5 ms·

How much area do you have to cover with turbines to get 400MW? This may be a figure of interest to, say, a small island nation.

• dane-pgp 5y ago
  > a small island nation. That is to say, an island with extensive scope for offshore wind. The real question for a well-populated island nation is how much area do you have to write off if a nuclear reactor suffers from a major accident (or attack)? For reference, the Fukushima exclusion zone was 311.5 square miles, and Chernobyl's was 1,600 square miles. https://www.britannica.com/story/nuclear-exclusion-zones https://www.britannica.com/story/nuclear-exclusion-zones
  • dash2 5y ago
    I kind of wonder if Putin's rationale for starting a fire at that Ukraine plant was "let's show them nuclear power can be risky... if some bad guy starts firing at it".
    • floren 5y ago
      My first thought when I heard about Russia shelling the nuke plants: "ah, that's a good way to make sure Europe will keep buying Russia gas..."
  • arrosenberg 5y ago
    > The real question for a well-populated island nation is how much area do you have to write off if a nuclear reactor suffers from a major accident (or attack)? I always roll my eyes at this line of reasoning. First, the number of nuclear incidents of that scope can be counted on one hand, and at least the Fukushima one was a result of poor planning. Second, that analysis never accounts for the externalities incurred by continuing to use fossil fuel Peaker plants, the externalities of etching solar panels and creating batteries, etc. Yes, nuclear power accidents can be very bad if we do a bad job of engineering the plan, and our other forms of energy production have major externalities even if we do a very good job.
    • hkt 5y ago
      It is fair to say that externalities exist for renewables that people don't like - I recall reading that the real reason China dominates rare earth minerals is because refining them has such toxic byproducts no other country wants to do it. See: https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic... Still, even that beats the uncontrolled meltdown of a nuclear reactor. It only has to happen once and then there's no going back.
    • dane-pgp 5y ago
      > the number of nuclear incidents of that scope can be counted on one hand, Yes, and people are proposing greatly increasing the number of reactors. > and at least the Fukushima one was a result of poor planning. So you're saying we just need to make sure that no one makes any mistakes in the design, planning, and operation of the plants? Or is Japanese society exceptionally bad at organising things and understanding technology? > Yes, nuclear power accidents can be very bad if we do a bad job of engineering the plan, and our other forms of energy production have major externalities even if we do a very good job. On the contrary: renewable power stations can fail catastrophically and almost no one would notice (except for the blackout), whereas a nuclear power station can "succeed" and still take 100 years and hundreds of billions of dollars to clean up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Decommissioning
      • arrosenberg 5y ago
        I don't see it as an either/or. I'm fully onboard with deploying solar and wind, but I don't think renewables are sufficient to meet our energy demands today, nor will it come close to meeting the needs of a civilization with spacefaring ambitions. I don't quite get the rest of your points - any human organization can ignore risks out of ego or greed, as TEPCO did with Fukushima. It's definitely on those with power to set up a system that rewards good behavior. There are plenty of examples in the mining, gas, and chemistry industries of malfeasance as well as functional regulation. It's not reasonable to compare a first generation, 60 year old nuclear power station to recently deployed renewables. Renewables aren't the totally-green panacea that the ads make them out to be, there is plenty of waste involved, and I'm certain there will be a few environmental disasters related to solar that come to light in the future.