5 ms·

> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. Citation needed on scaling back. Any way you sli

by lstodd 8y ago

> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. Citation needed on scaling back. Any way you slice it, Russia can't rely on renewables, it's either fossil or nuclear since most of hydroelectric is already harnessed. Edit: I just had a cursory look of Moscow energy needs. It has about 12GWe installed capacity in city limits, all natural gas. Up to twice that is used in distict heating in winter. I did not dig up how much energy is imported, but given how many high-voltage transmission lines come in it can't be trivial. Replacing that with "renewables" is not possible.

beat 8y ago
12Gw == 12,000Mw. Off a quick lookup, 2Mw of wind requires 1.5 acres of land. A little arithmetic, some rounding up, and we need, say, 10,000 acres of wind power, around 15 square miles. But you'll raise an objection, so double that. And then you'll raise another objection, so double it again, and sooner or later, we're up to 100 square miles of windmills. The city of Moscow alone is 970 square miles. For point of comparison, Minnesota produced 3500Mw of wind in 2016, from wind farms mostly in the southwest part of the state. There's lots and lots of land left for more wind farms.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  If Russia has plenty of anything, it's land. USA is in a similar situation. If politics didn't intervene, they both would naturally use more wind power than more densely populated nations.
godelski 8y ago
>> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. > Citation needed on scaling back. [0] says 11% btw [0] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy- https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy-
int_19h 8y ago
Don't forget that many power plants are thermal combined-heat-and-power that utilize waste heat from power generation. If you replace them all with renewables, you'd have to compensate for that heat output, not just electricity.

by lstodd 8y ago

beat 8y ago

12Gw == 12,000Mw. Off a quick lookup, 2Mw of wind requires 1.5 acres of land. A little arithmetic, some rounding up, and we need, say, 10,000 acres of wind power, around 15 square miles. But you'll raise an objection, so double that. And then you'll raise another objection, so double it again, and sooner or later, we're up to 100 square miles of windmills. The city of Moscow alone is 970 square miles. For point of comparison, Minnesota produced 3500Mw of wind in 2016, from wind farms mostly in the southwest part of the state. There's lots and lots of land left for more wind farms.

jessaustin 8y ago
If Russia has plenty of anything, it's land. USA is in a similar situation. If politics didn't intervene, they both would naturally use more wind power than more densely populated nations.

godelski 8y ago

>> Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. > Citation needed on scaling back. [0] says 11% btw [0] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy- https://www.worlddata.info/europe/russia/energy-

int_19h 8y ago

Don't forget that many power plants are thermal combined-heat-and-power that utilize waste heat from power generation. If you replace them all with renewables, you'd have to compensate for that heat output, not just electricity.