I mentioned damage at the Cattenom plant upthread, though the source says that there was disagreement between EdF and the oversight authority on whether load-following operation was the cause. Some words on actual variable output operation in France (which is apparently of limited extent, or so says the executive summary) should be in the other study Jérôme sent me, but I still have to read it. (Could become a follow-up diary.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

the gold-standard of safe nuclear operation, the US Navy.

Now that you mention, if anyone has below-top-secret insights on that...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Please don't compare nuclear submarines to baseload power plants. One fundamental of military engineering is that there are no cost considerations.

As for the French, what is the intermittent source that the nukes have been following?

Also note that there is considerable variation between nuclear plants,so even if your (to me, dubious) claim of French operation is correct, then there is no implication that follows for German plants designed to different specifications.

The point, again, is that a complex piece of machinery designed under a certain set of assumptions about operation regime cannot be assumed to be reliable under a widely different regime because an abstract class of equipment, e.g. boilers, can, in theory, be operated differently.

As just one consideration, the training and staffing of equipment operators under the assumption of load following is not going to be close to the existing training and staffing.