Canada

Rooftop solar takes basically no extra space and it's hard to get even closer to population centers than that.

300mw of solar would be between 1,500 and 3,000 acres of land. 300mw SMR could be as low as 10-20 acres.

In that context, it may still be better to plan for solar panels on all roofs in new developments.

Just taking one example of Whitby, Ontario, which only has a population of around 140,000. Using a quick and dirty measurement of the developed area from the waterfont to Taunton Rd., there's over 12,000 acres of area used up by mostly homes and other buildings (schools, retail, etc.).

You may not even need to have EVERY roof covered to meet the demands of a municipality like that. This makes it even more compelling because you have room to expand the capacity, if needed. And it still comes with the benefit of having multiple redundancies, being self-sustainable, offering residents free or extremely low-cost electricity (or even be paid to put energy back into the grid!), etc.

Anyway, this fantasy is unlikely to happen in Ontario. LOL

In theory you can setup electricity intensive operations that can use extra energy and power down when supply is tight. Things like water desalination or hydrogen production. You have the problem of capital not being used but desal plants are often cycled off already.

Except people will just purchase their own solar, because it's cheaper than getting nuclear power from a battery. They won't wait for demand to catch up, they'll make sure their own demand is fulfilled so they won't have to purchase power anymore.

It's a simple economic rule, if there's a cheaper option people wi shift towards it. You can't force people to purchase your power. You can't stop it unless you ban buying solar, which won't be received well.

Nuclear fills a rapidly shrinking niche in the power mix of tomorrow, and it's economics that's squeezing it out. There's no point in fighting that unless you want to pay more for power than is necessary (which nobody does).