> For land use, as I said in my other comments, the energy density is a red herring — the mass (and the area) aren't what we're limited by anyway. My point is,

> For land use, as I said in my other comments, the energy density is a red herring — the mass (and the area) aren't what we're limited by anyway. My point is, even if we accept the broken premise then the conclusion is still to plan and fund as much solar and wind as possible until we've provisioned about 80% of net energy. At that point you consider the tradeoff between LCOS of whatever battery tech can be scaled and the cost of nuclear (or if we're still operating under the faulty premise, the extra land and mass the reactor will consume). Just the fuel and storage cask of nuclear fuel weighs almost as much a solar panel for the same energy content -- the discarded depleted uranium weighs more. If you look at low concentration Uranium mines like Inkai (which are already close to a majority and will be comparatively high yield if nuclear is expanded) you have hundreds of square kilometers of poisoned and unusable land and poisoned ground water that will probably never be properly remediated producing about 15W/m^2 . Even Husab which is open pit only produces about 180W/m^2 from the currently occupied land and 30W/m^2 from the whole strike.