Submitted by sunflowerastronaut t3_10hy83k in UpliftingNews
Comments
jamfed t1_j5diea5 wrote
1.21 Jigawatts baby...
IHeartCannabis t1_j5dzsph wrote
I've watched BTTF 100s of times but only once or twice in English and in the French version they say ''2,21 Gigowatts'' and only now noticed it's different in the original version.
sunflowerastronaut OP t1_j5b527e wrote
>The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified the design for what will be the United States’ first small modular nuclear reactor.
>The rule that certifies the design was published Thursday in the Federal Register. It means that companies seeking to build and operate a nuclear power plant can pick the design for a 50-megawatt, advanced light-water small modular nuclear reactor by Oregon-based NuScale Power and apply to the NRC for a license.
>It’s the final determination that the design is acceptable for use, so it can’t be legally challenged during the licensing process when someone applies to build and operate a nuclear power plant, NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said Friday. The rule becomes effective in late February.
>The U.S. Energy Department said the newly approved design “equips the nation with a new clean power source to help drive down” planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
>It’s the seventh nuclear reactor design cleared for use in the United States. The rest are for traditional, large, light-water reactors.
>Diane Hughes, NuScale’s vice president of marketing and communications, said the design certification is a historic step forward toward a clean energy future and makes the company’s VOYGR power plant a near-term deployable solution for customers. The first small modular reactor design application package included over 2 million pages of supporting materials, Hughes added.
>However, David Schlissel at the Ohio-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis expressed concerns about the costs. Schlissel, who has studied the history of the nuclear power industry and the finances of the NuScale project, expects they will continue to go up, which could limit how many NuScale reactors are built. He said he thinks they’re not competitive in price with renewables and battery storage.
>Hughes said from wind and solar to hydrogen and nuclear, energy projects have seen cost increases due to changing financial market dynamics, interest rate hikes and inflationary pressures on the sector’s supply chain that have not been seen in decades. NuScale’s VOYGR power plant remains a cost competitive source of reliable, affordable and carbon-free energy, she added.
>For many, nuclear power is emerging as an answer as states and countries transition away from coal, oil and natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst effects of a warming planet.
>Roughly 40 serious concepts are in development for the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors worldwide. China was the first to connect a next-generation reactor to its grid to produce about 200 megawatts of electricity. A high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor began operating in 2021.
>The U.S. Energy Department said it provided more than $600 million since 2014 to support the design, licensing and siting of NuScale’s VOYGR small modular reactor power plant and other domestic small reactor concepts. The department is working with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to demonstrate a six-module NuScale VOYGR plant at the Idaho National Laboratory. The first module is expected to be operational by 2029.
>NuScale has signed 19 agreements in the U.S. and internationally to deploy its small reactor technology. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff said small modular reactors are no longer an abstract concept.
>“They are real and they are ready for deployment thanks to the hard work of NuScale, the university community, our national labs, industry partners, and the NRC,” Huff said in a statement. “This is innovation at its finest and we are just getting started here in the U.S.”
>NuScale has also applied to the NRC for approval of a larger design, at 77 megawatts per module, and the agency is checking the application for completeness before starting a full review, Burnell said.
Tdanger78 t1_j5dqxa5 wrote
This is old news, the NRC approved this over the summer.
evilgenius29 t1_j5dfyqw wrote
Didn't read the article yet but how is this different than the reactors that have been powering nuclear-powered submarines for decades?
DocPeacock t1_j5dtkf1 wrote
Naval reactors use uranium that is much more highly refined and presumably they are allowed to be much less safe because you're not usually within many miles of civilians. NuScale smrs are made to be built in a factory and then shipped to site via train and truck. They are also designed to be installed in groups at a site. The design is, allegedly, inherently safe meaning the mechanical design prevents meltdown or the release of radiation.
Fundamentally they are the same in that they are pressurized water reactors that use fuel rods.
fistedtaco t1_j5emer2 wrote
Naval reactors aren’t “much less safe” than civilian/commercial reactors.
DocPeacock t1_j5fedbz wrote
I'm not saying they're less safe. I'm saying they would not have the type of safety requirements that a stationary civilian power plant must have.
fistedtaco t1_j5fike6 wrote
And I’m saying you’re wrong. I’ve served on a nuclear powered naval vessel and worked ops at a commercial nuclear plant.
