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They are indeed massive, but a gigawatt is a lot of power! In the balance, nuclear uses a vastly less raw material and land per energy than almost all other ene

They are indeed massive, but a gigawatt is a lot of power! In the balance, nuclear uses a vastly less raw material and land per energy than almost all other energy sources. The DOE 2015 quadrennial report shows data on things like this, and here is a plot of the data (with citation) [1]. Where are you getting your info? E=MC² from the fuel does indeed carry over into incredibly low land, raw material, and waste footprints in nuclear. That's what's so cool about it. [1] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56a45d683b0be33df885def6/1559929822962-FA47VAASFE2H053HDUQI/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kNvT88LknE-K9M4pGNO0Iqd7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QPOohDIaIeljMHgDF5CVlOqpeNLcJ80NK65_fV7S1USOFn4xF8vTWDNAUBm5ducQhX-V3oVjSmr829Rco4W2Uo49ZdOtO_QXox0_W7i2zEA/The+Complete+Case+for+Nuclear+-+English.008.jpeg?format=1000w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56a45d683b0be3... Edit: actual citation is table 10.4 in [2] on pg 390 of the pdf. That cites ref 52 which points to [3] from Argonne National Lab. Would be nice to find a better reference. [2] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrennial-technology-review-2015_1.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrenn... [3] https://greet.es.anl.gov/ https://greet.es.anl.gov/ More info in here [4] [4] http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/961711588875536384/Minerals-for-Climate-Action-The-Mineral-Intensity-of-the-Clean-Energy-Transition.pdf http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/961711588875536384/Minerals-...

