You keep presenting these throw-away statements as if they're indisputable counter-arguments to a point nobody is actually making. In that sense they have the all the appearance of counterfactuals - at the very least claims in need of some kind of rational support. I won't hold my breath though.
As noted in the report above, nuclear accounted for just under 9% of global electricity in 2025. Let's consider one of the main features of electricity generation: it's bound to a locality, and electricity plants are tied to grid networks. Because of physics the further you are from the generation node the less efficient (and thus more costly) it is to get the energy to you. With minimum levels of global electricity demand projected to rise significantly through to 2050 basic logic suggests that nuclear generation capacity needs to grow at at least the same rate as demand just to stand still. Therefore, as noted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the amount of global GW(e) from nuclear needs to more than double in the next 24 years. Even with every current nuclear plant maintaining generation to 2050 that's the equivalent of more than 300 additional large nuclear reactors (LNRs). This is the scalability bottleneck.
Let's be generous and wave a magic wand that brings those 300 reactors into existence by 2050. To meet the minimum of projected global demand they're going to have to be distributed globally, because you can't put electricity on a boat at an Asian port and sail it through the Panama or Suez canals. This means expanding capacity where it already exists, and creating new capacity where it doesn't: In other words, having generating capacity in the localities where it is going to be needed ahead of time. The problem with making the magic wand approach a reality is that it requires nations to develop cohesive and compatible energy strategies that include nuclear, to guarantee consistent political commitments to such nuclear strategies across multiple electoral cycles, and, crucially, to secure massive amounts of capital investment to build, run, maintain, and decommission the plants. The latter point there is made incredibly difficult by the two former points. BTW: of the c.70 nuclear plants currently under construction around the world the vast majority of them are LNRs in Asia.
Nuclear may have an important role to play in meeting minimum levels of demand in places and at times where generation by other means isn't available - like, say, where the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow or where coal and crude are prohibitively expensive - or to meet specific use cases (the aforementioned datacenters). But to do this that capacity has to first exist wherever that is, and is going to be, needed. And yet, when we consider minimum levels of electricity demand globally we can already say that nuclear is not able to secure the base load (which is rising), nor is this likely to change in the near- to medium-term (in the absence of magicking 300 LNRs into existence of course!). This is unlikely to change in the long-term eith without those cohesive (inter)national strategies and firm financial commitments from govts and investors.
Saying that "wind and solar can't replace the base load of nuclear" strongly implies that wind and solar generation cannot expand to fill the < 9% that's nuclear's current share of the global energy mix. According to the report above, renewables accounted for just over a third of global power generation in 2025 (above coal for the first time. yay!) with solar power alone meeting 75% of the growth in electricity demand globally. So we know that solar and wind could easily meet capacity demands, but on the other hand the vagaries of sunshine and wind mean it's difficult to guarantee a continuous supply for that demand from solar and wind alone - at least without viable, cost effective energy storage solutions.
And finally, the point!
Given the high efficiency and lo-to-no marginal costs of solar and wind, investing in the over-capacity of solar and wind (capacity that outstrips maximum demand, and thus can be put to use in any number of large-scale storage solutions) is fast turning from a luxury which would be nice to have and into something that's capable of being a productive (and profitable) reality. While energy generation is bound to a locality, generation from solar and wind bring a significant difference to how we've conceived of and managed energy generation until now - in as much as the components of this kind of generation are modular, cheap to manufacture, transportable/exportable/importable, and therefore scalable to a far higher degree and at a far faster rate than nuclear, coal or gas generation plants. The report suggests that (mostly thanks to China's industrial capacity) the economics of energy generation have shifted into a whole new paradigm, and that from here-on out economic travel is only going to be in one direction - towards ever-greater renewable generation expansion, uptake and use.
Shhh. We're not supposed to mention that.
