[Reason077]

> "Nuclear plants have a linear cost. Going from 10% to 20% cost just as much as going from 90% to 100%. No overcapacity, no batteries, no conversion loss."

In your nuclear-only scenario, without storage you'd need enough capacity to cover peak demand. This can be 2X or even 3X higher than average demand, so there would indeed be significant overcapacity. Very expensive!

Typical nuclear plants are also not good at demand response: to operate efficiently, their output must remain constant most of the time. Over-capacity at off-peak times is potentially a big problem on grids with a large portion of nuclear.

Some combination of storage, peaker plants, and demand response is required regardless of whether nuclear or renewables are used. The most cost-effective future grids are likely to use a diverse mix of technologies.