Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

It's not the capacity factors of solar and wind that make them not able to follow flexible demand. Just like it's not the capacity factor of nuclear that also makes it unable to follow flexible demand.

Is it really just because it's a lower number than the alternatives, people just latch onto that and won't let go?

Some nuclear plants have some level of load following capability (though the cost are fixed so this can be less economic than a nuclear plant that runs 100%) but still not enough to precisely match demand, so what are you going to fill the rest in with? You've just explained how natural gas is horrible and causes explosions so I guess it won't be that.

"Base load" is another weird chimera, but that's not what I was suggesting natural gas be used for except in the short term to help phase out coal as quickly as possible. It has a medium term role in rapidly responding to demand to fill the gaps and has a similar potential role in a nuclear dominated grid. France appears to use natural gas and hydro in this role, both of which are regularly demonised by nuclear fans, which seems a bit self-contradictory to me.

Of course people are interested in the capacity factor of any power source - a utility planner would be crazy not to take that into consideration. In an interview, Bill Gates pointed out a real world implications of this: "..It’s kind of ironic: Germany, by installing so much rooftop solar, has it that both their coal plants and their rooftop solar are available in the summer, and the price of power during the day actually goes negative—they pay people to take it. Then at night the only source is the coal, and because the energy companies have to recover their capital costs, they either raise the price because they’re not getting any return for the day, or they slowly go bankrupt." He adds that clean energy advocates: "…They have this statement that the cost of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard this thing is. So false solutions like divestment or “Oh, it’s easy to do” hurt our ability to fix the problems. Distinguishing a real solution from a false solution is actually very complicated."

>…You've just explained how natural gas is horrible and causes explosions so I guess it won't be that.

That comes off as a rather flippant comment. Are you saying that you think natural gas is safer and has less effects on the climate than nuclear power or are you trying to say that the safety and the effects on climate change by using natural gas don't matter?

>…France appears to use natural gas and hydro in this role, both of which are regularly demonised by nuclear fans, which seems a bit self-contradictory to me.

I haven't noticed anyone here "demonizing" hydro or natural gas - please give an example of someone spreading false information.