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This is very interesting to me. On of my (perhaps irrational) fears with solar and wind is how much land it potentially could take to supply power. I live in

This is very interesting to me. On of my (perhaps irrational) fears with solar and wind is how much land it potentially could take to supply power. I live in a very sparsely populated state because my greatest joy in life is being as far as possible from "civilization." I spend a lot of my free time traveling through craggy jeep trails to visit obscure locations (and photograph them.) If nuclear takes, hypothetically, 200 acres to build a power plant, containment, and all the supporting services necessary to generate enough power to feed a city, and solar takes 600 acres to generate an equal amount (and be much safer as well) I'm ok with that compromise, but I would have expected that the ratio would be much higher. Can you tell me where the ratios you have quoted come from?

gameman144 6y ago
Sure, it's at https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf. I'm on the same page in terms of pro-solar, but I also think having nuclear ready to go is a nice fallback (e.g. if rare earth metals for solar and batteries become prohibitively expensive or embargoed).
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Solar does not use rare earth metals. Please stop propagating this canard.
  - gameman144 6y ago
    Ah, honest mistake, lithium (not rare earths) is the metal that the US doesn't have a sufficient stockpile of. The rest of the point should still stand though, essentially having an energy grid that can react to supply shocks.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      And lithium isn't needed for solar either. Lithium is used in one variety of storage, but there are thousands of different battery chemistries, and many different non-battery energy storage technologies. The "it can't do it" argument needs to show that they ALL fail, alone or in combination. That's a very tall order, especially when some storage technologies use cheap materials like steel and rocks.
opo 6y ago
>...I would have expected that the ratio would be much higher. And you are right - the land needed to actually generate the power is much different than that ratio. The strata report is also counting the land use for transmission lines which is a big part of the land use for any power source and makes the land use for different power sources look much more similar than they are. From the report: >...Because nuclear energy accounted for 19.55 percent of the nation’s electricity production in 2015, approximately 938,388 acres of land were used to transmit nuclear energy in 2015, or 10.312 acres per megawatt. So of the 12 acres they attribute per megawatt for nuclear, 10 acres of that is for transmission lines which are going to be needed no matter the source of power. The report gives an example later: >...The Arkansas Nuclear One Station requires only 1,100 acres (1.7 square miles) to produce 1,800 megawatts operating at a 90 percent capacity factor. A study by Entergy Arkansas estimates that for modern wind and solar plants operating at the same capacity, they would require 108,000 acres (169 square miles) and 13,320 acres (21 square miles) of land respectively to produce the same amount of power. https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf As another data point, in a report on the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, PG&E reported: >...To build the equivalent of a 1,000-Mw nuclear plant, a solar park would require 11,000 acres of PV solar panels and a wind farm would need 50,000 acres of wind turbines. By contrast, Diablo Canyon is able to produce twice as much power (2300 Mw) in a footprint of approximately 545 acres. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/hyman1/docs/mayeda.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/hyman1/docs/may... (Land use isn't the only factor obviously, but it is a factor.)

gameman144 6y ago

Sure, it's at https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf. I'm on the same page in terms of pro-solar, but I also think having nuclear ready to go is a nice fallback (e.g. if rare earth metals for solar and batteries become prohibitively expensive or embargoed).

pfdietz 6y ago
Solar does not use rare earth metals. Please stop propagating this canard.
- gameman144 6y ago
  Ah, honest mistake, lithium (not rare earths) is the metal that the US doesn't have a sufficient stockpile of. The rest of the point should still stand though, essentially having an energy grid that can react to supply shocks.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    And lithium isn't needed for solar either. Lithium is used in one variety of storage, but there are thousands of different battery chemistries, and many different non-battery energy storage technologies. The "it can't do it" argument needs to show that they ALL fail, alone or in combination. That's a very tall order, especially when some storage technologies use cheap materials like steel and rocks.

opo 6y ago

>...I would have expected that the ratio would be much higher. And you are right - the land needed to actually generate the power is much different than that ratio. The strata report is also counting the land use for transmission lines which is a big part of the land use for any power source and makes the land use for different power sources look much more similar than they are. From the report: >...Because nuclear energy accounted for 19.55 percent of the nation’s electricity production in 2015, approximately 938,388 acres of land were used to transmit nuclear energy in 2015, or 10.312 acres per megawatt. So of the 12 acres they attribute per megawatt for nuclear, 10 acres of that is for transmission lines which are going to be needed no matter the source of power. The report gives an example later: >...The Arkansas Nuclear One Station requires only 1,100 acres (1.7 square miles) to produce 1,800 megawatts operating at a 90 percent capacity factor. A study by Entergy Arkansas estimates that for modern wind and solar plants operating at the same capacity, they would require 108,000 acres (169 square miles) and 13,320 acres (21 square miles) of land respectively to produce the same amount of power. https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf As another data point, in a report on the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, PG&E reported: >...To build the equivalent of a 1,000-Mw nuclear plant, a solar park would require 11,000 acres of PV solar panels and a wind farm would need 50,000 acres of wind turbines. By contrast, Diablo Canyon is able to produce twice as much power (2300 Mw) in a footprint of approximately 545 acres. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/hyman1/docs/mayeda.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/hyman1/docs/may... (Land use isn't the only factor obviously, but it is a factor.)