Germany's Water Consumption Down 17% Following Nuclear Reactor Shutdowns

I don't really agree on this. The problem is that intermittent sources (wind/solar) have become really cheap per MW. Whenever those sources are available, nuclear power just cannot compete, so you basically build nuclear plants as glorified peaker plants (even if you run them full throttle all the time, when wind/sun is available the power they provide is effectively worthless).

You can see this very effect in China, where the capacity factor of coal power plants is going down every year (and coal power is not very suitable for that).

> By dropping nuclear, we have to deal with a bigger shortfall and that means gas peakers, etc.

I completely agree on this. Having built like 30 nuclear power plants 40 years ago would be a godsend now for almost every country (=> see e.g. France, which is still reaping the benefits).

But its important to consider: The whole concept shares similar weakness with renewables (=> need additional dispatchable sources), and it also works pretty well for France because not every nation around them is doing the same thing (=> somewhat cost effective power imports, because not every neighbor needs to smooth out the exact nuclear-caused daily load profile).

Another point is that back then, there was

1) Much less local resistance (pre-Chernobyl)

2) Much cheaper labor and more economy of scale in building reactors

And it still took a lot of additional national commitment (from France) to fully nuclearize (mainly for strategic defense reasons, i.e. oil independence).

Seeing people advocate for nuclear power now is really frustrating to me, because we had that opportunity half a century ago, but now it's become unrealistic, unhelpful against climate change and insanely expensive, compared to much better alternatives (which are straightforward and just need to be executed). Arguing in favor of nuclear power now instead of wind/solar/batteries just feels stupid.