If we want to have an industrial economy with 24×7 heavy manufacturing then we need nuclear power for the base load. There's no need to change output much. The amount of batteries needed to keep a huge factory running is ridiculous.

That we now have cheap storage makes nuclear more useful, just like with solar/wind we can use storage to make nuclear follow the demand curve, something it was previously incapable of.

The problem with nuclear today is just that it simply hasn't kept pace with the lowering cost of alternatives.

> It is too slow to change output as load changes.

its really not. The new(ie 90s) french reactors are about as fast as Combined cycle gas turbines. Even if its not, it works well enough, spain has shit all battery capacity and manages well enough

but if you have lots of renewables you need batteries ideally, which means the hypothetical argument of "its too slow" goes away because batteries are there to even out the supply.

Stored electricity is much more expensive than nuclear electricity. To replace 1 GW of nuclear running at 92% CF with solar+storage, you need 3-4 GW of solar nameplate plus enough storage to cover nighttime AND multi-day cloudy periods AND seasonal winter deficit. The seasonal piece is what blows up the cost, you'd need weeks of storage, which at current Li-ion prices is economically absurd ($1000s/MWh delivered).