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Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game by troupo on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @12:12PM (#38279237)
> No form of power meets its theoretical "installed capacity".

And yet unlike renewables nuclear (and coal and gas etc.) are very close to that. And nuclear routinely runs close to its capacity, predictably.

> When the entire EU is covered in clouds, it's especially unlikely that there's no wind at the same time.

So each EU country has to overprovision enough solar and wind to potentially generate power for the rest of the EU countries? Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38276778

Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game by ceejayoz on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @03:08PM (#38281731)
> And yet unlike renewables nuclear (and coal and gas etc.) are very close to that. And nuclear routinely runs close to its capacity, predictably.

Sure. Apples to oranges; they're not the same thing. Theoretical perfect-day max generation isn't how you provision solar/wind, that'd be stupid; the folks building out Germany's renewable efforts aren't stupid.

If you need a certain baseline of a certain renewable, you overprovision (and trade capacity with other areas and generation methods). Given the cost of new solar/wind capacity these days, that still makes perfect economic sense. Any long-term renewables plan is going to include energy storage and peaker plants of some kind to ensure a reliable grid on a national/continental scale.

Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game by troupo on Thursday November 16, 2023 @07:02AM (#38288503)
> If you need a certain baseline of a certain renewable, you overprovision

How much? Is 200% of required generation enough? Is 500%?

Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game by ceejayoz on Thursday November 16, 2023 @09:36AM (#38290007)
Again, you act like building power infrastructure is a "we're done!" scenario. It's like demanding to know how many more lines of code Linux will need to be finished.

Germany - and the rest of their interconnected EU grid - will continue to build out cheap, clean power for the forseeable future.