So they were complaining about being held to an agreement to priority (essentially a price cap) for 25% of power they made in exchange for being handed a monopoly on power generation with infrastructure paid for by the public?
And the feed in tarriff acumulated a quarter of a nuclear reactor's worth of extra liability which they are now being paid?
You seem to be really reaching to claim this is somehow unfair. Especially considering the other side of the deal where taxpayers or utility customers who are victims of new nuclear plants are just told 'fuck you, you're paying the price we made up even if we don't generate any power' or 'we made one in another country and failed really bad so you get to pay half' or 'whoops, we only put aside 1/4th of the money needed to decomission...have fun paying another billionperGWbyeeee' or 'we racked up a quarter trillion dollar cleanup bill but we made you sign a treaty saying we only have to pay 0.5%, have fun'.
EDF is 85% owned by the French government. They were forced to "privatize" by the EU but are now planning to be nationalized again.
Nuclear infrastructure that is already paid for is being neglected and paracitized to pay for new solar/wind generation. The government has mandated that they will shut down perfectly good plants, taking nuclear from 75% of generation to 50%. The grid was already largely decarbonized! They are throwing away reliable cheap energy in order to pay for new intermittent energy. The result is increased cost, decreased reliability, and more emissions when the renewables aren't available. Fossil fuel use has stayed the same or even increased since renewables started being added: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/File:F...
> Especially considering the other side of the deal where taxpayers or utility customers who are victims of new nuclear plants are just told 'fuck you, you're paying the price we made up even if we don't generate any power' or 'we made one in another country and failed really bad so you get to pay half' or 'whoops, we only put aside 1/4th of the money needed to decomission...have fun paying another billionperGWbyeeee' or 'we racked up a quarter trillion dollar cleanup bill but we made you sign a treaty saying we only have to pay 0.5%, have fun'.
Hmm, maybe they'd have more money to fund things properly if they were allowed to charge the true rate for electricity (instead of letting other companies arbitrage for free), and weren't forced to buy renewable electricity at high prices?
> The government has mandated that they will shut down perfectly good plants, taking nuclear from 75% of generation to 50%.
A plant that is aging out or reaching the stage in its lifetime when it needs a $1.5/W refurb isn't 'perfectly good'. Nor is a much newer one that is corroding due to major design faults and is off half of the time.
Replacing them with energy sources where total costs are lower than running costs is just financial sanity. At least until there is a large enough renewables fraction that storage is a concern.
> Hmm, maybe they'd have more money to fund things properly if they were allowed to charge the true rate for electricity (instead of letting other companies arbitrage for free), and weren't forced to buy renewable electricity at high prices?
You misspelled 'fully exploit their monopoly rather than have a price cap at their claimed true cost of generation for 25% of it'. If €48/MWh isn't enough to pay for the upkeep then maybe don't claim it's cheap?
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And the feed in tarriff acumulated a quarter of a nuclear reactor's worth of extra liability which they are now being paid?
You seem to be really reaching to claim this is somehow unfair. Especially considering the other side of the deal where taxpayers or utility customers who are victims of new nuclear plants are just told 'fuck you, you're paying the price we made up even if we don't generate any power' or 'we made one in another country and failed really bad so you get to pay half' or 'whoops, we only put aside 1/4th of the money needed to decomission...have fun paying another billionperGWbyeeee' or 'we racked up a quarter trillion dollar cleanup bill but we made you sign a treaty saying we only have to pay 0.5%, have fun'.