Nuclear getting hammered by green power, pandemic

Bloomberg

Generating power without harmful carbon emissions has never been more urgent, yet one of the biggest sources of clean power is struggling to turn a profit.
The nuclear industry has been vying for a role as the perfect partner to the surging, but intermittent, renewables sector for years, citing its role as a stable source of emissions-free power. Nations around the world have set tough targets to reduce greenhouse gases with the help of clean energy to meet commitments set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Record output from wind and solar is more frequently creating an oversupply that can push prices below where reactors are no longer profitable, or even to rates where utilities have to hand out power for free.
The rout has been exacerbated by the global pandemic gutting demand. Generators from France to Sweden, Germany and China have been forced to turn stations off or curb output.
“We need to work on being more flexible in nuclear,” Magnus Hall, the chief executive officer of Swedish utility Vattenfall AB said in an interview. “It’s a new way of learning how to run the plants and this is the mode we are in.”
Electricite de France SA, the world’s biggest nuclear operator, is feeling the heat more than most. The utility with 57 domestic reactors and new-build projects at home and abroad, expects output from its stations in the country to fall by more than a fifth this year.
Its output is near the lowest since at least 2012 after about a dozen plants were taken offline in April. The utility’s shares are trading close to a record low.
“The current period foreshadows an energy mix
with a more important role for renewables,” Etienne Dutheil, director of nuclear production at EDF, said in an interview. “It shows the necessity for other production means, and for nuclear in particular, to be flexible, which is the case for the French fleet.”
In Sweden, where the technology has provided
a stable supply for its energy-intensive factories for decades, two reactors at Vattenfall’s Ringhals plant are idle because prices are below the level where they break even for most of the time. Others have been forced to reduce output.
Vattenfall’s profit from power generation (excluding trading) slumped 39% in the first quarter and the company cut the dividend to its state owner by half, citing the impact of weak prices and the pandemic.
As electricity demand collapsed across the world
because of lockdowns, renewables have taken a bigger slice of the market because many nations had decided to give new green technologies priority into the grid.
For many years, European atomic reactors churned out electricity around the clock and lived in a happy coexistence with fossil-fuel plants firing on coal and gas. There was enough demand for everyone.
In China, the coronavirus caused reduced output at CGN Power Co’s atomic plants after the Lunar New Year holiday.