Pumped water storage is probably one of the better options out there right now. Of course, it's far from perfect, but it certainly beats batteries.

In addition for evening out dips and bumps in unreliable renewable energy, it's a good option for excess using excess capacity in nuclear power plants in order to deal with load variation. (Nuclear reactors don't like changing their energy production levels, so evening out the load on them by buffering with pumped water energy storage is a great benefit).

Flywheels are also another option, although I don't think they're nearly as popular.

Overall, purely mechanical solutions seem to be preferred over chemical energy storage for large installations.

Pumped-hydro suffers from a serious capacity lack.

Flywheel storage is OK for spinning reserve (responding to fluctuations on the order of an hour or two) but is too expensive otherwise.

My money is on thermal storage, and cheap-substrate batteries (molten salt, liquid metal) for longer-scale storage. For national scale grid storage there are many alternatives for which there's simply not sufficient material to create a feasible alternative.

There are many problems not solved with new and old nuclear systems too. Case in point is the Southern California Edison plant which failed trying to upgrade an existing, known system on their nuclear plant.

I haven't really heard of solar based "atmospheric disruption" issue. On the other hand, I have wondered what the effect of releasing gigawatts (terawatts?) of heat (and electricity that will become heat) derived from nuclear power plants year after year. Solar is a closed system energy source; we're going to receive that energy one way or another whereas nuclear is adding energy to the system derived by converting matter - energy that isn't a normal input.

The problem is you're taking that energy from one area and shifting it elsewhere. Acres of untouched natural fields suddenly covered with solar panels wicking away the bulk of light & heat will wreck the local ecosystem. Sure it's not aggregating an undue accumulation of additional heat, but shifting it around in large scales does impact. Make those solar farms big enough, and you'll start seeing atmospheric effects akin to the "heat bubble" effect cities suffer.

No, if the panels are on rooftops, and the electricity is mostly used in the same building, you have the same net thermodynamic effect of the sun hitting the building. No additional entropy is generated.

If cities at large become net exporters of electricity it would in some small part alleviate heat bubbles.

If the panels are next the the city, you do concentrate heat more in the city as electric is delivered, but no more than electric supplied and consumed from non solar sources. If the panels are adjacent to the city, you again alleviate the heat bubble to some small extent because you're cooling one area and increasing the thermal gradient between the hot city and cooler solar panel farm.

I don't know how one would conclude that any of these effects are of a magnitude to "wreck the local ecosystem".