DocPeacock t1_j5fontj wrote
And I was a nuclear reactor safety analyst for commercial pwrs. So what. I worked with many ex Navy people. I think they would all agree there's a big difference in operating requirements and environments that make their safety strategies quite different. Are navy nukes subject to NRC regulations? Is a nuclear sub required to have an exclusion zone, or any of the other site conditions that a commercial plant does? A ship or sub doesn't have to worry about loss of offsite power, staging FLEX equipment, store spent fuel. So you could argue that naval reactors are more safe, but they don't have the safety requirements to protect a nearby civilian population.
fistedtaco t1_j5fprwz wrote
We actually did have all those concerns in the navy, just different ways of handling them. Navy nukes were subject to the heavy hand of Naval Reactors, who are way bigger cocksuckers than the NRC or INPO or those other ABC organizations.
Naval nuclear power and its development the reason civilian nuclear power is as safe as it is.
Properjob70 t1_j5eymcl wrote
Only the military & govt experimental reactors are allowed to use High Enriched Uranium. SMRs have to use Low Enriched like any other civilian reactor.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5fqm0m wrote
And it is cheap. Cheaper than putting up a hundred thousand windmills to produce the same amount of power as one plant. Some plants are already there, could just be field and powered back up to save even more money (than constructing a new one).
Feeling-Ad-7598 t1_j5q3vqi wrote
Small steps
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[deleted] t1_j5cws24 wrote
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FoodFarmer t1_j5ddjni wrote
Nice, where can I get one?
[deleted] t1_j5etfr1 wrote
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[deleted] t1_j5ev877 wrote
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VerdantCabbage t1_j5fquzv wrote
And I used the wrong word. You said renewable. So I replied with the same word. I meant sustainable. And it is.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5frffi wrote
Also, Nuscale? We weren't comparing to Nuscale. We were comparing to current best nuclear technology. Not what someone can make in their garage with one of these little modular reactors.
Most-Artichoke5028 t1_j5g42tp wrote
And they're proposing to do what with the spent fuel rods?
Trax852 t1_j5gz2bv wrote
I do like its name, the VOYGR power plant.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5dye9e wrote
And I thought they didn't like nuclear energy. They seem to only be promoting wind and solar projects lately. That's excellent news though.
kiragami t1_j5g1blz wrote
Its because traditional nuclear plants are far too expensive and take far too long to build. By the time we were to finish building new ones renewables would have already been up and running for years at a far cheaper cost. The main issue is that battery and power storage technology isn't good enough to meet demand for nighttime hours when wind and solar outputs are at their lowest. This is where nuclear power would be useful. This modular reactors are much smaller meaning they are easier to spin up and cost far less than traditional reactor technology.
fracktfrackingpolis t1_j5dch8n wrote
1st small modular nuclear reactor *design
[deleted] t1_j5cvqgk wrote
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danteheehaw t1_j5dgri0 wrote
It's barely breaking even right now. It has major potential output. Even the test that yield a net positive output are not true positive outputs because we don't have a reliable way to convert the energy into usable energy.
dontcareitsonlyreddi t1_j5d113u wrote
Good I hope this upsets people on Reddit
Leather-Monk-6587 t1_j5bxohc wrote
R/WCGW
Mailman9 t1_j5cwomk wrote
What could go wrong? I mean, Fukushima killed 0 people and that was the worst nuclear accident this century. The worst nuclear accident in the US was Three Mile Island, also no deaths.
Sephyrias t1_j5dxfws wrote
>What could go wrong? I mean, Fukushima killed 0 people
Regardless of stances on nuclear power, that's just objectively wrong: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45423575
Mailman9 t1_j5ek9b6 wrote
You didn't read the article. It says, "Though no-one died directly in the nuclear meltdown." This person died because he had lung cancer after working with radiation since 1980. Fukushima likely didn't help, but even your own article doesn't attribute his death to Fukushima directly.
But fine, between 3 Mile Island and Fukushima there has been between 0-1 deaths.
sunflowerastronaut OP t1_j5by3h7 wrote
r/foundthemobileuser
[deleted] t1_j5d4k0c wrote
"US pushes forward with wasting money on over-expensive small nuclear reactors, rather than cheaper renewables"
Not uplifting.
For just the subsidy amount here, not including any of the private investment, you could produce more solar or wind power than the NuScale reactor will produce. Adjusted for capacity factor.
It's a bad investment.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5dyw7a wrote
Nuclear is renewable. It's safe, and it produces vastly more electricity (cost-effective) than wind and solar. So maybe DYOR and support the clear winner.
