a governments smartness is defined by its investment in nuclear energy? why are renewables not a smart investment?

You still need to generate base load, only hydro out of the three renewables is good with base load, and no, batteries are not a replacement for base load generation. Pumped storage is, but it's pretty inefficient and requires the right physical siting to build.

Base load is a misnomer. Nowadays people talk about dispatchable power. base load is an economic forcing function to justify high efficiency "always-on" generation models. Nobody actually wants this, as much as they want power when they need it. Synchronous condensers, PH, and fast response batteries with some topping up from gas turbines could be as good. Base power is just the low engineering effort answer.

There are other answers than "base load"

A good grid, batteries and power-to-gas is a replacement for base load generation.