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High energy density can in principle matter, a lot, from a societal point of view. If you only need a tiny amount of fuel to make the world's energy, then the o

High energy density can in principle matter, a lot, from a societal point of view. If you only need a tiny amount of fuel to make the world's energy, then the overall impact on land, minerals, ecosystems, wildlife, etc. can potentially be very small, assuming you deliver the rest of the fuel cycle and reactors with reasonably small footprints as well. The fact that current markets don't yet value these things is more a issue with the current markets than a critique of energy density.

pfdietz 4y ago
A sackcloth and ashes approach to civilization, where nuclear's low land use is preferred because we're also going to (for example) ban agriculture because it uses land, is a nonstarter. Society has decided that agriculture is ok, because the concerns of people are more important than the putative concerns of unfettered nature. And if agriculture is ok, so is the land use of PV and wind (which produce much more value per unit area than agriculture does.) (A similar argument applies to materials. Compare the materials used by a renewable energy system to the materials used by industrial society as a whole.)
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  At global scale, these kinds of things end up mattering a huge amount. This is the basis of Komanoff's "price scales primarily with fleet size" argument. No one remembers that rule, but at planetary scale even seemingly small externalities end up driving costs. Case in point: do you know how many individual anti-wind organizations there are in Germany?
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    No, they don't. At a global scale, land is enormously available. So are the materials from which renewable energy sources can be built. Are you worried about running out of silicon, iron, or aluminum? If so, stop being silly. Focusing on these is just to ignore the physical realities of what's available to work with.

pfdietz 4y ago

A sackcloth and ashes approach to civilization, where nuclear's low land use is preferred because we're also going to (for example) ban agriculture because it uses land, is a nonstarter. Society has decided that agriculture is ok, because the concerns of people are more important than the putative concerns of unfettered nature. And if agriculture is ok, so is the land use of PV and wind (which produce much more value per unit area than agriculture does.) (A similar argument applies to materials. Compare the materials used by a renewable energy system to the materials used by industrial society as a whole.)

acidburnNSA 4y ago
At global scale, these kinds of things end up mattering a huge amount. This is the basis of Komanoff's "price scales primarily with fleet size" argument. No one remembers that rule, but at planetary scale even seemingly small externalities end up driving costs. Case in point: do you know how many individual anti-wind organizations there are in Germany?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  No, they don't. At a global scale, land is enormously available. So are the materials from which renewable energy sources can be built. Are you worried about running out of silicon, iron, or aluminum? If so, stop being silly. Focusing on these is just to ignore the physical realities of what's available to work with.