Nuclear plants may or may not be reliable, but outages at multiple nuclear plants are usually not corellated.

Solar is corellated around time of day on a large scale and cloud cover on a more localized scale. Lack of wind sometimes happens to fairly large regions; interconnections to farther away wind farms helps though.

Weather extremes outside the design can result in outages for all kinds of plants though, so a relatively geographically small and isolated grid like Texas, that has many plants unprepared for cold will likely have outages at plants of all types during a bad cold snap; a particularly bad heat wave might cause issues as well.

On the other hand an advantage that solar and wind have is that they are predictable in the medium term. Weather forecasts are fairly reliable predictors of solar & wind output about a week or so out. They also ramp up and down smoothly.

So while grid operators have to be constantly adjusting for solar & wind output variations, they can do so without panic and without customers noticing.

Reactor shutdowns, while rare, are sometimes very unexpected and drop a lot of capacity from the grid very quickly.

This isn't really any more or less true of Nuclear than any other facility. A power outage which took out many of the railways in London a few years back was caused by one of the offshore wind fields tripping from the grid.

Lack of water to cool down is unfortunately correlated across the country.

Which country?

Every country. Lack of water in a river is usually correlated to lack of water in the other river close to it (a common cause could be very hot and dry season with no rain for instance)

France

>> Nuclear plants may or may not be reliable, but outages at multiple nuclear plants are usually not corellated.

Japan has seen a decade-long shutdown of most plants following a single incident.

> but outages at multiple nuclear plants are usually not corellated

Unless you start mass manufacturing them and the identical reactors start failing in identical ways...

... and one has to mass-manufacture them in order to lower the total cost.

Outages at multiple nuclear plants can be correlated. Right now: https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/06/29/corrosion-problem-sh...

Capacity factor is generally better for nuclear than any other energy source.

> British wind often generates less power than it can, but it very rarely drops to zero.

Sorry, I didn't realize French nuclear reactors weren't generating any energy at the moment.

Over half of French reactors are down. https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/07/28/frances-nuclear-...

Let's note that part of them are down now for planned maintenance that had to be delayed because of the pandemic. Hopefully, this is not going to be a recurring event.

Water temperature is also a problem, but, again, is something that is going to resolve itself "at some point".

Finally, others are closed for potentially recurring corrosion issues, and _that_ is the really problematic stuff since most of our reactors were built around the same time.

I don't exactly understand why everyone is tiptoing around the fact that we're going to have electricity shutdowns this winter in Europe, when the gas that's supposed to full peaked plants is going to be missing.

Sadly there is not much we can do to prevent it, at the moment, and at least a good old blackout and a few shortages at gas stations might make some people take energy issues seriously.

> Sadly there is not much we can do to prevent it ...

The people could demand a resolution to the politician's issues which are holding five turbines in Montreal that could be installed in a pipeline which supplies gas to parts of Europe. It is almost like some political segments don't want a resolution before winter.

Edit: I had read one was returned, five being repaired, and Germany restarting ten coal plants. https://globalnews.ca/news/9002839/canada-turbines-return-ru...

Those turbines were sent back to Germany a couple of weeks ago.

It is almost like the news is more interested in reporting on ongoing problems than solved ones.

At some point, "Breaking news : everything is pretty much ok" is going to be a thing.

I'm ready to bet that when all the turbines are back (some already are), if the geopolitical situation is still as complicated, Russia will find another good reason to limit the amount of gas sent to western Europe.

I think the Kremlin is expecting the German electorate to push pressure on their government to ask for a return to the "normal" flow of gas, Ukraine be damned.

That seems like a reasonable bet, but I'm not going to rule surprises out any more.