While it's true that large nuclear projects can attract political attention because of their economic impact and potential job creation, dismissing this focus as merely catering to egos ignores the legitimate concerns policymakers have about energy security and reliability. Nuclear power offers long-term, stable energy generation, which is crucial for maintaining grid reliability, especially in regions that cannot depend solely on intermittent renewables without massive investments in energy storage and grid upgrades. Furthermore, the notion that nuclear distracts from the growth of renewables overlooks the reality that energy transitions are complex and require balancing multiple priorities, including decarbonization, energy affordability, and security. Political attention on nuclear energy isn't inherently at odds with promoting renewables; in fact, integrating both into a cohesive energy strategy allows for a more resilient and flexible grid. By framing nuclear energy as merely a political spectacle, this story underestimates the strategic importance of having diverse energy sources and presents a black and white narrative.
You make some good points, particularly regarding political capital as a limited resource. I would contend that by denigrating pro-nuclear advocates yourself, referring to them as “useful idiots,” you undermine what I gather is the thesis of your article: that anti-renewable rhetoric from pro-nukes and its political implications harm the common cause of decarbonization. Was it not environmentalist and anti-nuclear sentiment that effectively castrated the industry in the first place, leading us to the excessive dependence on fossil fuels we currently find ourselves with? The only proper anti-stance to have is anti-fossil fuels, anything else is itself a waste of energy and political capital and plays directly into the hands of fossil fuel interests.
The "useful idiots" is indeed probably not helpful but is probably a(n over)reaction to the sad state of the debate in France, where the pro-nuclear crowd has mostly taken an often violent stance against renewables. They do have some credit in the debate as the French nuclear program has been a real success over the past 40 years, but they are misusing it today.
Not to mention a few other flies in nuclear's ointment:
1. If it's so great, why isn't it insurable? Lift the liability indemnification!
2. Lets finally face it: nuclear power is lipstick on a nuclear bomb pig. If it weren't for Armageddon threatening bombs, nuclear power would be moot.
3. The net energy ratio of nuclear power is terrible. As Amory Lovins once pointed out: even the slightest amount of energy used to manage the many 1000s of years nuclear waste brings it below 1:1. Notice that's a waste hazardous life much longer than human civilization, with a big dose of hubris.
4. Where's the very long term storage solution???!
5. The politicians, industry and military simply aren't particularly interested in cleaning up the hazardous waste created by the nuclear fuels cycle. E.g., it's been several generations since WWII and there's still numerous unremediated uranium mining and milling sites, and we're far from the end of Superfund sites. And SMRs and fusion reactors still will have long term waste to protect somewhere for many generations.
6. The markets for additional MW and MWh are open competitive markets based on delivered price, creditworthy providers, long term guarantees with LDs and on line date commitments (also w/LDs) - when's the last time a new nuc plant competed there???!
1. “Uninsurable” can be used to refer to almost any major infrastructure project that moves the needle (dams, bridges, airports). I suppose you’d like to do away with those as well?
2. We have an arsenal capable of destroying the world 20 times over. Right now. Can you explain how domestic nuclear power expansion could change the prospect of Armageddon?
3. It ranges from 5:1 to 15:1 conservatively, on par with fossil fuels, but the US fleet average is much higher at 40:1. EROI for solar is from 6:1 to 12:1. I believe Lovins was being disingenuous in his assessment for business reasons or is ignorant of modern waste management technology.
4. 2000 ft below sea level in Nevada, patiently waiting for members of your camp to legalize its use.
5. This is Cold War era stuff. Nothing to do with modern commercial nuclear and isolated in low impact, rural areas. You are correct that SMR’s will produce longterm waste, but overestimate waste from fusion.
Consider that all of Americas waste fits in a football field of depth 10 yds. Now imagine 10 billion+ sq ft of retired solar panels every 20-30 years. Which will have a larger environmental impact?
6. You’re correct that new nuclear is currently uncompetitive in many markets, as solar was a decade ago. A 100% year round renewable grid has yet to be seen though, so we’ll have to see how it plays out (if longterm storage progresses, what penetration level grids can handle, if US supply chain (China-US relations) remain stable, etc).
Most likely, new nuclear power is inevitable, as is the unrelenting growth of renewables.
