[janef0421]

Nuclear paired with pumped hydro is very flexible, being able to handle peaks at any time. It's also very reliable, since the vast majority of outages are scheduled, and the plant's output can be increased or decreased to ensure there is enough surplus to store enough energy to meet expected peak demand. It also uses much less land and material resources, and results in less waste, substantially reducing damage to the environment.

[ZeroGravitas]

Most of this is false, if you're trying to imply solar plus hydro is worse than nuclear and hydro. Taking them in order:

Demand is higher during the day. solar matches this better than the flat production of nuclear, so less storage per watt of production is needed for cheap solar energy when used to pump hydro storage, and even non pumped hydro can be varied to complement solar production and demand needs (within certain limits). And seasonally hydro and solar complement each other.

The land usage of pumped hydro isn't great, but since that's the same between both we'll ignore it for now.

Since the solar can be placed on top of the hydro dam water, or on the top of buildings, or used to shelter crops, the land use can and should be negative.

I very much doubt nuclear takes less material resources, but I don't have any good numbers for that off hand. Generally, cost is a reasonable proxy for energy and material input though (in the absence of large externalities) and solar costs less.

Again, hydro isn't super good for the environment, substiantially worse than nuclear and solar, but if you're going to build it to help nuclear deal with it's unhelpful power supply timing then you might as well use it for cheap solar.

[credit_guy]

> I very much doubt nuclear takes less material resources.

In the case of an existing nuclear power plant it does. Because if you shut it down, the plant is still going to be there, except that it won't produce anything.

California has been building solar like crazy for the last 5 years if not more. Nobody is saying stop building solar. Nobody is even saying build nuclear. The only thing this proposal is saying is don't shut down a very large existing nuclear power plant, at least not until we get to carbon neutral.

If you are suggesting that somehow by shutting down this power plant you can get faster to net zero, then we're all very eager to hear the details.

[janef0421]

A lot of people say that, actually.

[janef0421]

My points were that nuclear is flexible and reliable. Your point seems to be that solar's output is closer to average demand and has a lower price. These are totally separate design goals. My view is that flexibility and reliability are core design goals because they reduce resource use by decreasing the need for storage and long-range transmission, and because they reduce the risk of energy shortages, which have serious social consequences. Why do you think matching average demand and reducing monetary price are core design goals?

Your claims on land use and material use are empirically false.