France doubles exports to UK power market

[Dogmudgeon]

It's been a good year for nuclear energy in France.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66D2NB20100714">France doubles exports to UK power market

LONDON (Reuters) - French power exports to Britain have more than doubled in three months as ample supply due to strong nuclear power production and two-year highs in water reservoir levels kept French spot electricity prices below British equivalents.

France exported more than 1 terawatt-hour (TWh) of power to Britain last month, around one eighth of annual electricity produced by Britain's largest nuclear plant, Heysham 2.

...

Availability of French nuclear power plants, which provide around 80 percent of electricity for the country, has improved compared with one year ago. Reuters estimates show that last month's percentage of unavailable nuclear facilities ranged between 26-28 percent, compared with 31-35 percent in June 2009.

...

Over the past seven months, two new gas-fired power plants came on line in Britain, the 885-megawatt (MW) Langage station and the 840-MW Marchwood plant.

...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66D2NB20100714">Read the whole article at Reuters online.

And their nukes have a lower capacity factor than ours in the USA.

--d!

[FBaggins]

1. That ignores the other side of the story.

It isn't just that France is producing more power (and thus has more to export), it's the England needs to import more power as they have more frequent gaps in what they can produce (due to a higher proportion coming from more variable sources).

[Dogmudgeon]

3. That can not be denied

England decommissioned ~2030 MWe of nuclear capacity since 2000, and Oldbury (~430 MWe) is scheduled to go off-line this year. But their energy demand has grown faster than their ability to build more fossil fuel burning plants and wind farms. Unless there is a truly remarkable increase in renewables construction, most of the slack will be made up by importation and more fossil fuel plants.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/">Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK)

--d!

[Nihil]

2. Tomorrow's Daily Mail headline: "Those Damn Frenchies Have Got *OUR* Rain!"

> two-year highs in water reservoir levels

vs.

> For the UK as a whole, the provisional January-May rainfall total was the
> lowest since 1964. The dry weather is reflected in reservoir stocks – currently
> standing at the lowest overall early-June stocks since 1991 – ...

(http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/2010_news_item_17.html)

:evilgrin: