Unpopular Opinion

It's cheap fossil fuels that first pushed nuclear uneconomical, particularly natural gas.

But today, solar is already making those same fossil fuels increasingly uneconomical. If we transferred the >$20bil/yr that current gets sent to the already-massively-profitably fossil fuel companies instead to grid upgrades, storage, and renewable investment, that'd be pretty fucking neat. We're already seeing rapid changes to the energy economy because of the reality of these costs. The trillion+ dollars being almost entirely directed to grid enhancements, under-served communities, and renewable energy that is the IRA is causing massive, sweeping changes to the world of energy too. Even if people on forums like these have decided they want to throw out that bill's swimming pool of babies just because one West Virginian took a dry dump in the corner in exchange for getting it passed.

The whole "very different type of power" thing I don't really buy. It is not a profound, cutting observation that the sun isn't always shining. The duck curve barely even exists when you have a good mix of wind and solar for most of the world since these sources are basically fully-complementary, and we already have lots of short and medium-term energy storage technologies that can be run for profit because of how cheap solar is. The market is already creating these incentives and businesses are moving in to fill the need; the technology exists or else isn't that hard to figure out. Overbuilding solar to the point of negative energy prices at peak production (& thus curtailment) will create huge incentives for storage. We're already seeing this; a handful of very serious industrial heat battery firms, for example, are offering products that take advantage of these energy price fluctuations that can be build and run profitably both for them and the firms that buy them. Markets are not a solution for all problems, but they are super goddamn good at wiping out arbitrage.

I've seen no evidence of Germany seriously considering spinning back up their reactors. If you have a source from within the last few months implying different, I'd love to read it, but as of last fall their energy ministry was completely dismissing these ideas as baseless rumors. I'd personally prefer it if they did, though; with the things already built, a lot of the cost is already sunk, and beyond that it seems worthwhile to get coal decommissioned.

France is a more complicated story, but it's impossible to deny they have a lot of successful nuclear capacity. But guess what they're pursing as their key generation platform for the future? It's solar. Because it's way fucking cheaper. Easier for them than most thanks to their massive nuclear base, no doubt.