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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

Gas peaker plants are needed for nuclear just as much. Generally the article is looking at the most favourable conditions for the technology, e.g. only considering OCC and not interest cost for building and decommissioning of nuclear plants.

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Nuclear is producing 100% output during peak power needs. Solar varies greatly but in the winter may be producing little output during peak power needs. So yes, a 100% all the time output requires peaking, but a variable power source that is not producing during peak times requires much more.

You're going to have to source this because there's been absolutely no need for gas plants in the two cities I've lived in that were both powdered by nuclear in Europe.

Energy networks are not city-specific but are cross-national. Or are these cities self-sufficient and not connected to the rest of the grid?

It's right there in the article, but it seems many here commenting did not even read it:

Many US nuclear plants are incapable of cycling power output up or down without changes to procedures or equipment.

Where? Searching for 'peak' returns no results and going through the results for 'gas' doesn't turn up anything about peaker plants for nuclear.

I just cited the section in my post. US nuclear plants can not follow load at all, some European ones have some ability, but it's generally not enough.

If you compare France and Germany gas portion of the overall electricity production is quite similar (it's a bit tricky to compare, Germany produced 12% and France 7% but in different years, France gas accounts to 10% of their installed capacity)

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