France’s nuclear energy spending was 60% of what Germany spent on renewables. France gets about 400 Terawatt hour per year from nuclear but Germany gets 226 Terawatt-hours each year. 45 Terawatt-hours of Germany’s renewable power comes from burning biomass which generates air pollution.
Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years. The wind farms will need to be rebuilt every 20-25 years. Nuclear plants can last 40-80+ years. This means that it guaranteed that the solar and wind farms will have to be rebuilt in 15-25 years. The maintenance costs will increase as wind turbines or solar panels are replaced. The old turbines and solar panels will need to be replaced.
France completed construction on 76% of its current 58 reactors at an inflation-adjusted cost of $330 billion (€290 billion). The complete buildout of the 58 reactors was less €400 billion. Germany has spent about €500 billion over the last 20 years to get to 35% renewables. 7% of this is burning biomass.
France gets almost double the TWh from nuclear than Germany gets from renewables (solar, wind, biomass, hydro). France has gotten about 400 TWh per year from nuclear while all of Germany’s renewables (solar, wind and biomass) amounts to about 220 TWh.
China has a more recent buildup of nuclear energy. China has spent less than $150 billion from 2000 to 2019 to develop 300 Terawatt-hours per year of nuclear energy.
France’s cost was $1 billion to build each terawatt hour per year of clean energy.
Germany’s cost is $2.5 billion to build each terawatt hour per year of relatively clean energy. The 180 TWh per year of solar and wind is clean but the biomass is not. It generates air pollution. France’s electricity is 41% cheaper for its citizen’s than Germany. Germans now pay 30 euro cents per kwh. the French pay 18 euro cents per kwh. This was an extra €24 billion per year. 22 years of extra cost is another $500 billion. This is triple the cost of France and does not include the rebuild of solar and wind over the 50+ year during of the nuclear reactors.
China’s cost is $0.5 billion per terawatt hour per year of clean energy. China’s nuclear buildout is over 5 times cheaper than Germany’s.
From 2006 to 2017, Germany increased the cost of electricity for households by 50%. (per an OECD report) French electricity costs are just 59% of German electricity prices. France produces one-tenth the carbon pollution from electricity compared to Germany.