Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable.

I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?

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namibj 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Solar is REALLY CHEAP. And provided you keep existing central European gas heating infrastructure around for a while, you can basically just wait out the really good energy storage by using existing caverns you pre-fill with methane to keep your people from freezing. If you're not curtailing a substantial fraction of PV yield (yearly) in central Europe that's a sign there way not enough capacity yet.

Built facades and roofs out of glass-glass PV laminate. We have the technology from glass roofs/facades; you just add glass-catching-mesh/insulation below because you can't use the insulated multi-pane window glass construction with safety lamination and solar cells all three together.

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pjc50 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One small problem, nuclear is also dependent on water: https://www.theenergymix.com/low-water-high-water-temps-forc...

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Pay08 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm no expert but I believe the problem there is that you can only vary the power output of a nuclear reactor by very little. Essentially, it's either on or off, and is therefore not able to provide the flexibility needed for power outages, since only some of the generators might be offline, not necessarily all of them. Whereas you can vary the output of a coal or gas plant by a lot, simply via using different amounts of fuel.

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leonidasrup 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"PWR plants are very flexible at the beginning of their cycle, with fresh fuel and high reserve reactivity. An EdF reactor can reduce its power from 100% to 30% in 30 minutes. But when the fuel cycle is around 65% through these reactors are less flexible, and they take a rapidly diminishing part in the third, load-following, aspect above. When they are 90% through the fuel cycle, they only take part in frequency regulation, and essentially no power variation is allowed (unless necessary for safety)."

On the other hand it doesn't make economic sense to not utilize 100% of nuclear reactor output, because nuclear fuel is cheap.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

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phil21 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good news: nuclear costs the same to run at max output as it does idle! No change in fuel costs.

Other good news: solar and wind is trivial to curtail at the press of a button. And very cheap to deploy far more than needed on a day with perfect conditions.

Thus the obvious solution is keep your nuclear running at full load 24x7 and vary the rate at which you feed solar and wind into the grid on those days of optimal production. Idle solar is nearly free, which is one of its largest benefits! This way you have enough solar and even short term battery to meet peak daytime demand even on relatively cloudy days, and don’t need to overbuild your nuclear fleet. But you still get seasonal energy storage in the form of extremely dense nuclear fuel.

Nuclear compliments renewables quite well if you remove the fake financial incentives of “I must be allowed to be paid dump every watt possible into the grid at all times even if not needed, but cannot be called on to produce more energy when required”. Solar produces the least valuable watts. Nuclear the most. So use the cheap stuff whenever possible but fill it in with the expensive reliable source when needed.

That or you’re just gonna be backing renewables with natural gas. Which is of course cheaper, but not all that green.

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tokai 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No not at all. You can vary reactor output, its generally as simple as pulling rods in or out. But they cannot just turn on and off. That takes a ton of time and effort.

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Pay08 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Huh, I don't know where I read that their output can only be at 100% then.

	▲	zozbot234 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's generally uneconomical to throttle output once the plant is built. because the fuel is so cheap. The real cost is building the plant and decommissioning it.
	▲	mpweiher 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There is a lot of disinformation about nuclear power that has been so widely and consistently disseminated that it has basically diffused into the background.

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graemep 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A small amount of coal has a huge environmental impact.