I'm not clear you understand point 3. Net energy ratio is the ratio of energy used to create the generator (all the way back to materials mining & transports, along with the fuels and waster products handling) vs the energy produced by the generator. E.g., a 1:1 ratio means a new generator requires as much energy to make it as the energy it produces, which is a zero sum benefit for society, the environment, the economics, etc. The gross impacts of a national energy system based on high vs low net ratio generation types are very different, as is the needed scale of the system to provide energy for society above that needed to create the system. In this context, if fission were made more efficient, it'd have a better net energy ratio and would be more valuable to society.
France starts 4x higher than Germany in your chart, so it’s not surprising that they lose more in absolute terms. In relative terms your chart shows Germany losing nearly 100% capacity while France only lost 25%.
You say: "If nuclear made sense, Microsoft or Amazon or Rio Tinto would finance the construction of a few plants ..."
News reported: "Microsoft thinks next-generation nuclear reactors can power its data centers and AI ambitions, according to a job listing for a principal program manager who’ll lead the company’s nuclear energy strategy." - The Verge Sep 2023
You say: "In reality, despite all the high-powered attention, ridiculously few new nuclear plants are being built compared to new renewables, even in China."
News reported: "China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout
China is planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35." - Bloomberg 2021
>News reported: "Microsoft thinks next-generation nuclear reactors can power its data centers and AI ambitions, according to a job listing for a principal program manager who’ll lead the company’s nuclear energy strategy." - The Verge Sep 2023
Headlines, talk but still nowhere near actual billion dollar financing
>You say: "In reality, despite all the high-powered attention, ridiculously few new nuclear plants are being built compared to new renewables, even in China."
But that is true. China currently produces 2x more electricity from solar+wind compared to nuclear, and their recent invesments in solar and batteries are probably a zero higher than 440b$ over 15 years
I think SMRs suffer from the same issues as normal nuclear - even if all goes well they will not be cheaper than existing renewables, and their baseload profile is going to be increasingly hard to integrate in a grid with superabundant solar in daytime for increasingly large parts of the year. And that's presuming that all goes well.
First, have you read the post, which is about how to make nuclear much cheaper and faste to develop, INSTEAD of the current way to conceive SMRs?
Apart (not really) from that: from your answer, it seems to me you argue that a baseload isn't necessary with renewables. Is that so? If yes, how do you answer the concerns of S. Michaux, that I only summarized in this other post? Thx:
There's too many things in your posts, I(m not sure what you want me to respond to. Two things, maybe:
- we do know how to do a near 100% system with renewables only. People underestimate how much flexibility we already have (and it's all use to manage the gap between the highly inflexible baseload plants and demand, which is definitely not flat). 20 years ago people said that we would never get beyond 15-20% of renewables. now that we are at 50% (or more in some places), people say that we can't do 100%. But we will (and even if we only do 80% and the rest is fossil fuels that's still a vast improvement, not to be spurned)
- we will have enough material resources. People forget that by fat the largest physical extraction we do is oil gas and coal. 40% of all marine traffic is just to transport fossil fuels. Getting rid of this will actually massively reduce our needs for materials. And none of the materials we need are a bottleneck - there are available alternatives for pretty much everything. sometimes they are a little less good for the task, but they still work and are available.
re "Getting rid of [fossil fuel transport will actually massively reduce our needs for materials": for "transportation, yes. But how does "no more supertankers to transport fossil fuels" translate to "more/cheaper batteries and solar panels, wind turbines, etc"? That is, how will that reduction, surely massive, make all the mining of rare earths, manufacturing, shipping etc of all said batteries and panels... easier, greeer, quicker, cheaper?
"not sure what you want me to respond to": the above, and the part of Michaux videos where he argues that the reserves of raw materials ACTUALLY usable at affordable costs from here to 2050 are orders of magnitude less than what would be needed for a green transition to business as usual
If subsidies are removed from renewables then they aren’t cheap. If the horrifically expensive grid modifications required to bring renewables on stream are charged to renewables then they certainly aren’t cheap.
This is demonstrably false. The only plants that are being built today on a merchant basis are renewables, even though this is a very unfavorable tariff regime. And those that swap for long term fixed prices (under CfDs or similar) have paid back more in the past 2-3 years than the whole sector received in the past 20. Fixed prices are a two way option and governments (and rate payers) benefit from the price cap - as well as from the cheaper cost that they make possible through cheaper financing.
