No, I continue to think you are mistaken, for the reasons I've given. I think if we optimize out the energy system of the future, taking into account cost of construction and operation, it's going to optimize to 0% nuclear.
France's past system is irrelevant, since it was built at a time when renewables were completely noncompetitive. The world has changed now, and changed radically. Going forward, France will be going renewable too.
France is evidence that we can readily get to low carbon electric grids using nuclear power and relatively little technology.
Sure, it's expensive, but all the things we'll have to do to have an all-renewable grid are pretty expensive themselves and unproven.
Yes, we should end up with a much smaller mix of nuclear than France had, to help optimize cost. But it is an option available now that we know will work, and I believe that the optimum point is not 0% nuclear. (In western democracies, though, nuclear has become practically impossible. This hasn't stopped a large amount of reactor construction in China, so obviously planners there disagree with your assessment).
Further, nuclear and wind are comparable in CO2 emissions, and PV is a few times worse. So if we really care about minimizing CO2 there will be some nuclear in the mix.
Betting everything on power->gas->power when we have basically no evidence that this will be economical at scale is crazy. Betting on pumped hydro or battery storage is also dubious. We should be pursuing all avenues available to us.
Also, making a pure opportunity cost argument is a little weird as well. The investments are not purely fungible. That's why we should both give extensive resources to ramp PV and resources to ramp nuclear and resources to ramp p->g->p, because they're not the same resources.
France is evidence that putative economic buildouts of nuclear are not repeatable, if they were ever actually economical in the first place.
It is not an option we know will work. The inability of France to replicate their previous putative success means we can't take any of that for granted.
We have evidence that nuclear will NOT be economical at scale. The evidence is there in a cavalcade of disastrous experiences, even in places like France were experience supposedly, by your reasoning, would have told us to expect otherwise.
Well, France exists and is not bankrupt. France has managed to do it, and leads Europe in carbon output per unit of electricity, and will not be matched for quite some time.
France's past system is irrelevant, since it was built at a time when renewables were completely noncompetitive. The world has changed now, and changed radically. Going forward, France will be going renewable too.