[hathchip]

France also built out tons of hydro at the same time as developing nukes.

Installed capacity of 1 part hydro and 2-3 parts nuclear is a viable energy source at any scale, nuclear on its own is not.

The problem is that building both hydro and nuclear is even slower and more difficult than just building nuclear.

[pyrale]

France was more like 80% nuke, 15% hydro (some of it being baseload) and 4-5% other at peak nuclear.

[Retric]

Don’t confuse consumption with production, they consumed closer to 60% nuclear electricity though this varied by year.

It’s telling when they recently shut 26 of 56 nuclear plants for weeks and still had enough electricity.

[hathchip]

In terms of energy produced, you are correct. In terms of installed capacity the ratio is closer to what I said.

[pyrale]

I'm not sure how you see hydro being necessary for nuclear, then. Are you talking about reversible hydro, or just any hydro plant?

[hathchip]

France built this hydro because it could not have moved from fossil fuels to 95% nuclear.

You can't realistically bring nuclear up and down in line with a daily demand curve. Hydro provides the peaking. Pumped hydro is better for this, since it provides both positive and negative balancing, but any hydro will do if there is sufficient storage.

If you have a good balance of nuclear and hydro, the nuclear will run close to full capacity and the hydro at less than half capacity, averaged over a day or longer. This is by design.

[pyrale]

> You can't realistically bring nuclear up and down in line with a daily demand curve.

https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo...

[hathchip]

This is an article about progress being made towards, in some circumstances, being able to get around this problem. The implication is that in general, using standard techniques and technology, you can't do so, or it is very difficult, or incurs disproportionate costs.