It would be good if readers could find details on that; and also on possible load-following operation in Sweden or Spain.
Not easy to find. The common wisdom is that nuclear power (65-70 TWh) is base load and hydro (50-75 TWh) is both base and top load. The only solid thing I found was a report from Vattenfall on something else that mentioned reactors running at reduced load in the summer. It was just a sentence and could possibly referred to scheduled maintenance in the summer.
Sweden has a lot of hydro and I would see little need for using nuclear as intermedient power here. Especially as I agree that starting them puts them at risk. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
They do import gas into France but I'm not sure what they use it for. Cooking? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I note that according to this, due to the necessity to use fossil fuel plants to supply the seasonal heating peak, even according to EdF's own calculations, CO2 emissions from electric heating are barely below that from gas: 180 vs. 195 g/kWh. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
So the stronger summer than winter electric peak has distinct causes in different parts of the US, where in cold parts of the US such as Northeast Ohio, the strong summer peak is because of limited market share for electric heat and while in hotter parts of the US the strong summer peak is in part because cooling is such a large overall energy demand relative to heating even with high shares of electric heating. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
