No, nuke is for base-load, it cannot be started/stopped in 10 minutes (in France, as in many countries, hydro dams are used as buffers).

Parent is talking about load following. Nuclear power plants can absolutely load follow the diurnal predicted demand closely. Most power demand is forecast very accurately with only small amounts of new generation dispatched or load shedded to account for the smaller variances, or when outages happen on some part of the grid.

Indeed, however all this neglects that solar produces during peak hours, and that multiple production sites are possible (benefiting from various meteorological conditions).

The huge powergrid it implies isn't very different from the one nuke powerplants already need (given that many cannot sit nearby huge cities), that both wind and solar in such a wide area not producing enough is a rare occurrence.

Transporting energy far away causes losses, but we already do it, and who cares if its TCO is very low (solar and wind are progressing quickly), and its production not dangerous?

Add geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass, then better global efficiency and energy savings.

Then a pinch of very small complementary units (already available).

... and we are better set for so many more scenarios, at a globally lower cost and without any serious risk.

Solar doesn't product for french peak hours (8h and 19h) it is uncorrelated (Pearson correlation) with load. And solar is also auto-correlated on France scale, same with wind.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJuknaqXkAAwbWn?format=jpg&name=...

https://twitter.com/hokkos/status/1196564989022220289

Are solar and wind correlated? Adding other minor 'sources' (biomass), progressing on efficiency and storage, and also saving energy isn't as foolish than hoping that nuke plant and their waste will no commit another major boo-boo, and waiting for those supa dupa absolutely sure nuke plants architectures promised since the 50's.

French nuclear can make varies its plant at 3-5 %Pr/minute, when cumulating 53 reactors, it is a lot.

Also nuclear is 20% of the marginal electricity (the one that varies).

http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-c...

https://www.tmrow.com/static/c90a14e6fe7e73b4c60963818f9041e...

https://www.tmrow.com/blog/marginal-carbon-intensity-of-elec...

Nuclear plants doesn't have enough flexibility, therefore thermal (non nuclear) power stations are necessary. In France they produce about 7% of the gridpower.

"Not enough flexibility" isn't specific to renewables.

Renewable have no flexibility, that can't ramp up on demand, they can only be curtailed, which is stupid. Nuclear have a lot of flexibility, as I showed you, the spikes are already dealt with by hydro and reservoir.

We just need moar nuclear plants and we can eliminate the few remaining coal and gas plants.