When large plants are made to pay for their grid costs (including the ned for backup in case of any kind of problem, whether generation or transmission related), these are quite large. National Grid publishes the cost per plant of grid services, and these are not cheap for large plants.
I have to disagree… over the past few years when gas prices surged, renewables took the higher price, rather than enter into CFDs didn’t they. Our vast amounts of wind and solar did absolutely nothing to bring our electricity costs down. Yes some repayments under CFDs occurred but I’d like to see the evidence of how much in the grand scheme of things.
What does “on a merchant basis” mean? Political surely? No-one is going to build a plant of a type this government is threatening to close are they?
Renewables are the only game in town with Miliband.
IMO it will lead to power cuts. Persuade me otherwise.
In France, where the CfDs are quite tight, it was in the range of 30+ billion euros over 2 years (see the CRE reports, they are easy to find). The projects that were already in CfDs in the UK also had to pay back (they used a wrinkle in the rules to delay the start of the CfD for a short while - this should have been avoided). I agree that there are some places where the CfDs are one-sided (DE, NL) and that's a terrible regulatory design.
Merchant basis means that projects rely on spot prices only, and not on any regulated tariff. They often end up signing corporate PPAs (ie finding someone that buys all their generation at an agreed price), but that's a commercial route without any subsidies.
While I agree with the main point of this article (with the economics / logistics of nuclear being bad and pro-nuclear arguments often being more anti-renewables than pro-nuclear) I can't help but have a couple issues with your article
"And thus we get endlessly repeating “decisions” to build new nuclear plants"
> Can you please give examples? A couple states commited to build one or two more reactors here and there, China is actually building new reactors, and Macron's commitment to new reactors in France is one of a kind, with some Tenders already in place - i dont see were you find this "endless repetition" of new announcements that dont happen
"And, to conclude, a fun fact that seems ignored by most: France has lost more annual kWh from nuclear than Germany since 2011"
> And yet, gas & coal use are at an all time low, and exports (baring 2022) at an all time high. This is just the case of flat demand and early, subsidized renewable projects pushing out nuclear. I fully believe that had demand grown by 10-20% in the past ten years this curve would not have existed, and I fully expect a bounce when EVs and re-industrialisation come online in the next decade.
France would have exported more if it could - and renewables growth has been rather slow in France, so the lower production is definitely linked to availability rather than lack of demand. The demand bounce has been announced for a while - and should happen, but so far it has not been visible. Remember that if the full existing fleet of cars in France (40M or so) was replaced by electric vehicles in one go, it would only increase overall demand by 20-30%. At <2M new vehicles per year, the increase in demand linked to TVs is never going to be more than 1% per annum, which should easily be manageable.
I just looked up some RTE data. 2021 compared to 2011 is only +12TWh of Solar (x6) and +25TWh of Wind (x3) for a total of +37TWh, while consumption is +0TWh and nuclear is -60TWh (as visible here). Trade balance is +12TWh of imports (55TWh net exports => 43TWh).
While there is clearly, as you said, some upside potential for nuclear with more exports and less imports, the impact of renewables pushing out nuclear seems to be even stronger.
Especially as nuclear is forced to lower production during times of high wind, high sun, and low demand, which is often correlated with the rest of Europe (=> no potential for export at those times)
My point being that the decrease of nuke production in your graph is more linked to renewables growth/strength (at first due to subsidies, now due to low costs) forcing nuclear plants to shut off, and not due to any intrinsic issues with them (except 2022 of course)
There's a continued push in the UK (some much time spent on Hinckley Point, and now on Sizewell), as well as political efforts in places like Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and others. while these may not all go very far, they do use political oxygen
The everyone forgets when it comes to French nuclear: By 2040 when the first of the new nuclear fleet comes online, France will have closed or be in the process of closing 45-50 GW of their existing fleet.
