> country, not Russia, China, Japan, France, USA
Are you serious when putting France in this list? Nuclear is such a cash cow here that EDF manage to make profits even while being forced by the regulator to sell a big fraction of its nuclear capacity below the operating cost and buying it back to them at market price! (We're talking about a multi-billon subsidies scheme, look for ARENH).
And that is despite (rather legitimate IMHO) regulatory constraints that have no equivalent in any other industry.
Yeah I’m really confused why France is in that list (also, less so, but China - they have come a great way, further than almost any western country save France, I’m just unsure I’d the metric here applies evenly).
I’ll stand by the only reason nuclear power is unprofitable (in most cases) is because we decide it is unprofitable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49821997
Anything is cheaper when you don't count all the costs.
In January 2017 a parliamentary committee reported: "The cost of decommissioning is likely to be greater than the provisions," the technical feasibility is "not fully assured" and the dismantling work will take "presumably more time than expected."
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
France doesn't have an answer for decommissioning costs.
Yes, France is pretty much alone in making nuclear work. It's impressive. That said, it is alone.
IE, I don't see other nations reproducing the French institutions and culture that allowed this. Will France itself even continue them?