Why energy prices are so high in France if they have nuclear plants that should produce cheap eletricity.
Higher than Poland with 0 nuclear plants, no gas and no coal.
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France is normally one of the top 2 exporters of electricity in Europe and got cheaper electricity than most others.
However this year things have flipped around. They are having a lot of troubles with many of their nuclear plants, forcing them to rely on other countries for their electricity needs. Those countries electricity production is heavily linked to gas price (especially when they have to produce more than normally), and is why french electricity price is much higher.
This is also one the reasons why electricity have been so expensive in general in Europe, regardless of the Ukraine war. Cables usually carrying “cheap” electricity from France to surrounding countries now carry electricity the other way.
Finally electricity price is set by the lowest amount that covers the entire grids energy needs. In other words if you have cheap nuclear power, but have to rely on expensive gas to cover everything (even if the gas is just 1% of total electricity production). Then the market price of electricity will be what the expensive gas price is. So if you notice that electricity prices drop 90% or more at certain times, then its because cheap production methods can cover the entire electricity need of the grid at that time.
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