed for power regulation. They have very high fixed costs of operation, but really small variable costs, so they are designed to produce as much electricity as they technically can. This is the optimal economical strategy unless electricity prices are below zero. So, nuclear reactor is designed to start, run for say 1 year and stop for maintenance and fuel reloading. It's is optimized for "full power / stop" mode, and its performance in "throttling" mode is very sub-optimal. It has poor energy efficiency, and probably increased wear of equipment and higher risk of accidents.

Moreover, there is an iodine pit. This is one of effects that lead to Chornobyl disaster. It effectively means that after drop in power production, nuclear reactor control is much more difficult, so it's typically safe to restart a reactor no sooner than 24 hours after shutdown or slowing down.

BTW, coal power plants are also no good in daily power regulation (at least those I'm aware of; maybe there are new developments). They also need hours for engine start/stop, and their energy efficiency in throttling mode is so low that it's loss making (coal price becomes much higher than produced electricity price). The only fossil fuel power plants that are good in daily regulations I know are modern natural gas power plants.

So, typically nuclear plants are used for baseline power production (no regulation at all), coil power plants used for regulating season loads (by shutting down some engines), and daily loads regulation is made with hydro and natural gas stations.