_jal 6y ago
> nuclear uses a vastly less [...] land per energy It really depends on which particular installation we're talking about, doesn't it? https://medium.com/social-innovation-japan/fukushimas-nuclear-exclusion-zone-7-years-on-5b1998a1d560 https://medium.com/social-innovation-japan/fukushimas-nuclea... There are some other ones occupying rather a lot of land as well...
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  The people who study these kinds of things consider accidents as well. We've been running nuclear reactors for 70+ years and can still see that on average they use a truly tiny amount of land, very compatible with ecosystem conservation. That's why a lot of conservationists do like nuclear. Keep in mind that Colorado is naturally more radioactive (due to cosmic rays at elevation and uranium in the rocks) than almost all the area surrounding Fukushima today. Thus you can find people who say that nuclear accidents create permanently uninhabitable wastelands, but that is simply not true. Below 100 mSv/year of radiation, no one has proved that any harm is done (or not done). Antinuclear institutions have formally used the strategy of terrifying people into thinking that even levels of radiation close to the natural background (3-6 mSv/yr in most places) are deadly. It is unjustifiable. There are some interesting arguments to be made about Chernobyl as well. It is not really a wasteland, as you can see in the pictures and discussion here [1]. Wildlife has returned incredibly with the absence of humans. Climate change has pretty large potential land impacts so that should be factored into fossil like natural gas too. [1] https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive-wastelands-a-look-at-chernobyls-effects-on-nature/ https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...
  - _jal 6y ago
    > The people who study these kinds of things consider accidents as well "Consider" is a lovely word. I would certainly consider how they accounted for things like a ~220 sq/mi exclusion zone in Japan, if I had any idea what was being referenced. > Wildlife has returned incredibly with the absence of humans. It is true that many animals find radiation more tolerable than people. You can make similar claims about mountain top removal - thanks to devastated ecosystems, Kentucky is repopulating their elk. When you get around to looking at the costs of these wildlife havens, enthusiasm for diving down this line of inquiry in any serious fashion tends to evaporate on the nuclear-booster side, though. "Something can live in any hellhole humanity can create" isn't the best of bumper-stickers, I guess. > Climate change has pretty large potential land impacts Anything that encourages taking these externalities more seriously than now...
    - acidburnNSA 6y ago
      The key question is: how many square miles of Japan have annual dose rates higher than, say, 10 mSv/yr? If people knew the science and units of radiation dose response, I believe many would absolutely choose to live and play and raise children in that kind of environment. When you can detect a single atom decaying, dose rate numbers and health models matter.
      - _jal 6y ago
        At some point this starting sounding like a timeshare sales pitch. "...And our more senior members find the hotter zones a very economical tradeoff..."
- imtringued 6y ago
  That's an interesting argument. I've always seen people downplay the exclusion zones but if you are accepting them as a cost of doing business then they clearly should be counted towards the footprint of the power plants.
epistasis 6y ago
I've just run my own numbers. But looking at your image, something seems seriously seriously off on the solar side. I get roughly similar numbers for nuclear; e.g. 250 thousand metric tonnes concrete / TWh for an AP1000 and 5x that for Sizewell B, using concrete mass numbers from [0]. Averaging these two designs is really close to their 760 number for concrete. For solar, let's take some average random numbers, 800 pounds for a 6kW array on a roof [1]. So starting just with the panels, a 25% capacity factor over 30 years will generate 394 MWh == 0.000394 TWh. 800 pounds is 0.000363 thousand metric tonnes. So converting to the units of thousand metric tonnes / TWh, we are at 900 thousand metric tonnes/TWh for the panels for solar. Add another 10% for inverters, double that for framing if you're installing in a field rather than on a house, and I don't know where they are coming up with their stuff. 2700 tonnes/GWh for glass alone is ludicrous. I'm not sure where that report comes from, but it would be worth checking the sources. After a basic sniff test, I'm going to dismiss it. Maybe it's using weights from 1980 solar panels or something. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110722031413/http://www.nuclearinst.com/uploads/Branch%20Presentations/The%20AP1000%20-%20A%20Bull%20-%2016th%20Nov%2010.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110722031413/http://www.nuclea... [1] https://news.energysage.com/average-solar-panel-size-weight/ https://news.energysage.com/average-solar-panel-size-weight/ Edit: and honestly, both weight / Wh and land / Wh are fairly meaningless numbers for both technologies. What really matters is cost and environmental impact, since we have ample land and ability to put weight on land.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  I tried smell testing it too. For glass, we find 70 tonnes for a 1 MW capacity unit [1]. Using slightly more normal 20 year lifetime, and I'll re-use 25% capacity factor (which is about the avg in the USA), this comes out to 1597 tonnes/TWh of glass, compared to 2700 on the plot I showed. Running some sensitivity analysis shows that if you use 15% capacity factor, then you get 2662, basically the number given. Capacity factor is very location dependent so I guess the answer for solar resources is also highly location dependent. For instance if you're choosing between nuclear and solar in Boston, these numbers are pretty reasonable. In Arizona, there might be a factor of 2-3 improvement in solar's resource usage. In any case, best-case solar uses vastly more raw materials from Mother Earth than all-case nuclear. Also, solar is usually first built where it will make the most money, so early fleet capacity factors are likely to be biased high. They will decrease as people build solar in less sunny places. [1] https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2017/Jun/IRENA_Leveraging_for_Solar_PV_2017.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...

_jal 6y ago

> nuclear uses a vastly less [...] land per energy It really depends on which particular installation we're talking about, doesn't it? https://medium.com/social-innovation-japan/fukushimas-nuclear-exclusion-zone-7-years-on-5b1998a1d560 https://medium.com/social-innovation-japan/fukushimas-nuclea... There are some other ones occupying rather a lot of land as well...