[deleted] t1_j5ehzw1 wrote
Nuclear is literally NOT renewable. It uses uranium as fuel which is a non-renewable resource. There is plenty available, especially if we start extra ring from seawater, but that doesn't change the fact that it's non-renewable.
And nuclear absolutely isn't more cost effective than solar/wind, especially if you are running into the small modular reactor thing. This is a complete Reddit meme.
By their own cost estimates the NuScale plant's main first project in Utah is going to cost $89/MWh produced over it's lifetime (or $119/MWh if you include the government subsidy).
By contrast US onshore wind is averaging about $33/MWh pre-subsidy as of 2021 according to the US DoE, and utility scale solar is coming in between $20 and $40/MWh according to the NREL.
This is all scaled by the amount of power produced, per MWh of electricity actually generated, not per MW of capacity.
If you look at cost per capacity, NuScale is tracking at $20/W (for 95% capacity factor), whereas solar is hovering around $0.9/W (20% capacity factor). So adjusting again, that's $4.3/W for "95% equivalent" amount of power from solar, which is nearly 5x lower than NuScale SMR.
If you want to argue the idea that nuclear has a place because it may reduce storage requirements, I am willing to entertain that discussion. I will disagree with you, but at least it is a valid line of discussion.
However if you are just going to continue make easily falsifiable claims that nuclear is cheap and renewable, then it isn't worth discussing anything with you, as you are just willfully ignorant.
SellTheBridge t1_j5ep0ka wrote
By this standard, please explain how any energy source is renewable. Even if steel/aluminum (wind) and silicon (solar) are abundant, they certainly are finite and they each depend on energy storage, which means lithium right now. I fail to see how nuclear is meaningfully different from a resource consumption standpoint.
[deleted] t1_j5f1z02 wrote
Simple. Uranium is fundamentally consumed (changed into another isotope) when you use it in a nuclear power plant. Aluminum / lithium / silicon is not fundamentally consumed in a solar/wind/battery plant. You absolutely can recycle the materials and reuse them. Losses in this process are an engineeriing issue; losses in the nuclear process are physics and fundamental.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5fqa4z wrote
But the cost to transport the blades and other pieces in a wind turbine kit (flat-bed truck fueled by Diesel). And I doubt very much you can recycle them also. If they break. They go in the landfill and stay there for a hundred years or so.
[deleted] t1_j5fskjs wrote
You can transport those with electric vehicle in principal, burning fuel is not fundamentally required, which is the difference.
Plus, there are a lot of projects underway to recycle wind turbine blades, because as you pointed out that is a real long term concern. Not insurmountable, though.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-wind-turbine-blades/100/i27
VerdantCabbage t1_j5grthm wrote
True. Anything given enough time, effort and money can be made more efficient. That's why all this money thrown at wind and solar has improved the technology. Money they refuse to throw at nuclear. From what I hear.
snorkelaar t1_j5exars wrote
Your downvotes are completely undeserved. I guess this sub only wants to hear good news, doesn't matter if its true or not. A nice story to feel good...
business2690 t1_j5cbiu0 wrote
this will stop global warming..
​
fuc wind
fuc solar
fuc magic fusion
fuc underground thermal
fuc wave technology
​
just simple old fashion nuke with proper waste disposal.
​
the sh!t is so simple
MidnightBloos t1_j5d453l wrote
Or maybe, just maybe we try and use all the possible available sources of clean energy alongside nuclear for a sustainable and redundant grid system which will maximize the availability of energy? Haven't you ever heard the phrase "don't put all your uranium fuel pellets in one basket"?
sparkerson t1_j5bjc38 wrote
Uplifting continues to mean different things to different people...
sunflowerastronaut OP t1_j5bjgdg wrote
It's uplifting for the environment. Not so uplifting if you work at one of the last 200 coal plants in the US
[deleted] t1_j5d56j4 wrote
It's not, though. Investing money in nuclear instead of solar/wind is literally a gift to the fossil fuel industry. Solar/wind are cheaper per MWh output (4x cheaper unsubsidized than NuScales pre-construction claimed price estimate) and faster to construct, so for the same amount invested you phase out far more fossil fuels.
Plus you can't even use nuclear plants as economically viable dispatchable power: cost per MWh directly scales upwards as capacity factor drops, because basically all the costs are fixed not variable depending on how often you run it. So if at 90% capacity factor it's $120/MWh (as the Utah NuScale is, pre-sunsidy), at 60% capacity factor it's $180/MWh. Compare to wind and solar at around $30-40/MWh and it's just a bad look.
