Price != cost/value. You can produce cheap electricity at noon, which would have little value.

I asked Framework that repeatedly, but no progress. I think they might be violating EU Regulation 2018/302, which is rather common, mostly due to ignorance. The problem is that it is rather hard to enforce such regulation to non-EU/EEA companies. You can still send your wishes to support@frame.work.

[citation needed]

Lazard 2024, CAISO scenario: nuclear is cheaper compared to go with renewables + batteries (max 4 hours). It also does not take into account integration costs, such improving network connectivity.

It is quite ironic, because European Nordic countries do not want to build more network because of the crazy electricity spot prices that Germany has because of renewables. I live in Norway and no-one wants to further connect their electricity network to Germany, and the Swedish government blocked the construction of new connections. When Germany needs electricity, people in Oslo start to pay electricity even hundreds of times more, and when Germany has too much power from renewables, the energy price goes below zero, which means that German taxpayers are paying people from other countries to buy their discounted low value electricity, damaging the other producers. It is a terrible system, and it will only get worse without a good base load or accumulators that are not realistic for the foreseeable future. If Germany had a stable electricity production with renewables+nuclear, it would be beneficial to strength the network, which would indeed be beneficial to renewables.

If there is a place which clearly show how the fight against nuclear caused damaged is Germany: ~700 b€ between investments and subsidies to renewables, has very high emissions in the energy sector, while being dependent on Russian gas (costed ~1500 b€ in the last years) and France export of nuclear energy, high and unstable energy prices, that contributed to an industrial crisis that made France more attractive (where electricity is cheap and stable), while still failing at reaching climate targets.

The alternative would have been to keep the existing reactors open, build new ones, for a grand total of ~36 b€.

Source: doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642

The belief that renewables+batteries alone are the only solution (even in hard to abate sectors) is not supported by real world data, nor by simulations. IPCC scenarios clearly shows that there is the need of a nuclear+renewable mix to meet the climate targets. The report from JRC recommends the same.

Historically, German citizens have chosen to be reliant on fossil fuels and highly subsidized electricity to not use nuclear energy. I just hope that at Germany will stop blocking nuclear at the EU level if other countries have different opinions on that and rather prefer not to follow the demise of the German energy policy.

Cost != price/value. You can produce energy cheaply at noon, but it has little value compared to electricity produced at 18:00. The higher the share of renewables in the electricity mix, the more storage is needed, and it grows faster than linearly. You can also not stock electricity in advance for months in northern areas. There are a lot of factors to keep into account, and the cost of electricity production is often a minor one, when considering the total price.

Short answer: no, they are not (read footnotes 1 and 2)

CAISO, 1st column, 1st bar: - blue is the cost of solar - beige is the cost of firming intermittency using gas

CAISO, 2nd column, 1st bar: - blue is the cost of solar+battery (max 4 hours) - beige is the cost of firming intermittency using gas

Using batteries improves the ELCC (contribution to meet peak demand), but it is not enough, so it has to be compensated somehow. Want to get a higher ELCC? Get a larger battery (and install more solar panels). Be aware, this is not a linear relationship: getting from 10 % to 20 % of renewables is cheaper than getting from 70 % to 80 % (this is why the costs are lower when the penetration rate shown in the slide is low). You reach a point where you just waste energy or need to pay to use it, like in Germany, Netherlands or Denmark.

There is no best energy source. There are different networks, energy mixes, needs, etc. Under CAISO, it is just more convenient to go with nuclear. Under SPP, solar has a very high ELCC and a very low penetration, which makes it convenient just to install solar, but up to which percentage?

Overall, some mix of renewables and nuclear, depending on the network, seems a reasonable solution. Otherwise we would need to go with fossil power plants to meet the remaining demand (carbon capture seems wishful thinking) or to over provision renewables while building incredibly large storage systems (be aware that there are places where fluctuation are not on a daily or weekly basis, but on a seasonal basis - good luck storing the energy for ~3 months using lithium ion batteries because you live in a polar region).

The book "How to avoid a climate disaster" (Bill Gates) has a chapter just for that. I would recommend it.

Of course it has debt, as almost every company and state :)

EDF got loans from banks and money on the market, based on the fact that investors thinks it is a good investment. That is economics 101 and holds true for all publicly traded companies. The numbers are freely available on the internet, as prescribed by the law for all companies listed.

The debt also went down in 2023. It is worth to remember that EDF is forced by the French government to sell cheap energy, below market price, to protect consumers from rising energy prices (caused by the high reliance of other countries on natural gas from Russia - like Germany that phased-out nuclear in the meanwhile).

Nuclear is also treated differently from renewables when it comes down to low-emission investments by the various EU investment funds, and cannot compete in bidding rounds together with renewables (which drives the prices up, as there is way more demand than offer, so it makes no sense to compete). If the EU commission decides that there should be technological neutrality on low-emission power plants, EDF would be in a quite good position.

If you are so sure that EDF will not be able to finance its debt or build new reactors, you can bet against it by short it and, if your analysis is correct, make quite some money.