While it's true that large nuclear projects can attract political attention because of their economic impact and potential job creation, dismissing this focus as merely catering to egos ignores the legitimate concerns policymakers have about energy security and reliability. Nuclear power offers long-term, stable energy generation, which is crucial for maintaining grid reliability, especially in regions that cannot depend solely on intermittent renewables without massive investments in energy storage and grid upgrades. Furthermore, the notion that nuclear distracts from the growth of renewables overlooks the reality that energy transitions are complex and require balancing multiple priorities, including decarbonization, energy affordability, and security. Political attention on nuclear energy isn't inherently at odds with promoting renewables; in fact, integrating both into a cohesive energy strategy allows for a more resilient and flexible grid. By framing nuclear energy as merely a political spectacle, this story underestimates the strategic importance of having diverse energy sources and presents a black and white narrative.
A sensible comment, thanks
You make some good points, particularly regarding political capital as a limited resource. I would contend that by denigrating pro-nuclear advocates yourself, referring to them as “useful idiots,” you undermine what I gather is the thesis of your article: that anti-renewable rhetoric from pro-nukes and its political implications harm the common cause of decarbonization. Was it not environmentalist and anti-nuclear sentiment that effectively castrated the industry in the first place, leading us to the excessive dependence on fossil fuels we currently find ourselves with? The only proper anti-stance to have is anti-fossil fuels, anything else is itself a waste of energy and political capital and plays directly into the hands of fossil fuel interests.
I would agree with that, yes.
The "useful idiots" is indeed probably not helpful but is probably a(n over)reaction to the sad state of the debate in France, where the pro-nuclear crowd has mostly taken an often violent stance against renewables. They do have some credit in the debate as the French nuclear program has been a real success over the past 40 years, but they are misusing it today.
Not to mention a few other flies in nuclear's ointment:
1. If it's so great, why isn't it insurable? Lift the liability indemnification!
2. Lets finally face it: nuclear power is lipstick on a nuclear bomb pig. If it weren't for Armageddon threatening bombs, nuclear power would be moot.
3. The net energy ratio of nuclear power is terrible. As Amory Lovins once pointed out: even the slightest amount of energy used to manage the many 1000s of years nuclear waste brings it below 1:1. Notice that's a waste hazardous life much longer than human civilization, with a big dose of hubris.
4. Where's the very long term storage solution???!
5. The politicians, industry and military simply aren't particularly interested in cleaning up the hazardous waste created by the nuclear fuels cycle. E.g., it's been several generations since WWII and there's still numerous unremediated uranium mining and milling sites, and we're far from the end of Superfund sites. And SMRs and fusion reactors still will have long term waste to protect somewhere for many generations.
6. The markets for additional MW and MWh are open competitive markets based on delivered price, creditworthy providers, long term guarantees with LDs and on line date commitments (also w/LDs) - when's the last time a new nuc plant competed there???!
1. “Uninsurable” can be used to refer to almost any major infrastructure project that moves the needle (dams, bridges, airports). I suppose you’d like to do away with those as well?
2. We have an arsenal capable of destroying the world 20 times over. Right now. Can you explain how domestic nuclear power expansion could change the prospect of Armageddon?
3. It ranges from 5:1 to 15:1 conservatively, on par with fossil fuels, but the US fleet average is much higher at 40:1. EROI for solar is from 6:1 to 12:1. I believe Lovins was being disingenuous in his assessment for business reasons or is ignorant of modern waste management technology.
4. 2000 ft below sea level in Nevada, patiently waiting for members of your camp to legalize its use.
5. This is Cold War era stuff. Nothing to do with modern commercial nuclear and isolated in low impact, rural areas. You are correct that SMR’s will produce longterm waste, but overestimate waste from fusion.
Consider that all of Americas waste fits in a football field of depth 10 yds. Now imagine 10 billion+ sq ft of retired solar panels every 20-30 years. Which will have a larger environmental impact?
6. You’re correct that new nuclear is currently uncompetitive in many markets, as solar was a decade ago. A 100% year round renewable grid has yet to be seen though, so we’ll have to see how it plays out (if longterm storage progresses, what penetration level grids can handle, if US supply chain (China-US relations) remain stable, etc).
Most likely, new nuclear power is inevitable, as is the unrelenting growth of renewables.
Agreed, though i feel like point (3) is completely irrelevant.