There's a reason the initial pumped-hydro energy storage plants were built in the US to allow dispatchability of nuclear power... And now that same kind of storage idea can more cheaply be applied to solar/wind. ie, nuclear doesn't actually solve the storage issue in the way that proponents like to claim, so it doesn't even have that going for it.
And nuclear plants have never shown a positive learning curve, where repeated builds decreased costs over time.
It's not even small amounts we are talking about investing, that could be seen as OK for initial demonstrator plants. The Utah project cost estimate is now over $9 billion.
The nuclear industry needs to be allowed to die due to its lack of economic competitiveness.
It's safe, and low-carbon, but a bad use of money/time/workforce/effort.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5dyqo6 wrote
That's completely wrong. It's cheaper because solar and wind produce vastly less electricity than nuclear. And nuclear is safe. Don't get it twisted.
[deleted] t1_j5eiyk1 wrote
That is 100% not true.
According to their own cost estimates, the NuScale plant (Utah site, their first.major one) is going to come in at $89/MWh produced (or $119/MWh pre subsidy). By contrast, according to DoE number wind comes in at $32/MWh US onshore right now, and solar comes in at $20-40/MWh.
This is all per unit of electricity output, ie already adjusted for capacity factor / average output being higher on nuclear.
If you want to discuss it per nameplate capacity, solar is $1/W at 20% capacity factor, wind at $1.5/W for 35% capacity factor, whereas NuScale nuclear is $20/W at 95% capacity factor.
Could also be worth noting that in 2021 globally solar+wind produced more electricity than nuclear, and in the US, wind + solar together produced about 60% as much as nuclear. So this idea even that nuclear currently produces vastly more electricity, or that wind/solar aren't proven at scale, is wrong.
Please don't spout nuclear talking points that are easily falsifiable with a 5 minute google search.
Nuclear is safe, technologically viable, low carbon, but economically completely uncompetitive in most situations compared to solar/wind. And hence the industry should be left to fade away.as we spend our money on the options that phase out fossil fuels quicker and cheaper.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/land-based-wind-market-report-2022-edition
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81325.pdf
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked
VerdantCabbage t1_j5fp7jg wrote
And then someone with even less time can come back in and show you that you're wrong. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-nuclear-energy
VerdantCabbage t1_j5fploc wrote
Or at the very least. I WAS right. But then technology improved and costs decreased. If that was the case, you could have saved a lot of time and just said that.
[deleted] t1_j5fqmz9 wrote
Sure if you want to say that nuclear was re sensible choice 10 or 20 years ago, I'm fine with that. Even as much as 8 year ago, I was lro nuclear.
But solar costs, wind costs, and storage options have decreased in price so much in the apsr two decades, with more decrease in the horizon (while nuclear hasn't), that it no longer makes sense.
Otherwise I'm not sure what that link is supposed to be contradicting in my post.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5grfvc wrote
It's debunking that wind and solar are more energy efficient than nuclear. It's like in Simcity when you compare coal vs wind and solar. Coal is vastly superior.
[deleted] t1_j5gtzox wrote
"Energy efficient" is an odd term here, though. Energy per area? Sure, fully agree. I never claimed that solar/wind use less land than nuclear (or coal), and almost nobody does. Number might be close if you include coal open pit mine area, but that's a garbage discussion to get into give you then need to discuss full lifecycle mining land use for everything.
I do not think the land use is at all an issue, though. Or an overly important factor, parti ularly in the US context, for choosing your generation source.
For instance, there are about 40 million acres of land in the US right now devoted to corn-ethanol production for energy. Convert that to solar, and you have 8 TWof solar capacity, enough at 18% capacity factor to cover triple the current US electricity demand. Which is sufficient to cover all current demand, all new demand created by electrifying road vehicles, and likely also all demand caused by electrifying heating. (corn ethanol currently makes up about 5% of US motor fuel, by comparison). Probably with energy to spare.
That's literally not even changing the amount of land devoted to "energy production" in the country. Just changing it from corn-ethanol to solar.
Or... Switch it all to agrivoltaics for food production, still be able to power the entire country with it (maybe not including heating), while producing enough grain on that land to also feed a couple hundred million people.
-FullBlue- t1_j5i7dq7 wrote
Your IEEFA source sucks ass, just so you know. It's probably worse than fox news in terms of technical and industry credibility.
[deleted] t1_j5j1q10 wrote
You rather world nuclear news then? Or how about Reuters. Or nuclear engineering international.
