zlacker

Which theyve actually used very very rarely.

Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload. Theyre ridiculously cost ineffective when used for load following since it's basically curtailment.

This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as theyve been plummeting in price).

>>pydry+(OP)
It's untrue, it is used everyday on all our Gen3/Gen3+ reactors (our Gen2 are able to do it too, but it does cost a lot as core monitoring is more costly for them)

I've found this https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-... even if it isn't really clear, you have a graph that show you a typical year on a french reactor, and load followinf the german reactors used to do over a day.

>>pydry+(OP)
> Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when used as baseload.

Ontario, Canada would disagree with you: nuclear is 10.1¢/kWh, hydro is 6.2¢, (methane/natural) gas is 11.4¢; see Table 2:

* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023...

Of course hydro-electric dams typically flood many hectares of land for the reservoir. The current ones are getting refurbished:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-power...

Ontario's nuclear fleet are also in the middle of a bunch of refurbs:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power...

Some of which are finished:

* https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-comple...

Live data on Ontario's grid:

* https://ieso.ca/power-data § "Supply" tab

>>throw0+l5
Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh. Keeping the nuclear plants running overnight means they're losing 7 cents/kWh overnight. Better to shut those plants down overnight, but of course approximately all the nuclear costs are incurred whether the plants are running overnight or not, so shutting down overnight would just double the daytime costs.

>>bryanl+67
> Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c / kWh.

And if you sign up for those ULO rates you also get 28.6¢ on-peak rates. The average over the entire day stays at 11.1¢ (see Table ES-2).

I guess they want to flatten the demand curve and reduce its cyclic nature: there's a cost to dealing with the traditional peaks times as well in various types of capacity.

>>throw0+xK1
Much of that cost is due to Ontario's high reliance on nuclear power.