[rgmerk]

SMRs are going to have relatively high capital costs and (hopefully) low but non-zero operating costs. They will probably have similar ramping characteristics to coal. As such, they will probably operate like coal - generating most of the time when able to and get their lunch eaten by zero-marginal-cost solar in the middle of the day.

One thing SMRs will absolutely not be used for is as peakers, which is where market design matters is most important for keeping the lights on at an affordable cost.

[mythhabit]

Both France and Germany have nuclear plants with load following capabilities to the tune of 5% change per minute. That is 50-100MW change every minute for a single powerplant. It might not be peak-peak, but it is certainly going to handle the vast majority of all electricity generation with very small delay.

[rgmerk]

Sure, I get that you can ramp nuclear plants, technically, but it’s highly unlikely to be economically attractive to build new ones with the intention of ramping them a lot.

If SMRs are built, I’d expect many of them to be accompanied by batteries (either co-located or elsewhere on the grid) to be used as an alternative to ramping.