I thought that a lot of the younger nuclear plants were still around, and that only the very old ones were being retired. Also, aren't gas plants peakers (as well as baseload) due to the fact that they can be spun up quicker than coal?
You might be right on the first part, but in general a lot of us in the power transmission industry at the utility & the RTO & ISO level (those whose software turns on units and determines where to dispatch them) are pretty worried about nukes going away. Especially in the Northeast...there is one region where a lot of coal and nukes are set to retire in the next couple of years and they are import constrained with natural gas. There was a cold snap a few years ago where they had to run all the coal and nukes slated for retirement at Max...so that is where we're at.
Gas plants can be peakers...maybe an expensive unit that can move fast and is reserved for emergencies, but in general the gas prices are so low that the units are very economical and we therefore run them as baseload.
Natural gas steam plants (retrofits from coal-fired) cannot be spun up very quickly. Natural gas turbine plants (e.g. that burn the gas directly in a turbine engine) can and those are the type that are typically used as "peakers"
The plant by my house growing up closed recently, like 15 years before it was originally slated to. There was a bunch of strange corrosion they couldn't account for.
Im pro nuclear but the whole situation at SONGS is a slow moving disaster.
