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France’s nuclear fleet gives it one of the world’s lowest-carbon electricity grids
(ourworldindata.org)
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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France is already doing just that
As I said, Nuclear Plants are slowing down their expansion of renewables. No idea why people downvote me.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260212-france-slashes-renewable-energy-targets-favour-of-nuclear-power-new-energy-law
Well maybe because of your assertion that renewables and nuclear are a bad combination. Renewables are notoriously unstable sources of energy and you need grid stability or you will have power outages.
This has traditionally been achieved by coal, gas and oil plants. Nuclear power plants are a non GHG emitting way to replace this stability. Countries that have a larger share of renewables but much less nuclear than France still have to fire up their coal and gas powered plants on quiet winter nights after an overcast day. Which means more GHG emissions.
What I meant by “France is already doing just that” is that they are running their NPPs in load following mode, which means they have the ability to adjust their energy output capacity based on the share of renewable energy available.
So while I don’t know exactly why you are being downvoted (not by me in any case), it could be because you’re attacking an ally of the fight against GHG emissions. The goal is not simply to have as many solar panels or wind farms, but to reduce GHG emissions. And that’s what we have to keep in mind. So while, yes France moved to more nuclear there are more ways to look at the same news item: they are still going for 60% electrification of the nation by 2030, up from 30% right now and still going for massive expansion of renewables.
But the nuclear plants will always push the renewables away and keep the price up. It is a bad combination. You need something like gas (later hydrogen) which you can just turn on and off again. It's just physics. Nuclear Plants will always push the price up.
That’s not necessarily true. There is less need for them if NPPs are there, sure, but the price tag is always king. If renewables are simply much cheaper they will proliferate.
And we will always have to fill in the gaps for when renewables aren’t available. Betting it all on battery tech mostly coming from China is a dangerous game in this geopolitical era.
I don’t understand why people are so anti nuclear. It doesn’t have any emissions. The US, Canada and especially Australia have massive uranium reserves. It provides grid stability. Except for being expensive there is almost nothing going against it. And life cycle costs are likely coming down substantially in the near future with emerging technologies.
Renewables + Battery is the most cheapest way. If you don't want to import Batteries from China then you need to starz to build your own factories. Nuclear Reactors make you also depend on other countries.
I'm not directly Anti-Nuclar. I'm anti bad financial decissions. Spending so much money on Nuclear just to produce expensive electricity is just stupid. All the money needs to go to Renewables + Batteries, now.
Yes, but factories are expensive and cost a lot of time to build. So I’m not that sure about the financial picture of that either. Not to mention finding the space to put those factories + battery parks + more space for extra renewables to charge those batteries.
Nuclear also only makes Europe dependent on Canada or Australia, although Ukraine and Estonia have some too. The US has their own.
Not to mention batteries require a lot more resources. Whereas uranium is only a few tonnes per year, lithium- or sodium-ion battery technology requires resources that run in the millions of tonnes. That’s because of the difference in energy density:
So to put this in perspective: to get the same energy that only 1 kilogram of reactor-grade U-235 provides, you would need sodium ion batteries with a total weight of 4.8 - 12.8 million kilograms.
Now of course batteries are reusable and nuclear fuel rods are only partly recyclable, but batteries don’t generate any energy by themselves. They need to be recharged with extra solar or wind power, on top of the ones directly feeding into the grid that you also have to build in even more factories, place onsite and individually connect to both the grid and the battery parks, etc.
This is a more rough estimate: but here they did the math:
And even then you still haven’t solved what to do on all those quiet winter nights after an overcast day.
Betting it all on one horse it what’s stupid. Especially one that needs a mind boggling amount of resources. Yes we need to make batteries, but we also need to diversify and reduce dependency by expanding our nuclear power capacity.