That speaks nothing to the 'reliability of keeping plants online' that you are referring to. even if the reliability referred to by the author was claiming they are easy to keep online, that doesn't except France from the need of keeping good maintenance of the plants.

Now the 2nd part on your claim about renewables. most claims in output and gains in renewables include hydro electric (which is kind of weird since the super green crowd villainised hydro electric ), which is a great solution but unfortunately most of the best opportunities for hydro electric have already been exploited. wind and solar makes sense in certain situations, but in most it doesnt.

renewables should be part of the planning as much as possible, but they are not in a position to help Europe in its current situation. Germany's decision to shut down nuclear power plants just after fukushima because it was the social media hip thing to do at the time, has been a disastrous decision.