In the sense that 1 joule of electrical energy is inherently more valuable than 1 joule of thermal energy. A current commercial nuclear reactor requires 3 units of the latter to produce 1 unit of the former.

This issue comes up all the time in energy analysis where you need to carefully distinguish between "primary" (i.e., before conversion in a heat engine) energy to zero-entropy energy (electrical energy, work).

> In the sense that 1 joule of electrical energy is inherently more valuable than 1 joule of thermal energy. A current commercial nuclear reactor requires 3 units of the latter to produce 1 unit of the former.

When people are talking about 1 GW nuclear reactor, they mean that reactor is generating 1 GW of electricity, so that the reactor is in fact >3 GW thermal. Nobody is comparing electricity from renewables to thermal energy from nuclear.

In fact, this actually makes nuclear superior: you can use the waste 2 GW of heat to run district heating in nearby located cities. Pretty popular in Europe, though with coal/gas plants. There is no similar useful byproduct to solar/wind.

1 GW of electrical power driving a heat pumps gives you the other two GW of heat for free. So, no advantage to nukes there. Anyway nukes are generally too far away from pop centers to provide useful secondary heat. But nukes can drive heat pumps too, so no advantage either way.

Of course the sun does provide direct heat without need to process it through panels. Solar PV and nuke customers both rely on that.

Quality also applies to different temperatures of thermal energy. Low temperature heat, such as the waste heat from a nuclear power plant, has very low quality. It is worth very little, which is why in most cases it is just dissipated to the environment.