You wrote earlier about an order of priority, which should have renewables before nuclear. This article seems to have it in the opposite order, though that may be due to tailoring it to a certain audience.

However, more practically, should there be a nuclear feed-in tariff, how would that order of importance be reflected?

Today, in zeroeth order, feed-in tariffs establish an equality (at present, of all renewables). On a deeper level, the price level (relative to production costs as well as market prices), the time period it is guaranteed for, influence relative fortunes. So does the relative capital strength of the existing industry: say wind today can live on much tighter margins than geothermal or solarthermal (and I think nuclear could live on even tighter margins).

Then there is the issue of the yearly decrease of price levels. How fast it is, also determines relative fortunes (what decrease R&D in an industry is capable to follow). But there is also the thing that in principle, the ultimate aim is to make the supported production mode 'market-competitive' in terms of average prices [even if average prices is not the basis on which the market really works]. How would this apply to nuclear?

Ultimately, if successful in pushing out existing alternatives, feed-in tariffs bring the supported modes into conflict: a conflict over quasi-guaranteed market shares. This conflict is not apparent when the modes concerned are renewables as yet giving only 5-20% of total generation. (It exists nevertheless -- witness the fights over the 2005 and the next modification of the German feed-in law, wind versus PV and biogas.) But if the issue is 30-60% of generation or more, the conflict will become much more explicit.

On a final note, what do we do about marginal production in the future? I think the ultimate replacement of gas needs a special effort. In that problem, I include France. In my understanding, due to a certain inertia of nuclear, France actually depends on its exports to Italy and France for elasticity.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}