[alecco]

Wind and solar are extremely unstable. Spain had a country-wide blackout earlier this year because of reactors being off. Days with peak solar and wind (heavily subsidized) made nuclear not viable. But you need a stable source to keep the grid from collapsing (and not fry appliances), like nuclear or hydro. It's like both a pace-maker and a goakeeper.

So you need a mix. Small reactors fix the problem of NIMBY caused by decades of fearmongering (now slowly reversing).

[osn9363739]

Why not just firm the renewables with batteries to even it out. seems easier and cheaper than building nuclear.

[crote]

Nonsense. For a stable grid you need inertia. Traditionally this has been provided by the spinning mass of turbines, but there's no technical reason why those have to be used.

For example, the UK has been building a bunch of "synchronous condensers" for this reason - essentially a giant flywheel. Battery storage can easily provide a massive amount of inertia as well - provided it is configured to operate that way.

The Spain blackout was mostly caused by misconfiguration. It is not in any way representative of any inherent characteristic of a renewable grid.