How did the UK grid respond to losing a few nuclear reactors?

[FBaggins]

5. How did they expect to sell that nonsense?

Wind can't "come to the rescue" of other generation that's unexpectedly shut down. You can't order extra kWhs from wind generation unless you have a direct line to Mother Nature.

The UK grid responded the way that it should... by having surplus capacity and a diversity of generation types.

If the same thing had happened in France and they had to shut down all reactors of a certain type... they would have been up a creek.

You could say that wind "came to the rescue" because the additional backup generation that they've had to install to support the variability of wind at high penetration levels could have come in handy... but then the "100% wind/solar by Friday!" crowd would have to accept the cost of those generators as part of the cost of a renewables transition... and they like to pretend that isn't the case.