No, intermittent energy can't load follow since it's intermittent. You can see this mostly in europe where those that keept nuclear online has cheaper grids that those that didn't. Especially true for this is in germany
Load following is the 1st category historically, currently filled by hydro, gas turbines, and batteries.
Base load was the 2nd category which was less flexible but historically cheaper coal and nuclear. The only advantage it has over load following is price.
We now how a new 3rd category intermittent generation which is also cheaper than load following but just like base load it can’t follow the demand curve.
Therefore replacing all base load generation with cheaper intermittent generation is absolutely fine as lone as load following can pick up the slack there is zero downsides.
PS: Nuclear doesn’t actually lower peoples electricity costs. The difference is people in France are paying a percentage of their electric bill in taxes rather than as a separate bill. That’s great for poor people, but less so for the economy.
That’s critical because nuclear really doesn’t fit very will in a renewable heavy grid. Given the choice of nuclear + hydro + batteries or solar + wind + hydro + batteries the solar + wind grid is vastly cheaper.
Having said that, some nuclear is likely to be cost competitive without subsides in 2060+ somewhere.
I'm very much not anti-nuclear but I do wonder if we've possibly missed its window. To me, a plausible two-step solution to decarbonization would be (or could have been): 1a. Replace all the fossil fuel base load generation with nuclear/hydro, 1b. Replace all the variable load natural gas plants with storage, 2. Now that storage is mature and scalable, replace all the nuclear with solar/wind.
The reason this makes more sense in my head is that renewables are actually more dependent on natural gas than nuclear would be, in the current world of limited storage. I agree with you that once storage is built out, the role of nuclear is a lot less clear. But I think you'd have to say that it's still an open question whether we can really make storage scale as much as it needs to if it's going to support a fully renewable grid. It has only recently started to seem like the answer to that may be promising.