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In the US it takes about 14 years for a new fission plant. You can make a lot of PV panels, wind turbines, and storage in that amount of time. You will also get

In the US it takes about 14 years for a new fission plant. You can make a lot of PV panels, wind turbines, and storage in that amount of time. You will also get economies of scale benefits and technology improvements.

ekianjo 8y ago
You should compare all aspects. How much land it uses, how much energy it produces over 50 years, how dirty is the manufacturing process (solar panels involve extremely toxic materials to be made) etc... Its not black and white.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Rooftop solar doesn't use any additional land and the US has vast tracks of mostly uninhabited deserts. I would be very interested in a comparison between solar and nuclear regarding their manufacturing. It's not like nuclear fuel pellets grow on trees either. Do you have any sources perhaps?
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    The bulk of the Manhattan Project's $33B budget went into uranium and plutonium production. The K-25 plant at Oak Ridge gives you a sense of the scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#/media/File:K-25_aerial_view.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#/media/File:...
  - mimixco 8y ago
    Helen Caldicott's book (linked above) has quite a bit about this. One aspect of nuclear that's never brought up is that the mining process is carbon-intensive (all gas powered machines) and very dirty. It pollutes the surrounding environment terribly. The entire process of producing uranium pellets is really toxic and unsafe. Another aspect that's never counted in the costs of nuclear power is decommissioning. This gets passed onto the consumer in the form of rate hikes -- after the plant has been turned off! There has never been a real assessment of the costs of nuclear power that includes all these factors.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      > One aspect of nuclear that's never brought up is that the mining process is carbon-intensive (all gas powered machines) So is the process of making solar panels: there's so solar powered machine manufacturing the solar panels after all! However I would wage the ratio of carbon consumption over the lifetime of a nuclear plant is extremely favorable compared to the lifetime energy output. > in the costs of nuclear power is decommissioning How about the costs of recycling/destruction of solar panels? They don't last forever (far from that) and you also need to take in account that the cost of solar panels (already heavily subsidized in many countries) does not include that kind of things either. As for decommissioning nuclear plants, it's not "unknown" in any way, there are already multiple cases in the US and in Europe where plants have been stopped and decommissioned and the economic impact can be estimated and calculated.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > Rooftop solar doesn't use any additional land and the US has vast tracks of mostly uninhabited deserts. The problem of putting solar panels in deserts is well known: it's not where people live, so you need a way to transport the electricity, and you lose a lot of energy between where it is produced and where it is consumed. So, putting them in deserts is a terrible idea. On rooftops it makes a lot more sense in regions that get good sunlight.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  how many thousands of square miles of arable land did we hand over to corporations to turn corn into biodiesel? How many of those square miles dump phosphorous-rich run-off into the Mississippi, creating a deadzone of how many thousands of cubic miles in the Gulf of Mexico? Ever been out West? The suburban roofs alone provide enough real estate for most solar. Imagine if we turned the roads into solar. There's plenty of space for solar.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Roads are terrible places for solar panels.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Biodiesel is a terrible investment. That's a pretty low bar to set.
gralx 8y ago
Wind turbines are surprisingly land-intensive: > Meeting present-day US electricity consumption ... would require 12% of the Continental US land area for wind at 0.5 W_e/m^2, or 1% for solar at 5.4 W_e/m^2. Source: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/meta http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/m...
- redblacktree 8y ago
  On the other hand, we have a lot of empty, mostly-useless land, like that managed by BLE for grazing. Wind power also lines up well with rural manufacturing decline; since it must be built in rural areas it can replace some of the lost jobs.

ekianjo 8y ago

You should compare all aspects. How much land it uses, how much energy it produces over 50 years, how dirty is the manufacturing process (solar panels involve extremely toxic materials to be made) etc... Its not black and white.

adrianN 8y ago
Rooftop solar doesn't use any additional land and the US has vast tracks of mostly uninhabited deserts. I would be very interested in a comparison between solar and nuclear regarding their manufacturing. It's not like nuclear fuel pellets grow on trees either. Do you have any sources perhaps?
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  The bulk of the Manhattan Project's $33B budget went into uranium and plutonium production. The K-25 plant at Oak Ridge gives you a sense of the scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#/media/File:K-25_aerial_view.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#/media/File:...
- mimixco 8y ago
  Helen Caldicott's book (linked above) has quite a bit about this. One aspect of nuclear that's never brought up is that the mining process is carbon-intensive (all gas powered machines) and very dirty. It pollutes the surrounding environment terribly. The entire process of producing uranium pellets is really toxic and unsafe. Another aspect that's never counted in the costs of nuclear power is decommissioning. This gets passed onto the consumer in the form of rate hikes -- after the plant has been turned off! There has never been a real assessment of the costs of nuclear power that includes all these factors.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > One aspect of nuclear that's never brought up is that the mining process is carbon-intensive (all gas powered machines) So is the process of making solar panels: there's so solar powered machine manufacturing the solar panels after all! However I would wage the ratio of carbon consumption over the lifetime of a nuclear plant is extremely favorable compared to the lifetime energy output. > in the costs of nuclear power is decommissioning How about the costs of recycling/destruction of solar panels? They don't last forever (far from that) and you also need to take in account that the cost of solar panels (already heavily subsidized in many countries) does not include that kind of things either. As for decommissioning nuclear plants, it's not "unknown" in any way, there are already multiple cases in the US and in Europe where plants have been stopped and decommissioned and the economic impact can be estimated and calculated.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > Rooftop solar doesn't use any additional land and the US has vast tracks of mostly uninhabited deserts. The problem of putting solar panels in deserts is well known: it's not where people live, so you need a way to transport the electricity, and you lose a lot of energy between where it is produced and where it is consumed. So, putting them in deserts is a terrible idea. On rooftops it makes a lot more sense in regions that get good sunlight.
killjoywashere 8y ago
how many thousands of square miles of arable land did we hand over to corporations to turn corn into biodiesel? How many of those square miles dump phosphorous-rich run-off into the Mississippi, creating a deadzone of how many thousands of cubic miles in the Gulf of Mexico? Ever been out West? The suburban roofs alone provide enough real estate for most solar. Imagine if we turned the roads into solar. There's plenty of space for solar.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Roads are terrible places for solar panels.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Biodiesel is a terrible investment. That's a pretty low bar to set.

gralx 8y ago

Wind turbines are surprisingly land-intensive: > Meeting present-day US electricity consumption ... would require 12% of the Continental US land area for wind at 0.5 W_e/m^2, or 1% for solar at 5.4 W_e/m^2. Source: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/meta http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/m...

redblacktree 8y ago
On the other hand, we have a lot of empty, mostly-useless land, like that managed by BLE for grazing. Wind power also lines up well with rural manufacturing decline; since it must be built in rural areas it can replace some of the lost jobs.