illiarian

> Nuclear reactors are not only slow to switch power output

This is not true

> On top of that, running nuclear reactors on average significantly below maximum output drives the cost up further.

It doesn't

> I don't know the actual numbers, but what if peak load is 50% higher than average load

You'd know if you read the link I provided.

Nuclear plants in Germany had no issues scaling up and down between 400-600MW and 1200-1400MW per reactor per day.

Now, with renewables you do have this issue. Because due to their intermittent nature you're required to both overbuild them and provide enough grid-scale storage to last for hours.

> It's just not efficient to keep nuclear power at a capacity lower than their peak capacity.

For some politically-motivated definition of efficient. Additional costs to running nuclear plants in load following mode are immaterial.

> The irony being those same plants failed at the time of the biggest energy crises since then.

They didn't fail.

> Ramping down renewables is lots faster and easier.

And the source for this is? Because reality seems to disagree with you

> The stability argument is just populistic bullshit. Plausible on the surface, not a concern in actual practice

You're surprised that renewable energy is intermittent and you need to significantly overbuild them?

> You are acting like those who plan and build this renewable capacity never thought of that.

So many decisions in this space are made purely for political points, so you can see how yes, people who are building this rarely if ever talk abou this.

> The goal with renewables is to reduce the total emissions.

Note how if you don't shut down nuclear power plants you don't need to burn coal to make up for the difference.

> Nuclear has failed to scale, it's a well documented issue.

It hasn't, and it's not a "well-documented issue". What's documented is decades of FUD, fear-mongering, underinvestment etc.

> If decarbonization is the goal, projects like Flamanville are already a failure

Why not look at projects like Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant instead?

> will take decades and decades to make up for the construction time

Ho long will it take to overbuild renewables and all the required power storage for them?

E.g. right now, during the day, Germany's renewables are generating:

- wind: 20% of installed capacity

- solar: 34% of installed capacity

- pumped hydro storage: sucking up 8% of total power generation for recharging

> Germany was over 50% coal 20 years ago, it would still be at this level if it had gone that route.

Which route? E.g. France's carbon output from electricity generation is ~56g/kWh. Germany's is ~340g/kWh. Care to guess why?

> France needs to and is decarbonising.

In Europe only Sweden and Norway have lower carbon emissions from electricity generation than France.

> costs they kept halfway reasonable by neglecting maintenance.

That is not how you keep costs reasonable. You're just postponing them until they become unreasonable.

I forgot to mention in the sibling comment:

> in a Grid which draws like 50.

Installed wind capacity in Germany is 65GW. Seems to be much higher than what grid demands.

And yet, on April 15th it was producing only 5% of that. And solar was producing zero.

Guess where the power to cover that came from?

Even today on a reasonably windy day (at least in Hamburg where I am right now) wind production is at 20% capacity, solar at 36 capacity.

Busy burning coal for 21% of electricity even on a windy day.

> No, renewables are easy to regulate and nothing about them is slow.

Renewables are among the slowest power sources to ramp up production. Which is complicated by the fact that they are intermittent.

> That is, why there is a need for a huge buildup of renewables.

1. At what cost

2. What happens to generation on a quiet night?

> Though no idea how realistic this is

They promise to start delivering power in 2030, and estimate the project cost at 16bn dollars or something along those lines.

We all now how well it goes with mega projects :)