nuclear-news

Support for nuclear is “money down the drain” – Rystad

(Montel) The expansion of solar energy will make nuclear power obsolete and push it out of the electricity market by the 2030s, making financial support for nuclear power a waste of money, the CEO of consultancy Rystad Energy told Montel on Tuesday.

Reporting by: Elias Huuhtanen,  Montel News 27th Aug 2024

Support schemes for nuclear, like the financing model recently mulled by Sweden, was throwing “money down the drain”, said Jarand Rystad on the sidelines of the ONS conference in Stavanger.

Even newer technologies like small modular reactors (SMR) would become “very irrelevant, very fast” because of the changing electricity markets, Rystad said.

“In the 2030s and 40s energy will actually be much cheaper than today and integrated into the system with storage in a different manner. I think [nuclear] is a technology of the past,” he said.

As well as being “tremendously expensive”, nuclear did not have the same flexibility as renewables, Rystad noted, as ramping down nuclear production during periods of low demand did not bring the same cost savings as solar.

Renewables support
Instead, renewables combined with flexible demand had “cracked the code” to create “energy abundance”, he said.

“The big problem now is you have too much energy. It will be irrelevant to have this kind of baseline [from nuclear],” Rystad said………………………………. https://montelnews.com/news/1aa921fb-7184-4eb1-8dcd-2e1ad45de3df/support-for-nuclear-is-money-down-the-drain-rystad

September 14, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Sweden