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Comment by Moldoteck | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear power is one of the most flexible sources of power, especially PWR's with ALFC or even more so - BWR's You can actually see how France is flexing in the summer on RTE website

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France's nuclear operators have been claiming this for years. But recently started claiming that wind and solar are bad because they force nuclear to flex which is too expensive.

> Electricite de France SA said growing solar and wind generation was increasing equipment wear and maintenance costs at its nuclear reactors, which are forced to reduce output when power demand is insufficient.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-16/edf-warns...

"France's nuclear operators have been claiming this for years. But recently started claiming that wind and solar are bad because they force nuclear to flex which is too expensive." - one doesnt disprove the other.

French nuclear is extremely flexible https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/g... but it doesn't mean it's free. Solar and wind without proper bess to support them are creating problems for other generators, acting as grid parasites without offering proper firm generation

The flexibility claim was always the same lie: that what mattered was technical flexibility, when economic flexibility wasn't there.

That's false too. Most of the arguments from antinuclear activists in this direction are about physical capacity of modulating too slow, which was false. Regardless, EDF is modulating now mostly due to economic reasons. Above 50-60% capacity factor you'll be fine, beyond that it'll be problematic with any asset, at which point you'll need to ask yourself if you love gas or you let nuclear run for some minimal CF or if you mandate each NPP to build a bess buffer to absorb capacity when needed

Most of the claims from nuclear opponents talk about lack of flexibility in nuclear without specifying whether they are talking about technical or economic flexibility. Dishonest nuclear proponents then interpret that in a strawman way, as if the opponents were arguing they couldn't technically scale power output.

You can design a load following nuclear reactor (that's the industry term, only activists and marketers say flexible). Nobody does that because the basic NPP design that everyone uses is for a base load reactor. We have had load following NPP designs for 50 years but getting them approved is a political process that greens block.

You are just trying to politicize the laws of physics due to your own lack of understanding of the topic. Meanwhile, your solar panels are manufactured mostly with power gotten from coal, in the 3rd world, and are mostly sited in places where they do little to no good while at the same time destabilizing the grid. Then you have the temerity to argue with actual engineers who spend their lives studying this topic. Seriously???

load following for modern reactors is mostly embedded. For some Gen2 it's possible to adapt ALFC from Framatome (like Germany did in the past). But if you want fastest load follow you need BWR's.

Solar manufactured from coal is irrelevant, it's offsetting that carbon many times over during lifetime. A real problem is on the other hand providing firm power. In some regions like Australia it could be realistic to get by with ren alone. In other regions like say Germany, it's not realistic and confirmed even by Fraunhofer ISE

Calling BS on the last claim there. It's not realistic to do it in Germany with just batteries for storage (since something like Li-ion batteries are poorly suited for handling Dunkelflauten or seasonal storage). Throw in a very low capex, if poor RTE, storage technology and renewables can easily get to 100% anywhere.

See https://model.energy/

I will add that if a place like Germany tries to compete in energy-intensive industry against places nearer the equator with cheap, low seasonality solar they're going to lose.

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