Since 09/12/2024, the Doel4 nuclear plant has been back in operation, bringing a bit more than 1 GW of production on top of the already running 3 GW from the other active nuclear plants in a grid delivering a total load of 9,5 GW.
So, the total nuclear production has increased by 25%, reaching 42% of the total load.
According to the theory, or rather the dogma, that nuclear power is cheap and thus leads to cheap electricity, we should have clearly seen the impact of Doel4 on electricity prices.
Of course, this can’t influence the long-term market quotations (futures) like a CAL2025 (a flat power band across 2025), because we are so near the start of the effective date that it can’t be influenced anymore. Or rather, the market had already expected or anticipated this comeback. Economists will say that this comeback had already been incorporated into the price, and this applies for all futures.
Below, as an illustration, the quotations for the JAN-2025 and DEC-2025 futures over the last 12 months:
Understandable. So, no observable impact on that side. But the short-term market, the day-ahead market (the daily bid prices for the next operational day), is directly impacted by all the submitted bids, thus surely by the huge surge of 1 GW of extra (cheap claimed) production. This impact can be direct, if the nuclear power plants were bid on the day-ahead market, or indirect by eliminating competitors on other markets so that they will be forced to bid on the day-ahead market. In both cases, the effect is an increase in the bid while the demand remains unchanged, thus leading to an important decrease of the crossing (so-called equilibrium) price.
Below, the total load across the fortnight around 09/12/2024:
We see that the total remains nearly constant, with some ripple due to the weather and other circumstances, and the clear dip during the weekend (recurrent well-known phenomenon).
Let us now look at the prices on the day-ahead market. The day-ahead market for Belgium (formerly Belpex) is the Epex, where the auctions are closed at 12:00 and the result prices, for each hour of the next day, are published at 13:00. Below, as an illustration, the result for 18/12/2024:
Now, let us focus on the prices across the fortnight around 09/12/2024. The table below gives these results (from 02/12/2024 to 15/12/2024, thus around 09/12/2024):
We can see that 11/12 has the highest day-average by far, and that this day and the preceding and following ones showed the 3 highest prices of the whole range (see columns ‘average’ and ‘rank’ on the right side of the table). Even Saturday (14/12) shows much higher figures than the previous Saturday. The average of all the days after the comeback of Doel4 is 42% higher than that of all the days before (153 €/MWh vs. 108 €/MWh).
The graph below gives the prices along the day for each date (a different color for each date). The curves related to the days before the comeback of Doel4 are in dashed lines and blue-like colors, while the days after this comeback are in continuous lines and red-like colors.
It is clear that the red-like curves are highly above the blue-like ones. The prices after the comeback of Doel4 are much higher than before.
Drawing conclusions from just a few days is, of course, open to criticism, but don’t forget that the day-ahead market is a very dynamic market, thus directly influenced by an increase or decrease in bids or asks, so that they can’t be invisible. Furthermore, we have also seen that there was no influence on the futures market.
One would argue that external factors or circumstances influence prices, preventing the comeback of Doel4 from having an impact. This, in fact, recognizes that nuclear is not setting the prices, but rather external factors or circumstances.
Observation must always take precedence over theory, and the observation is that, in the best case, nuclear has no impact on the price of electricity, whether in the short-term or the long-term market.
Nuclear is thus only an ideological choice.
I can already hear the nuclear advocates demonizing me for daring to blaspheme against the dogma. While facing the figures, they might come back with other arguments like being CO2-free (or low CO2) and ensuring independence or security of supply. But both are as flawed as the price dogma. We will see this in another article coming soon.