1. This must be a nightmare to plan the maintenance of a nuclear-heavy grid (as we have in France.) Any nuclear project must be planned 20 years, including just "keeping" what you built 50 years ago. So, assuming they're not stupid and are reading the changes in batteries and PV, anyone working on that knows that, potentially, during the 8th year of a 10-year construction plan, your all plan will have become obsolete.
But, if, for some reason, the evolution is not skyrocketing, and if you _don't_ plan on maintaining / replacing your plans (assuming that "batteries and EV will just solve it"), then you take the risk of, well... not having enough electricity.
So I suppose it's a trade-off between "the risk of have too expensive nuclear capacity", "the risk of loosing face and shutting down a plant construction because it's useless", and "the risk of not having electricity".
I suppose the calculation is that, if you do the first one (as we're doing, as far as I can tell), you end up with sunk cost, but your reactors are there, and you can always find something to do with it...
2. Is there an "Ormouz of solar" scenario ? What would be a SPOF in the solar + battery rollout that could bring the solarpunk world to a halt ? Obviously it's less at risk because, once the PVs and batteries are out of chinese factories, they will produce electricity no matter who rules in Beijing ; but, appart from Xi (who already controls pretty much everything we consume, at this point), is any particular country / corporation gaining leverage if the whole world goes full PV+B ?
[–] piskov 2 days ago
[–] phtrivier 2 days ago
In short, yes, France was able to build a lot of nuclear in the 80s, but the plans were made in the 70s and, to some extend, reused design and research from the 60s.
Mostly, they benefited from pre-Tchernobyl regulations, and a standardized design that would not be accepted anywhere in the world today if you started from scratch.
After a long hiatus, we sort of managed to build an over engineered post-Fukushima reactor (EPR) in about 20 years, and hopefully learnt lessons so that the next version of the new thing (EPR2) is less of a disaster - but still, you're talking about a decade and a half from presidential ink on paper to electron in the grid if everything goes well - and nuclear is one of those industries where things never go well. Mesmer plan is the exception, not the rule (except if you're Chinese, of course...)
[–] piskov 2 days ago
[–] phtrivier 2 hours ago
[–] marcosdumay 2 days ago
Yes. At some point somebody will weaponize smart inverters.
It's avoidable if people suddenly decide to not act stupidly. I classify that as unlikely. It's also fixable, just like the oil Hormuz.
Is it true? France built more the 40 nuclear reactors in the 80s. I doubt it started “planning” for those in late 50s.
Ain’t designs standardized? Russian Rosatom builds a nuclear plant in 5-7 years