Is there something unique to Italy that makes it an intractable problem? Where I live we've been able to shift a huge amount of our fossil fuels over to batteries in a relatively short time. It's nice that nuclear has power production 24/7 but it seems unnecessary when there's already a glut during the daytime

Where do you live? Kinda hard to compare!

Italy is extremely energy poor, it even lacks coal. It does have significant hydro storage though

Thank you for this very detailled and instructive post

The fact that nuclear is good at the easy part of power production is not a point in favor of nuclear. Grids are built to peak needs; any grid that can handle peak load can handle base load.

lol because nuclear reactors are so damn stable: https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/13/france-shuts-down-nuclea...

"France's largest electricity producer said the move was required to comply with environmental regulations."

This is a policy decision, not a technical limitation. Palo Verde has been operating in the Arizona heat for forty years: nuclear can handle situations of low/high-temp water.

Even while that was happening, we never stopped being a net exporter of energy.

The system worked as designed.

base load is a myth

"base load is a myth" is a myth

Six words: base load generation is economically obsolete