The energy density of nuclear fission is so high that 0.1% energy efficiency is perfectly suitable, and why nobody cared to increase it
I'm not clear you understand point 3. Net energy ratio is the ratio of energy used to create the generator (all the way back to materials mining & transports, along with the fuels and waster products handling) vs the energy produced by the generator. E.g., a 1:1 ratio means a new generator requires as much energy to make it as the energy it produces, which is a zero sum benefit for society, the environment, the economics, etc. The gross impacts of a national energy system based on high vs low net ratio generation types are very different, as is the needed scale of the system to provide energy for society above that needed to create the system. In this context, if fission were made more efficient, it'd have a better net energy ratio and would be more valuable to society.
France starts 4x higher than Germany in your chart, so it’s not surprising that they lose more in absolute terms. In relative terms your chart shows Germany losing nearly 100% capacity while France only lost 25%.
See you in solartopia
Could you please fact-check your article?
You say: "If nuclear made sense, Microsoft or Amazon or Rio Tinto would finance the construction of a few plants ..."
News reported: "Microsoft thinks next-generation nuclear reactors can power its data centers and AI ambitions, according to a job listing for a principal program manager who’ll lead the company’s nuclear energy strategy." - The Verge Sep 2023
You say: "In reality, despite all the high-powered attention, ridiculously few new nuclear plants are being built compared to new renewables, even in China."
News reported: "China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout
China is planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35." - Bloomberg 2021
>News reported: "Microsoft thinks next-generation nuclear reactors can power its data centers and AI ambitions, according to a job listing for a principal program manager who’ll lead the company’s nuclear energy strategy." - The Verge Sep 2023
Headlines, talk but still nowhere near actual billion dollar financing
>You say: "In reality, despite all the high-powered attention, ridiculously few new nuclear plants are being built compared to new renewables, even in China."
But that is true. China currently produces 2x more electricity from solar+wind compared to nuclear, and their recent invesments in solar and batteries are probably a zero higher than 440b$ over 15 years
"If a few nuclear plants could easily be built on budget and on time in a given system, it would not be an issue"
True. So, may I ask your opinion on THIS proposal to rebuild from scratch how to design and build nuclear reactors? Thx: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/a-nuclear-power-offer-that-you-cannot
I think SMRs suffer from the same issues as normal nuclear - even if all goes well they will not be cheaper than existing renewables, and their baseload profile is going to be increasingly hard to integrate in a grid with superabundant solar in daytime for increasingly large parts of the year. And that's presuming that all goes well.
First, have you read the post, which is about how to make nuclear much cheaper and faste to develop, INSTEAD of the current way to conceive SMRs?
Apart (not really) from that: from your answer, it seems to me you argue that a baseload isn't necessary with renewables. Is that so? If yes, how do you answer the concerns of S. Michaux, that I only summarized in this other post? Thx:
https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/no-petroleum-and-minerals-no-problem
There's too many things in your posts, I(m not sure what you want me to respond to. Two things, maybe:
- we do know how to do a near 100% system with renewables only. People underestimate how much flexibility we already have (and it's all use to manage the gap between the highly inflexible baseload plants and demand, which is definitely not flat). 20 years ago people said that we would never get beyond 15-20% of renewables. now that we are at 50% (or more in some places), people say that we can't do 100%. But we will (and even if we only do 80% and the rest is fossil fuels that's still a vast improvement, not to be spurned)
- we will have enough material resources. People forget that by fat the largest physical extraction we do is oil gas and coal. 40% of all marine traffic is just to transport fossil fuels. Getting rid of this will actually massively reduce our needs for materials. And none of the materials we need are a bottleneck - there are available alternatives for pretty much everything. sometimes they are a little less good for the task, but they still work and are available.
re "Getting rid of [fossil fuel transport will actually massively reduce our needs for materials": for "transportation, yes. But how does "no more supertankers to transport fossil fuels" translate to "more/cheaper batteries and solar panels, wind turbines, etc"? That is, how will that reduction, surely massive, make all the mining of rare earths, manufacturing, shipping etc of all said batteries and panels... easier, greeer, quicker, cheaper?
"not sure what you want me to respond to": the above, and the part of Michaux videos where he argues that the reserves of raw materials ACTUALLY usable at affordable costs from here to 2050 are orders of magnitude less than what would be needed for a green transition to business as usual
Thanks!
If subsidies are removed from renewables then they aren’t cheap. If the horrifically expensive grid modifications required to bring renewables on stream are charged to renewables then they certainly aren’t cheap.
