"Why Are Nuclear Power Plants More Reliable?Nuclear power plants are typically used more often because they require less maintenance and are designed to operate for longer stretches before refueling (typically every 1.5 or 2 years).Natural gas and coal capacity factors are generally lower due to routine maintenance and/or refueling at these facilities.Renewable plants are considered intermittent or variable sources and are mostly limited by a lack of fuel (i.e. wind, sun, or water). As a result, these plants need a backup power source such as large-scale storage (not currently available at grid-scale)—or they can be paired with a reliable baseload power like nuclear energy."
"A typical nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity. That doesn’t mean you can simply replace it with a 1 gigawatt coal or renewable plant.Based on the capacity factors above, you would need almost two coal or three to four renewable plants (each of 1 GW size) to generate the same amount of electricity onto the grid."
Acorn, you like the CSIRO totally ignore this point. And how many square kilometres of land would you need to fill with solar panels to equal Australia's baseload power requirements? Victoria would be nothing but solar panels!
