Right now both should be expanded. It's not either. Again, if you don't plan firm power ahead you'll end up building gas because it's faster and too late. Even Norway understands this, hence they want nuclear too
Production is adapted each year. 2025 had 13% increase vs last year
That's true. So you deploy different tech to alleviate this problem.
The situation also looks very different in the magnitude - it's extremely rare to get all nuclear fleet down to 5-10% production at the same time. Especially when you have more units (hence smaller reactors do have a benefit here)
So again, wind is nice and should be expanded where it makes sense, esp to avoid some drought problems like Norway has faced. But you still need more firm power. If you don't start planning for nuclear now, gas will be planned later because it's too late to plan for nuclear
And that's based on a day GWh average. The actual production in that day in some timeframes could have been even lower. On first febr offshore CF in Germany was about 3.6%. in 19Feb- 2.2%. these are daily averages so min production could have been worse (I don't have per hour data sadly)
Last year's winter, cumulative wind+solar CF in the whole EU dropped significantly for 2-3 days several times.
It's hard to find data for Sweden, but say for DK on 5-7 november offshore generated at about 4-8% (1-2GWh vs 2.7GW installed). In Germany it was similar with 6% for offshore those days
On the other hand I'm optimistic about BWRX timelines. Both Sweden and Hitachi have great BWR experience and BWRX is similar in many ways to ABWR that was already built in the past. They have all the chances to beat EDF in this by a mile
Nuclear rises the bar by 1GW. Offshore can still play along with hydro modulation and help with droughts, but you no longer have supply issues. And rather than waiting when demand reaches 5GW(hypothetical) you better start building nuclear when peak demand is still 2-3GW considering delays
Offshore wind will not solve the lack of firm power. It can help for drought periods to save hydro and sometimes reduce gas. But if your total demand rises to say 5GW and hydro can output 4GW at max and wind is operating at 1%CF due to weather, you are screwed unless you ration or import
Sweden still doesn't have alternative clean firm power. Hydro can be boosted but nordics in general don't want to extend it too much due to environmental concerns. If peak demand grows and wind isn't blowing, telling people to wait isn't an option. Better start building now than waiting
Yes if EU wants to ditch gas for firming.
Yes if countries want less transmission expansion
Yes if countries care about material/mining amount ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-t...
Or environmental impact unece.org/sites/defaul...
Recycling is sadly banned in US under any form
10% of french power is from recycled MOX from Orano la Hague. They also tested REPU last year
Heck, France even had a reactor designed to work on nuclear waste called Superphenix which was closed under greens pressure. Because of that nowadays only Russia has a big working fast reactor
It's pretty safe despite of them ourworldindata.org/safest-sourc...
And despite it not being renewable, it still requires least mining ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-t...
And has lowest environmental impact unece.org/sites/defaul...
Not in France. It actually proved to be the best one
That's a different thing. Twh will not change much if peak demand grows by some hours but you still need to cover it
300gw is unrealistic imo
Solar is nice and should be added too, but isn't firm. There's a reason big tech hopes nuclear works- buying carbon credits like before becomes challenging since amount of firm power is limited
But it exemplifies what you can do in a series build- you start a new unit 1y after prev one and continue this till you are done. But this requires tons of effort and maybe govt intervention similar to messmer
They had about 8y per units, 12 total. Each unit 1400MW. That's not fast compared to chinese deployments, french messmer ones and even more so-japanese abwr
But in their case it took bit longer per unit
You can have one team and move subteams on different sites once their phase is done. That's how you do series deployment. If you want 10 units, 5y each, with team movement, you get 15y total.
Kinda similar to how Barakah was built
I think this shrimp is from Indonesia
Utah should better talk to Hitachi
It was figured out with AbWR. The question is why Vogtle picked AP1000 foak instead of ABWR noak that was a proved design
It is. Fk wastewater has tritium at levels below WHO limit.
We can speculate, but CS137 is usually used for food decontamination among other usecases like medical sector. My bet is either on that or nuclear weapons testing era
Basically they installed a new equipment that performed so well that after tests they found out other equipment must be replaced too to work in sync
You should ask the same question about forever toxic chemicals, some coming from renewables, that must be stored forever. The same solution applies for nuclear
Ontario was already burnt with alternative pathway energyregulationquarterly.ca/en/articles/...
Nothing bad in trying something else
If peak demand rises ren alone will not be enough and gas will be expanded.