5 ms·

Out of curiosity, I decided to do some napkin math on this. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant produced 4.7GWe when it was operational, and its current exclus

Out of curiosity, I decided to do some napkin math on this. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant produced 4.7GWe when it was operational, and its current exclusion zone covers an area of 230 square miles - or 0.0204 GW/mi^2. The US has (according to https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/ https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...) 102.9GWe of solar capacity covering an area of 965 square miles - or 0.1GW/mi^2. Judging by that, a nuclear disaster's exclusion zone is worse than that of a "solar disaster" (so to speak). However, the Fukushima plant itself occupies 1.34375 square miles - putting its normal-operation figure at 3.498 GW/mi^2. That's considerably better than the land area occupied by a Fukushima-equivalent solar installation. The question, therefore, is whether a better worst-case figure for land destruction justifies a substantially-worse best-case figure; I don't think it does, but I understand that not everyone would agree.

pfdietz 3y ago
If you look at the value delivered per acre by a solar field, it's massively (orders of magnitude) higher than the value delivered by a farm. If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use.
- krupan 3y ago
  What are you talking about? It’s not all dollar cost. You can’t eat what a solar farm produces. A solar farm does not replaced the carbon sequestration of a forest. Endangered species displaced by solar farms (desert tortoises, for example), do not benefit from the “value” produced by a solar farm, quite the opposite! This is what the “nuke bros” are talking about!
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    We can assign monetary value to things and then compare them. Food, for example, has value mostly because of enjoyment, not because we absolutely have to eat (the elasticity of demand for beef is an example of this.) The value of the ecosystems displaced by farming, PV, or other land using activities can also be assigned a monetary value (since it's clearly seen as tradeable against economic benefits.) Given that, we can ask what's the ratio of the value of the output of a farm to the value of the displaced natural ecosystem, and do the same for PV. And if we do that, we will find the ratio is MUCH higher for PV than it is for farming. So, if the goal is to maximize utility for a given displacement of natural ecosystems, we come out ahead (on the margin) if we use land for PV instead of farming. If we want to return land to nature at lowest cost we would do that by returning farmland to nature, not PV land.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  > If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. Land cost rules out solar because there are alternatives which do not cost nearly as much in land (barring, per above, preventable and rare disasters). The same can't be said about agriculture; there ain't (to my knowledge) some agricultural equivalent of a nuclear power plant. Vertical farming might be it someday, but so far that hasn't panned out at scale. > I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use. We "nuke bros" ain't saying we shouldn't use PV at all, either. Solar panels: - Are much more portable than nuclear plants - Can be deployed in a wider range of locations than nuclear plants (Have you tried putting a molten-salt reactor on a rooftop? Solar's great for that!) - Are great at providing energy for peak loads, energy to be stored later, and energy for things that don't typically need to be powered when there's no sunlight (e.g. air conditioning) Solar panels have their place even in a world powered primarily by nuclear. Likewise, livestock animals: - Are much more portable than crop fields - Can be raised in a wider range of locations than most crops (Have you tried growing corn on a mountain? Chickens and goats are great for that!) - Taste good, produce byproducts that taste good (like eggs and milk), and provide nutrients that are harder to come by in vegan diets without either supplements or additional planning (e.g. multiple different crops). Animal products have their place even in a world fed primarily by plant products. Given this: yeah, by all means work toward reducing agriculture's land footprint - but that effort's independent from the effort to reduce the energy sector's land footprint, so it really shouldn't be surprising that people advocating for the power-per-land effort won't automatically start talking about the food-per-land effort in a conversation about power.

pfdietz 3y ago

If you look at the value delivered per acre by a solar field, it's massively (orders of magnitude) higher than the value delivered by a farm. If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use.

krupan 3y ago
What are you talking about? It’s not all dollar cost. You can’t eat what a solar farm produces. A solar farm does not replaced the carbon sequestration of a forest. Endangered species displaced by solar farms (desert tortoises, for example), do not benefit from the “value” produced by a solar farm, quite the opposite! This is what the “nuke bros” are talking about!
- pfdietz 3y ago
  We can assign monetary value to things and then compare them. Food, for example, has value mostly because of enjoyment, not because we absolutely have to eat (the elasticity of demand for beef is an example of this.) The value of the ecosystems displaced by farming, PV, or other land using activities can also be assigned a monetary value (since it's clearly seen as tradeable against economic benefits.) Given that, we can ask what's the ratio of the value of the output of a farm to the value of the displaced natural ecosystem, and do the same for PV. And if we do that, we will find the ratio is MUCH higher for PV than it is for farming. So, if the goal is to maximize utility for a given displacement of natural ecosystems, we come out ahead (on the margin) if we use land for PV instead of farming. If we want to return land to nature at lowest cost we would do that by returning farmland to nature, not PV land.
yellowapple 3y ago
> If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. Land cost rules out solar because there are alternatives which do not cost nearly as much in land (barring, per above, preventable and rare disasters). The same can't be said about agriculture; there ain't (to my knowledge) some agricultural equivalent of a nuclear power plant. Vertical farming might be it someday, but so far that hasn't panned out at scale. > I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use. We "nuke bros" ain't saying we shouldn't use PV at all, either. Solar panels: - Are much more portable than nuclear plants - Can be deployed in a wider range of locations than nuclear plants (Have you tried putting a molten-salt reactor on a rooftop? Solar's great for that!) - Are great at providing energy for peak loads, energy to be stored later, and energy for things that don't typically need to be powered when there's no sunlight (e.g. air conditioning) Solar panels have their place even in a world powered primarily by nuclear. Likewise, livestock animals: - Are much more portable than crop fields - Can be raised in a wider range of locations than most crops (Have you tried growing corn on a mountain? Chickens and goats are great for that!) - Taste good, produce byproducts that taste good (like eggs and milk), and provide nutrients that are harder to come by in vegan diets without either supplements or additional planning (e.g. multiple different crops). Animal products have their place even in a world fed primarily by plant products. Given this: yeah, by all means work toward reducing agriculture's land footprint - but that effort's independent from the effort to reduce the energy sector's land footprint, so it really shouldn't be surprising that people advocating for the power-per-land effort won't automatically start talking about the food-per-land effort in a conversation about power.