>But nuclear isn't very good at quickly and continuously ramping up and down. It wants to run at mostly constant output[1]
Modern reactors can actually ramp up for down pretty quickly, as far a the grid is considered. That is to say, they can go from 50% to 100% in an hour or two.
However, you want to run them mostly constantly because once you build them, they are basically free power.
Besides, Constant power IS what you want for a "stable base load". You can start and stop solar and wind basically at the push of a button for very rapid response.
The point of Nuclear or fossil fuels with respect to the grid is reliability.
> You can start and stop solar and wind basically at the push of a button for very rapid response.
No, you can't do that with solar and wind, that's the whole point. Sure, you can choose to waste the renewable energy when it's in excess, but you can't conjure it when it is not.
If you want a grid that has a significant renewable percentage, you don't want stable base load plants, you want power storage, peaker power plants and demand scaling in response to supply.
Cue someone scoffing and saying, yeah, exactly, that's why we don't want any significant amount of renewables on our grid -- Fine! At least that's honest.
lets be clear, for your a grid, you have a base load that is basically constant, and then variation on top of that. You can think of as a base load and a variable load of another similar magnitude.
The ideal source for base load is something that has an uptime as close to 100% as possible.
Variable load is obviously the tricky part, because that is where you want storage to time shift, overbuilding to deal with seasonal changes, and build redundant peaker plants. This is the really expensive part, far more expensive than building nuclear
Modern reactors can actually ramp up for down pretty quickly, as far a the grid is considered. That is to say, they can go from 50% to 100% in an hour or two.
However, you want to run them mostly constantly because once you build them, they are basically free power.
Besides, Constant power IS what you want for a "stable base load". You can start and stop solar and wind basically at the push of a button for very rapid response.
The point of Nuclear or fossil fuels with respect to the grid is reliability.