That ieefa source is literally just reporting what NuScale is now announcing as the revised price of the project.
You calling out the source rather than actually addressing the content is kind of telling. Reddit, outside of a few energy subs, has an extreme pro-nuclear bias, even when that stance conflicts with reality.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Further-cost-refinements-announced-for-first-US-SM
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsnew-budget-plan-for-nuscale-project-10524935
Properjob70 t1_j5f23fk wrote
🇬🇧 last 12 months. We certainly have more wind & solar to harness. A record 21GW just last month followed by a period where it wasn't windy & we only got 0.7GW out of it.
41% gas underpins this. And we've all (Europe) been walloped by the price fluctuations caused by the geopolitical antics of producers of said gas jacking up the price this side of the pond. Gas is not an energy security friendly fuel. And it still heats a large percentage of homes here.
We're building HVDC interconnects for all we're worth. Hydro & geothermal isn't really a thing here and hydro is mostly built out. Our wood pellet burners (6.5% total 12mths) are disallowed past 2028 so we don't chip up North American virgin forests to supply them.
Nuclear plants provided >16% electricity but each year fewer plants will be around so that has dropped from 9GW to 5GW in a few short years. It ain't cheap but it is secure so policy is aiming at around 10GW by 2035 to assist net zero. SMRs might help buy us 50 years or so while we work out the harder problems intermittent sources bring
[deleted] t1_j5f31ax wrote
Nuclear doesn't mesh well with intermittent sources at all, though.
The only thing it does is provide a base level below which generation will not drop, which is not actually that useful for the way grids operate. What you need for intermittent renewbales is backup sources that can be easily, economically, and quickly ramped up and down to balance demand and supply.
Currently that does mean gas generators, unfortunately. Medium to long term, various storage plants such as pumped hydro, batteries, maybe gravity storage, compressed air storage, maybe hydrogen, etc.
UK has 3.2 GW of nuclear that will be finished (Hinkley C). And 3.2 GW that might be built (Sizewell).
Alongside something like 90 GW of wind power in the pipeline that will produce 6-7x as much annual electricity as those two nuclear projects.
Properjob70 t1_j5f7izj wrote
We're building more solar & gas at pace here - a good thing but over here it'll barely keep up with the ageing out nuclear stations & the woodchip burners going offline by 2028. All those storage things are nearly as far out in adoption as SMRs and we're really going to need them as well as the planned 10GW nuclear.
Mostly, the storage will be able to last hours, maybe days, the HVDC between nations smooths things out. But when that Black Swan weather event happens & blankets most of Europe in a high pressure bubble that kills off the wind for 2 weeks... Not many answers with what we'll have around 2030.
E.g. Lithium batteries are great as instantaneous peakers & grid frequency stability for a few hours - but lower tech solutions like flow batteries are more suited to stationary applications, especially as lithium production hits a pinch point where it's really wanted for Gigafactories for electric vehicles above all else - and transport will pay more.
[deleted] t1_j5f84lu wrote
Nuclear isn't an answer for long term outages of renewables, though, unless you are proposing we just build a 100% pure nuclear grid, overbuilt by a factor of 60% or something to be able to ramp up and down to load follow.
Because in any normal model of nuclear buildout you don't have significant "spare capacity" to bring online to backstop renewable shortages; the plants are designed to run at 90-95% capacity factor. Minimal room to ramp up further.
All the happens if you have a 50% renewable 50% nuclear grid is that if half the renewable generation drops out, you drop to 75% output and the grid collapses into rolling (or long term) blackouts anyways.
Properjob70 t1_j5fa75g wrote
Govt policy here is aiming at around 20-25% nuclear by around the mid 2030s. Three off 3.2GW EPR sites (one under construction, one agreed, one contended) plus one existing AGR.
They are supporting a Rolls Royce version of the SMR in this article but there isn't a policy that includes their use in generation yet given they aren't being built and aren't approved. But I can't see a scenario where SMRs won't come in useful for net zero if we can crack it.
[deleted] t1_j5fcsml wrote
What's the third EPR? I'm only aware of Hinkley and Sizewell.
And for sizewell. While I knownits been approved, I'm still maintaining some skepticism on it actually being built, until construction is significantly underway.
SMRs will be useful for net zero if they come in as economically viable. But right now, that prospect does not seem likely.
