> Energy density matters... a lot. As a matter of scale, nuclear can be shipped by plane to feed a plant (no Government would allow it, just for comparison sake

> Energy density matters... a lot. As a matter of scale, nuclear can be shipped by plane to feed a plant (no Government would allow it, just for comparison sake). Try doing it with coal or gas. How much digging you must do to have a sizeable quantity of radioactive ore to refine into nuclear fuel? Compare it to coal, lithium salt, bauxite (aluminium) and cobalt. Electrification of everything and mining every item above can take a greater toll on environment. You're still just pointing out categories where renewables win. Glassless pv panels are available to anyone. Consider the Barrel 375W panel at 5kg. That's a power density of 18W/kg which is about on par with the mass of steel in most nuclear reactors and dwarfed by the mass of concrete. In a 25 year lifetime it has an energy output of 14GJ/kg. Compare to about 200GJ/kg of uranium fuel at typical burnup and thermal efficiency. It looks favourable for the uranium until you consider you have to have a huge amount of safety and shielding equipment around it. So this is fine unless you are arguing that LWRs have insufficient energy density? Solar also requires a little bit of silver and copper, but that is vastly easier to get than all the exotic elements required to keep a nuclear reactor running. > The most important component in solar panels is silicon with 99.999% purity. That consumes a lot or energy to produce. And China produces lots of them... fueled by coal plants. Nice for a carbon-free tech. How do you think that uranium is mined? This is captured hy eroi which is in the 20-100 range for current generation panels.