This is demonstrably false. The only plants that are being built today on a merchant basis are renewables, even though this is a very unfavorable tariff regime. And those that swap for long term fixed prices (under CfDs or similar) have paid back more in the past 2-3 years than the whole sector received in the past 20. Fixed prices are a two way option and governments (and rate payers) benefit from the price cap - as well as from the cheaper cost that they make possible through cheaper financing.
When large plants are made to pay for their grid costs (including the ned for backup in case of any kind of problem, whether generation or transmission related), these are quite large. National Grid publishes the cost per plant of grid services, and these are not cheap for large plants.
I have to disagree… over the past few years when gas prices surged, renewables took the higher price, rather than enter into CFDs didn’t they. Our vast amounts of wind and solar did absolutely nothing to bring our electricity costs down. Yes some repayments under CFDs occurred but I’d like to see the evidence of how much in the grand scheme of things.
What does “on a merchant basis” mean? Political surely? No-one is going to build a plant of a type this government is threatening to close are they?
Renewables are the only game in town with Miliband.
IMO it will lead to power cuts. Persuade me otherwise.
In France, where the CfDs are quite tight, it was in the range of 30+ billion euros over 2 years (see the CRE reports, they are easy to find). The projects that were already in CfDs in the UK also had to pay back (they used a wrinkle in the rules to delay the start of the CfD for a short while - this should have been avoided). I agree that there are some places where the CfDs are one-sided (DE, NL) and that's a terrible regulatory design.
Merchant basis means that projects rely on spot prices only, and not on any regulated tariff. They often end up signing corporate PPAs (ie finding someone that buys all their generation at an agreed price), but that's a commercial route without any subsidies.
While I agree with the main point of this article (with the economics / logistics of nuclear being bad and pro-nuclear arguments often being more anti-renewables than pro-nuclear) I can't help but have a couple issues with your article
"And thus we get endlessly repeating “decisions” to build new nuclear plants"
> Can you please give examples? A couple states commited to build one or two more reactors here and there, China is actually building new reactors, and Macron's commitment to new reactors in France is one of a kind, with some Tenders already in place - i dont see were you find this "endless repetition" of new announcements that dont happen
"And, to conclude, a fun fact that seems ignored by most: France has lost more annual kWh from nuclear than Germany since 2011"
> And yet, gas & coal use are at an all time low, and exports (baring 2022) at an all time high. This is just the case of flat demand and early, subsidized renewable projects pushing out nuclear. I fully believe that had demand grown by 10-20% in the past ten years this curve would not have existed, and I fully expect a bounce when EVs and re-industrialisation come online in the next decade.
France would have exported more if it could - and renewables growth has been rather slow in France, so the lower production is definitely linked to availability rather than lack of demand. The demand bounce has been announced for a while - and should happen, but so far it has not been visible. Remember that if the full existing fleet of cars in France (40M or so) was replaced by electric vehicles in one go, it would only increase overall demand by 20-30%. At <2M new vehicles per year, the increase in demand linked to TVs is never going to be more than 1% per annum, which should easily be manageable.
I just looked up some RTE data. 2021 compared to 2011 is only +12TWh of Solar (x6) and +25TWh of Wind (x3) for a total of +37TWh, while consumption is +0TWh and nuclear is -60TWh (as visible here). Trade balance is +12TWh of imports (55TWh net exports => 43TWh).
While there is clearly, as you said, some upside potential for nuclear with more exports and less imports, the impact of renewables pushing out nuclear seems to be even stronger.
Especially as nuclear is forced to lower production during times of high wind, high sun, and low demand, which is often correlated with the rest of Europe (=> no potential for export at those times)
My point being that the decrease of nuke production in your graph is more linked to renewables growth/strength (at first due to subsidies, now due to low costs) forcing nuclear plants to shut off, and not due to any intrinsic issues with them (except 2022 of course)
There's a continued push in the UK (some much time spent on Hinckley Point, and now on Sizewell), as well as political efforts in places like Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and others. while these may not all go very far, they do use political oxygen
The everyone forgets when it comes to French nuclear: By 2040 when the first of the new nuclear fleet comes online, France will have closed or be in the process of closing 45-50 GW of their existing fleet.
that's a nice chart at the end