[alephnil]

Distributed power may work in sparsely populated areas, but urban areas have a too high population density for that to work. That is even the case for whole countries, like Germany, where all the available renewable energy resources amounts to no more that 25 % of the current energy uses. That number is even unrealistically high, requiring to cover almost any available surface with solar panels and all usable spots with wind turbines etc.

Thus in such areas, a centralized grid is needed to transport electricity from where it is available to where it can be used. This can be nuclear, but it can also be renewable energy, e.g solar energy from southern Spain and Sahara or wind power from Norway in the case of Germany, but to produce everything locally won't work a lot of places.