Comment by XorNot
13 hours ago
This is just wrong. Nuclear is perfectly fine for nighttime because nighttime is highly predictable and doesn't fluctuate very much.
My state (NSW, Australia) for example uses no less then 6 GW at all times of day. Variable load is on top of that during the day.
If we had 6GW of nuclear plants, our grid would be almost completely green and they'd run at 100% utilization.
Now calculate what it costs running a nuclear plant only at night.
You’ll end up at $400 per MWh excluding transmissions costs, taxes etc.
Your state already has coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned because no one wants their expensive electricity during the daytime. Let alone a horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear plant.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...
Not what I was responding to. Saying nuclear plants can't ramp for predictable night time demand is wrong.
Nuclear plants can't do instant demand response, but they can absolutely respond over windows of several hours.
But not economically. And it can’t ramp twice. Once is easy.
For the French to do load following they sync their entire fleet to manage it. Letting plants take turns and spread out where they are in their fuel cycle.