acidburnNSA 6y ago
The people who study these kinds of things consider accidents as well. We've been running nuclear reactors for 70+ years and can still see that on average they use a truly tiny amount of land, very compatible with ecosystem conservation. That's why a lot of conservationists do like nuclear. Keep in mind that Colorado is naturally more radioactive (due to cosmic rays at elevation and uranium in the rocks) than almost all the area surrounding Fukushima today. Thus you can find people who say that nuclear accidents create permanently uninhabitable wastelands, but that is simply not true. Below 100 mSv/year of radiation, no one has proved that any harm is done (or not done). Antinuclear institutions have formally used the strategy of terrifying people into thinking that even levels of radiation close to the natural background (3-6 mSv/yr in most places) are deadly. It is unjustifiable. There are some interesting arguments to be made about Chernobyl as well. It is not really a wasteland, as you can see in the pictures and discussion here [1]. Wildlife has returned incredibly with the absence of humans. Climate change has pretty large potential land impacts so that should be factored into fossil like natural gas too. [1] https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive-wastelands-a-look-at-chernobyls-effects-on-nature/ https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...
- _jal 6y ago
  > The people who study these kinds of things consider accidents as well "Consider" is a lovely word. I would certainly consider how they accounted for things like a ~220 sq/mi exclusion zone in Japan, if I had any idea what was being referenced. > Wildlife has returned incredibly with the absence of humans. It is true that many animals find radiation more tolerable than people. You can make similar claims about mountain top removal - thanks to devastated ecosystems, Kentucky is repopulating their elk. When you get around to looking at the costs of these wildlife havens, enthusiasm for diving down this line of inquiry in any serious fashion tends to evaporate on the nuclear-booster side, though. "Something can live in any hellhole humanity can create" isn't the best of bumper-stickers, I guess. > Climate change has pretty large potential land impacts Anything that encourages taking these externalities more seriously than now...
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    The key question is: how many square miles of Japan have annual dose rates higher than, say, 10 mSv/yr? If people knew the science and units of radiation dose response, I believe many would absolutely choose to live and play and raise children in that kind of environment. When you can detect a single atom decaying, dose rate numbers and health models matter.
    - _jal 6y ago
      At some point this starting sounding like a timeshare sales pitch. "...And our more senior members find the hotter zones a very economical tradeoff..."
imtringued 6y ago
That's an interesting argument. I've always seen people downplay the exclusion zones but if you are accepting them as a cost of doing business then they clearly should be counted towards the footprint of the power plants.

epistasis 6y ago

I've just run my own numbers. But looking at your image, something seems seriously seriously off on the solar side. I get roughly similar numbers for nuclear; e.g. 250 thousand metric tonnes concrete / TWh for an AP1000 and 5x that for Sizewell B, using concrete mass numbers from [0]. Averaging these two designs is really close to their 760 number for concrete. For solar, let's take some average random numbers, 800 pounds for a 6kW array on a roof [1]. So starting just with the panels, a 25% capacity factor over 30 years will generate 394 MWh == 0.000394 TWh. 800 pounds is 0.000363 thousand metric tonnes. So converting to the units of thousand metric tonnes / TWh, we are at 900 thousand metric tonnes/TWh for the panels for solar. Add another 10% for inverters, double that for framing if you're installing in a field rather than on a house, and I don't know where they are coming up with their stuff. 2700 tonnes/GWh for glass alone is ludicrous. I'm not sure where that report comes from, but it would be worth checking the sources. After a basic sniff test, I'm going to dismiss it. Maybe it's using weights from 1980 solar panels or something. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110722031413/http://www.nuclearinst.com/uploads/Branch%20Presentations/The%20AP1000%20-%20A%20Bull%20-%2016th%20Nov%2010.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110722031413/http://www.nuclea... [1] https://news.energysage.com/average-solar-panel-size-weight/ https://news.energysage.com/average-solar-panel-size-weight/ Edit: and honestly, both weight / Wh and land / Wh are fairly meaningless numbers for both technologies. What really matters is cost and environmental impact, since we have ample land and ability to put weight on land.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
I tried smell testing it too. For glass, we find 70 tonnes for a 1 MW capacity unit [1]. Using slightly more normal 20 year lifetime, and I'll re-use 25% capacity factor (which is about the avg in the USA), this comes out to 1597 tonnes/TWh of glass, compared to 2700 on the plot I showed. Running some sensitivity analysis shows that if you use 15% capacity factor, then you get 2662, basically the number given. Capacity factor is very location dependent so I guess the answer for solar resources is also highly location dependent. For instance if you're choosing between nuclear and solar in Boston, these numbers are pretty reasonable. In Arizona, there might be a factor of 2-3 improvement in solar's resource usage. In any case, best-case solar uses vastly more raw materials from Mother Earth than all-case nuclear. Also, solar is usually first built where it will make the most money, so early fleet capacity factors are likely to be biased high. They will decrease as people build solar in less sunny places. [1] https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2017/Jun/IRENA_Leveraging_for_Solar_PV_2017.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...