I’m sorry I struggle to understand your comment, but I’ll have a go.

> Saying “nuclear can handle the easy part” doesn’t help.

That’s literally how baseload works, look at France’s energy mix for an example, they have nuclear handle the bulk of their demand (at least the very minimum it will ever be) and renewables + transfers handle the rest, if renewables goes up they export it or lower their nuclear output (yes, their nuclear output can be modulated).

> You still need 20GW of extra capacity to cope

The goal isn’t to replace the entire energy mix with Nuclear, the goal is to add enough nuclear in the mix so that we don’t need gas being generating all year round (gas sets the price in the merit order so we don’t want it on 24/7). If you added just 6GW of nuclear you’d be achieving that on some days.

> gas sets the price in the merit order so we don’t want it on 24/7

I never quite understood the logic for this. Sure, if you overlay a simple upward sloping cost curve on a downward sloping demand-price curve, the market-clearing price is where they intersect, and that in practice much of the time is a gas generator.

But there must be a million other aspects that can affect what price needs to be paid to secure the capacity below that point. Surely only part of the total area under that market-clearing price needs to accrue to the generators?

And if generators are getting windfall profits, can't the market rules be adjusted so more of it can given to the consumers in the form of lower energy prices?

Can someone explain this? Maybe that is what actually happens, just it is too complex for the mass media.

So if wind produced 35gw and nuclear 20 and demand is 30GW, you just say “well nuclear is the base load and wind needs to be curtailed”

What about when nuclear produces 20GW and wind 5 and demand is 35gw

Of nuclear costs the same as wind then why not have nuclear produce the full demand?