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Current world power consumption is about 15 terawatts. That's 15,000 gigawatts. [0] One gigawatt takes about 1 nuke. So, 15,000 nukes. Round that down to 10,000
by 8bitsrule 5y ago
Current world power consumption is about 15 terawatts. That's 15,000 gigawatts. [0] One gigawatt takes about 1 nuke. So, 15,000 nukes. Round that down to 10,000 nukes; ignore demand from new electric cars and cooling, and required downtime.
On a very good day, a new nuke rounds down to $10 billion. 10^4 x 10^10 = $ 100 trillion. Not to mention mining, operating, disposal, and environmental costs. Or tsunamis, or profits, or interest.
In other units (Q = 10^18 joules) Total world energy consumption per year: 400 Q. Total solar power striking the Earth each year: more than 4 x 10^6 Q.[1] Catch 1/10,000 of that.
[0] https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/world-power-consumption.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-scienc...
[1] http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/~hetheriw/energy/topics/doc/intro/total_solar_power_over_earth.pdf http://sites.science.oregonstate.edu/~hetheriw/energy/topics...