Properjob70 t1_j5fezjk wrote
TBH I share your skepticism on Sizewell but it would be a major controversy if it didn't, especially now China has been paid off
EPRs at either Wylfa/Oldbury (April 2022 announcement) plus some as yet unrealised plans from 2021 to build a hybrid wind farm / Nuscale SMRs that is meant to be for generating hydrogen.
cry_w t1_j5bwgwj wrote
How would it not be uplifting? Nuclear power is a boon to humanity.
tiggertom66 t1_j5c2lsc wrote
If you banked your investment portfolio on fossil fuels I could see why this wouldn’t be uplifting.
Either that or you just don’t understand nuclear energy and think it’s scary.
Prinzka t1_j5bspwz wrote
What's not uplifting about this?
I guess it should've happened sooner, but no time like the present.
[deleted] t1_j5d6zok wrote
Investing money in nuclear instead of solar/wind is literally a gift to the fossil fuel industry. Solar/wind are cheaper per MWh output (4x cheaper unsubsidized than NuScales pre-construction claimed price estimate) and faster to construct, so for the same amount invested you phase out far more fossil fuels.
Plus you can't even use nuclear plants as economically viable dispatchable power: cost per MWh directly scales upwards as capacity factor drops, because basically all the costs are fixed not variable depending on how often you run it. So if at 90% capacity factor it's $120/MWh (as the Utah NuScale is, pre-sunsidy), at 60% capacity factor it's $180/MWh. Compare to wind and solar at around $30-40/MWh and it's just a bad look.
There's a reason the initial pumped-hydro energy storage plants were built in the US to allow dispatchability of nuclear power... And now that same kind of storage idea can more cheaply be applied to solar/wind. ie, nuclear doesn't actually solve the storage issue in the way that proponents like to claim, so it doesn't even have that going for it.
And nuclear plants have never shown a positive learning curve, where repeated builds decreased costs over time.
It's not even small amounts we are talking about investing, that could be seen as OK for initial demonstrator plants. The Utah project cost estimate is now over $9 billion.
The nuclear industry needs to be allowed to die due to its lack of economic competitiveness.
Plastic-Wear-3576 t1_j5fetpx wrote
Not to say you're wrong, but, https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood
[deleted] t1_j5fiip1 wrote
So on those notes I'd say:
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The cost of SMRs isn't one being presented by critics here, it's directly the cost the NuScale company is stating the project will have. They should be the ones giving the MOST optimistic.picture, not the least.
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The NuScale costs are are still (without subsidy) worse than the "solar/wind plus imposed costs" number in that article.
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Arguing against regulations on the nuclear industry, while at the same time arguing that nuclear is a great safe energy source, when the safety is largely produced by those same regulations, always feels problematic to me. I'm sure there are some regulations that can be changed, but in general... Issue.
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If we want to bring up the Japan issue, then it seems completely fair to tally in the independently estimated $800 billion total cleanup cost of Fukushima. Split across the approximately 10,000 TWh of electricity Japan has produced with nuclear plants since the first one came online in the 60s, that's an added $80/MWh of cost produced by using nuclear power, which is roundabout the entire "solar/wind plus imposed costs" number on its own. Even if you use lower estimates of $400 billion. It's still a huge cost added.
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That article somewhat disingenuously claims that wind would "use up" 17,800 acres for a plant that produces a TWh /year of electricity. That number is actually the land area that wind turbines would be spaced out across; wind installed capacity is around 5 MW/km^2 (20 kW/acre). So at 35% capacity factor, 16,000 acres of spacing needed to install the 320 MW of wind that would produce 1 TWh of electricity a year (Their numbers assume a slightly lower capacity factor which isn't a big deal). However, the direct land footprint of wind power (land actually taken up and unavailable for other use) is more like 0.75 acre / MW. So that 320 MW wind farm only "uses up" 240 acres of space, or about 2.5x what nuclear needs. Not 178x as the article tries to claim.
Solar definitely uses significant land, and their number is near enough correct there.
I'd note however than land constraints aren't actually particularly significant right now (particularly in the US context with millions of acres devoted to wasteful corn-ethanol-fuel production), so these larger land footprints should not be a primary concern at this time. If they DO become a concern, note that a significant portion of solar can be installed on rooftops or parking lots with zero new land use (possibly 1/2 the current electricity demand of the US can be covered in this way), and the land use of field-solar can be mitigated using agrivoltaics. Where mixed agriculture and solar land use ends up being more efficient than just having two different fields dedicated to each one.
SpinCharm t1_j5d9mum wrote
And just like that, Deloreans are back in vogue. Back to use. Back…. to the