4 ms·

Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how m

Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how many resources all those panels and windmills require to build and transport. > How much land solar and wind farms use seems kind of minuscule next to all these efforts. And given how urgent the climate disaster is, complaining about land use from solar farms seems like a distraction. No, it's part of the equation for picking energy sources. Solar and wind both work better in some areas than others, and none of the equipment maintains itself. The 100 acre solar farm you build instead of a 1 acre Nuclear plant is going to have its' own environmental and maintenance challenges. It's not clear why it is a priority to limit roads through wildlife, but not apply the same principles to energy policy. > Given the timescale we have to react to and reverse the climate crisis the best technology that we have right now is wind and solar. What are you basing this on? Nuclear technology is being held back by regulation and economics, not by engineering or technology.

conradev 6y ago
> The 100 acre solar farm you build instead of a 1 acre Nuclear plant is going to have its' own environmental and maintenance challenges What specific environmental and maintenance challenges? Solar farms are incredibly low maintenance. The land is graded before construction if it is not flat enough and besides that the only maintenance required is: - Cleaning the panels periodically - Replacing broken equipment Top tier panels can come with 25yr manufacturer warranties, and inverters can come with 12yr warranties.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  Cleaning the panels periodically on that size farm means continuous maintenance, especially in the desert, where most people seem to want to put them. If you clean them with water, that's going to have to come from somewhere (I'm not sure if high pressure air would be good enough). In utility terms 25 years isn't that long. Nuclear plants are good for ~80 years, so you'd need to 2-3x the capital costs right off the bat. I'm not under the impression we have storage where it needs to be either, so that's additional cost + infrastructure that's already baked into nuclear. Grading the land destroys the existing ecosystem, and putting panels on top of the ground will obviously have an impact on that area of the biome. Deserts are important ecosystems, and if we thoughtlessly destroy them to build solar farms, we'll have to deal with the consequences 30 years down the road. I'm not against solar farms, I'm just not religious about them. They have downsides and there is a lot of money to be made, so it's worth being weary of magic bullets.
epistasis 6y ago
> Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind I think that you'll find the comparison in fuel densities between nuclear and solar/wind does not show nuclear in a good light. Since nuclear fuel doesn't get converted into energy on its own, you had better also include the reactor, turbines, and cooling system if you are going to talk about comparisons of density. And once those get factored in, nuclear plants are found to be absolutely massive, with nuclear and the fuel-less solar and wind needing the same order of magnitude of mass to generate electricity. > What are you basing this on? Nuclear technology is being held back by regulation and economics, not by engineering or technology. The bad economics are driven by the engineering and technology. And the regulations are also driven by the very nature of the technology. It's not great technology for the modern world.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  I have looked into it and I don't find that at all. I agree that solar and wind are more profitable in the short term, and they fit the private-equity model of funding much better than Nuclear. That has nothing to do with engineering and technology, nor about what the actual best long-term solution for securing our energy needs is. Even if Wind/Solar-only was viable (it's not), available everywhere (it's not), and substantially cheaper over the lifetime of the plants (it's competitive) it would not make sense to rely only on wind and solar. Besides the intermittency, it still takes 3.125MM solar panels for a 1GW plant according to the USDOE. By my math, that requires 1,400 acres of land just for the space the panels cover. Even if you improve on that, you are still talking about ~1,000 acres. And we'd need to build over-capacity to charge the batteries (more mining-intensive materials) for when power generation is low, it would require 2-4x the land. That's a LOT of land! It would still make sense to me to replace NatGas with cheap, carbon-free nuclear power and it's small physical footprint.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    Many crops benefit from partial shade, as do industrial-building roofs, and parking lots. So, claiming that land used for solar can't be used for anything else, and must be new development displacing ecosystems, is not honest. There are numerous viable storage alternatives; the only open question is which will turn out to be cheapest. Underground compressed air is interesting because it can use otherwise-mothballed turbines. Gravity storage, in the form of a 20,000 ton weight raised and lowered, is low tech. Ammonia and hydrogen are marketable or even directly useful on their own, when tankage is full.
__turbobrew__ 6y ago
> Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how many resources all those panels and windmills require to build and transport. You miss the part where nuclear fuel needs to be enriched. You don't just dig ore out of the ground and put it into a reactor. You need to enrich the fuel which means that much more ore needs to come out of the ground and be processed than the fuel end product.
- inter_netuser 6y ago
  You can convert absolutely all of mined uranium into nuclea (and extant depleted military uranium can be converted too). It's purely a political problem.
nl 6y ago
> Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how many resources all those panels and windmills require to build and transport. Uranium is rare and very unconcentrated so huge amounts of mining is required to get sufficient quantities. This is what a uranium mine looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:Arandis_Mine_quer.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:Ara...

