[nashalo_nighly]

Solar and wind are still not good at providing a baseline load, especially in winter where the power consumption is higher. France slows down some reactors during heat waves due to environmental regulations not allowing power plants to heat the river past a certain threshold, not because disposing excess heat is inherently difficult.

[bryanlarsen]

Why is baseline supply an issue? The only power supplies that are needed in a system are dispatchable aka peak. If your peaker plants can handle the entire load then you don't need any other type of power. You may want to have supplies that are cheaper and/or greener, but you don't need them.

So until Nuclear plants can provide dispatchable power, they're competing against the much cheaper solar/wind power, not against natural gas or batteries where the cost disadvantage isn't as bad. Nuclear theoretically could be dispatchable, but current designs aren't.