In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy strategies of the United States and certain European countries.
There is, actually, a conflict. Renewables are more dynamic in production. You can turn them on and off quickly, you can scale them quickly too. You can’t do that with nuclear plants. Baseload is not a goal, it’s a limit. That’s why the nuclear energy sector is friends with the coal sector.
Example of Nuclear-Coal friendship from Poland: https://twitter.com/stepien_przemek/status/1642908210913853442
Example of Nuclear-Coal friendship from the USA: https://www.energyandpolicy.org/generation-now-inc/
A deeper understanding here: “The duck in the room - the end of baseload” https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/the-duck-in-the-room-the-end-of-baseload
I would love to know what oil company you heard that from, since it’s absolutely not true. You can both turn them off quickly (faster, in fact, than LNG or Coal), start them up quickly (sub minutes) and change production quickly. These have all been features since 1960’s era reactors, and we’re around 10 generations past them.
I think they might be referring to turning down the reactors, which I think is an actual difficulty with them. By no means however is it a reason to not use them, it just means you employ it wisely. Have it meet most of the demand, and use solar and wind and others to supplement to full demand.