France is used as an example for the study. The currently discussed lifetime extensions for French nuclear power plants alone would force more than two billion kilowatt hours of clean green electricity out of the grid in France, Spain and Germany in 2030. This amount of electricity would supply 617,000 households for a year. "Nuclear reactors that run longer are harmful brake blocks for the energy transition because their sluggish production methods block the feed-in of green electricity," says Sönke Tangermann, board member at Green Planet Energy.
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Extending the lifetime to 50 years?
In February, the French government - against the backdrop of the election campaign and the war in Ukraine - announced that it would invest in the construction of new nuclear power plants. This would further aggravate the situation. Energy Brainpool's study focuses on extending the operating lives of existing reactors to over 50 years, as Paris is currently considering. This longer operation would result in an additional 19 gigawatts of nuclear power plant capacity producing electricity in France by 2030.
Nuclear power plants are far too sluggish
In times of high feed-in of renewable energies, however, the national and European electricity grids cannot absorb the entire electricity production without becoming overloaded. The grid operators then have to shut down plants. Because older nuclear power plants only reduce their electricity production to around 80 percent of their installed capacity in the short term - primarily for cost reasons - these curtailments primarily affect the more flexible wind or solar power plants, which can no longer feed in their green electricity.
See also: Why nuclear power is not an option
Electricity markets in Spain, France and Germany affected
With the help of precise modelling, Energy Brainpool has calculated that if the French nuclear reactors were to remain in operation for a longer period of time in the example year 2030, the regulated green electricity volumes would increase by around twelve percent or by 2,160 gigawatt hours. France itself would lose 781 gigawatt hours of green electricity.
Other countries want to extend
But the neighbouring countries Spain (780 gigawatt hours) and Germany (586 gigawatt hours) would also be massively affected by the deregulations. "If other EU countries besides France extend the lifetimes of old nuclear power plants, the damage caused by unused green electricity - which is often remunerated by national support systems such as the Renewable Energy Sources Act - would be much greater," says Sönke Tangermann. Belgium, for example, decided a few weeks ago to postpone the country's nuclear phase-out by ten years.
Massive destruction of green electricity threatens
In Germany, too, there are repeated calls to keep the last three active nuclear power plants on the grid beyond the end of 2022. In addition, the EU Commission, at the urging of France, wants to enforce within the framework of the taxonomy that nuclear power be classified as ecologically sustainable in order to facilitate investments in new nuclear power plants. "The massive destruction of valuable green electricity shown in the study is, along with nuclear waste and the risks of accidents, further proof that nuclear power can never be sustainable," criticises Tangermann. "It neither helps us in Europe with climate protection - nor with becoming truly independent of fossil imports." (HS/mfo)