conradev 6y ago

> The 100 acre solar farm you build instead of a 1 acre Nuclear plant is going to have its' own environmental and maintenance challenges What specific environmental and maintenance challenges? Solar farms are incredibly low maintenance. The land is graded before construction if it is not flat enough and besides that the only maintenance required is: - Cleaning the panels periodically - Replacing broken equipment Top tier panels can come with 25yr manufacturer warranties, and inverters can come with 12yr warranties.

arrosenberg 6y ago
Cleaning the panels periodically on that size farm means continuous maintenance, especially in the desert, where most people seem to want to put them. If you clean them with water, that's going to have to come from somewhere (I'm not sure if high pressure air would be good enough). In utility terms 25 years isn't that long. Nuclear plants are good for ~80 years, so you'd need to 2-3x the capital costs right off the bat. I'm not under the impression we have storage where it needs to be either, so that's additional cost + infrastructure that's already baked into nuclear. Grading the land destroys the existing ecosystem, and putting panels on top of the ground will obviously have an impact on that area of the biome. Deserts are important ecosystems, and if we thoughtlessly destroy them to build solar farms, we'll have to deal with the consequences 30 years down the road. I'm not against solar farms, I'm just not religious about them. They have downsides and there is a lot of money to be made, so it's worth being weary of magic bullets.

epistasis 6y ago

> Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind I think that you'll find the comparison in fuel densities between nuclear and solar/wind does not show nuclear in a good light. Since nuclear fuel doesn't get converted into energy on its own, you had better also include the reactor, turbines, and cooling system if you are going to talk about comparisons of density. And once those get factored in, nuclear plants are found to be absolutely massive, with nuclear and the fuel-less solar and wind needing the same order of magnitude of mass to generate electricity. > What are you basing this on? Nuclear technology is being held back by regulation and economics, not by engineering or technology. The bad economics are driven by the engineering and technology. And the regulations are also driven by the very nature of the technology. It's not great technology for the modern world.

arrosenberg 6y ago
I have looked into it and I don't find that at all. I agree that solar and wind are more profitable in the short term, and they fit the private-equity model of funding much better than Nuclear. That has nothing to do with engineering and technology, nor about what the actual best long-term solution for securing our energy needs is. Even if Wind/Solar-only was viable (it's not), available everywhere (it's not), and substantially cheaper over the lifetime of the plants (it's competitive) it would not make sense to rely only on wind and solar. Besides the intermittency, it still takes 3.125MM solar panels for a 1GW plant according to the USDOE. By my math, that requires 1,400 acres of land just for the space the panels cover. Even if you improve on that, you are still talking about ~1,000 acres. And we'd need to build over-capacity to charge the batteries (more mining-intensive materials) for when power generation is low, it would require 2-4x the land. That's a LOT of land! It would still make sense to me to replace NatGas with cheap, carbon-free nuclear power and it's small physical footprint.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Many crops benefit from partial shade, as do industrial-building roofs, and parking lots. So, claiming that land used for solar can't be used for anything else, and must be new development displacing ecosystems, is not honest. There are numerous viable storage alternatives; the only open question is which will turn out to be cheapest. Underground compressed air is interesting because it can use otherwise-mothballed turbines. Gravity storage, in the form of a 20,000 ton weight raised and lowered, is low tech. Ammonia and hydrogen are marketable or even directly useful on their own, when tankage is full.

__turbobrew__ 6y ago

> Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how many resources all those panels and windmills require to build and transport. You miss the part where nuclear fuel needs to be enriched. You don't just dig ore out of the ground and put it into a reactor. You need to enrich the fuel which means that much more ore needs to come out of the ground and be processed than the fuel end product.

inter_netuser 6y ago
You can convert absolutely all of mined uranium into nuclea (and extant depleted military uranium can be converted too). It's purely a political problem.

nl 6y ago

> Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how many resources all those panels and windmills require to build and transport. Uranium is rare and very unconcentrated so huge amounts of mining is required to get sufficient quantities. This is what a uranium mine looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:Arandis_Mine_quer.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:Ara...