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Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

The government refused to protect nuclear plants when prices went negative for a long time, so of course they were turned off because the companies were losing money. That was the obvious plan all along.

And no more blackouts because now they are running nuclear 24/7 to keep things stable.

And again, it's not completely Spain's government fault as it obviously came from the EU and their anti-nuclear stance.

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Nuclear was working as usual the day of the blackout and the previous days.

What does it even mean to "protect the nuclear"? Give them free money for the sake of it? They are already facilities being paid to keep the system in sync, or "protected" as you say, and they are paid very handsomely. But someone got greedy, it seems.

For one year we had to hear that the blackout was to blame on the renewables, and now that the final report is out and places zero blame on the shoulders of the renewables, we couldn't read anything in the newspapers (electric sector is a main supporter of local press through ads or indirect ownership), or we have to read incredible bad blame redirects like "this is on the government for not protecting nuclear".

Wait, so not giving unprofitable power plants subsidies to keep operating at a loss is "anti-nuclear"?

And sure, it is a Really Good Idea to contract additional intertia to keep the grid stable. But why shouldn't that be done on the open market? Why pay a fortune for spinning a reactor's turbine at idle load when running a gas peaker plant's turbine at idle works just as well for a fraction of the price?

You can run nuclear (or gas or whatever) at a minimum to keep the network stable. Read my comments. Solar and wind are very unstable and unless you have the latest generation hardware (costing hundreds of millions) you need some stable source.

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