[dragontamer]

Nuclear can be on demand, but if you are turning nuclear on/off, you have huge capex but less and less electricity.

Nuclear is so expensive to build, that it doesn't make sense to 'turn off' a nuclear plant. We can do it with control rods, but the economic fallout of leaving nuclear off is bad. (Nuclear will need to be retired after 50 years. Every minute it is turned off is a minute wasted of it's limited lifespan)

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Natural gas is the opposite. High ongoing costs but very low capex. So it makes economic sense to cycle natural gas on and off.

[throw0101a]

> We can do it with control rods,

Also note that there is 'turning off/down' thermally and electrically.

Once the steam is created, all of it is usually sent to the turbines. But if a nuclear plant need to dial back output, it is possible to route the steam to some place else where it's dissipated and not used to spin a turbine.

You can see this in some of the generator numbers for the Ontario grid, specifically for today (2021-04-24), DARLINGTON-G1 had reduced output:

* https://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html