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Nuclear power plants have very large "clearing areas" for safety and security reasons. In fact, one of the reasons Elon Musks cites for investing in solar rath
by jessriedel 10y ago
Nuclear power plants have very large "clearing areas" for safety and security reasons. In fact, one of the reasons Elon Musks cites for investing in solar rather than nuclear power is that the power area density is actually comparable. Here's some criticism of that claim, but it agrees that it's within about an order of magnitude (which is impressive given that nuclear is probably dozens of orders of magnitude denser in power at the scale of the reactor).
https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/a-book-recommendation-for-elon-musk/ https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/a-book-recomm...
- masklinn 10y agotyingq lists Hooper at 50MW/320 acres, or 156kW/acre. The Paluel nuclear plant is 5200MW (4x1300MWe reactors) over 400 acres ("160 hectares" according to https://www.edf.fr/groupe-edf/producteur-industriel/carte-des-implantations/centrale-nucleaire-de-paluel/presentation https://www.edf.fr/groupe-edf/producteur-industriel/carte-de...), or 1300kW/acre, so it's within an order of magnitude yes. As long as we only consider nameplate capacity and ignore capacity factor of course, which greatly favours solar as it has a much lower capacity factor than nuclear. If you factor that in the difference grows by ~4x (PV in dry southern US states has a capacity factor of ~20%, US nuclear plants are around 90%).
- XorNot 10y agoAlso less regulation. When you want to make money off the idea, being able to buy any land you want and start filling it with solar panels is a pretty great model.