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France temporarily shuts down three nuclear reactors over heatwave
(www.france24.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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Climate
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Its not insane at all, in fact battery based energy storage is already keeping black outs from happening in California. Batteries are currently on an exponential tech development curve, so in 5 years data becomes obsolete. The result of that is we have people thinking Europe can't use battery grid storage to help easy nuclear maintaince down time.
Let's see, a smaller nuclear power plant operates at 1GW, that means you'd need to store 12GWh per day (plus 12 of direct use) assuming half day solar doesn't yield, or more with cloudy days and long winter nights. Where do we have such energy storage?
Here's a chart of average daily generation in the NEM (Australian south/east network) over the last 28 days. The dark blue bit is battery charging (average just over 13GWh per day). The dip below the zero line during midday is when batteries and pumped hydro are charged using the excess of solar power.
Speaking of excess of solar power, we have three hours of free power during the day because there is so much free solar that isn't being stored.
China’s grid-scale battery energy storage capacity surged from just 2.4 gigawatts in 2020 to more than 140 gigawatts in 2025
Chinese nuclear power output is 62GW, which means you'd need 12h*62GW for simplistic optimistic night worth of energy. Which is 744GWh. But realistically you have to look at worst case scenario during long winter nights and cloudy days. Which is a lot more storage required and less solar power output. And batteries get degraded over time, some malfunction etc.
First, Nuclear power plants degrade much faster and at a higher cost than solar/batteries. Its the moving parts simplification. Its a major factor in why we replaced relays with transistors. Senond, you need to do some new research that reflects current technology. China will absolutely produce that amount of grid storage. Look up their production curve its insane.
Nuclear power plants can run many decades at full power with adequate maintenance, even more so newer ones. Can the li-ion batteries though? Note that they'd be under stress each day. Perhaps with new/different battery tech, but that's yet to see how it pans out. As per China and batteries, perhaps, but that's yet to see how it turns out at the end. They also reverted from not building (many) coal power plants and they are increasingly building them again. So, it's complex. Also read "China Targets 180 Gigawatts of Battery Storage by end of 2027" which is far away from minimum required for getting rid of nuclear and coal.
85% of the 180Gw capacity was installed in 2026. The machines to make that storage dont go away at the end of the year. Also the science on li-ion batteries is showing they degrade much lower than expected as well. All your data is out of date. Go read.
"Where do we have such energy storage?" - You're asking for overnight replacement with something that currently exists!