This is Grohnde #nuclear power plant. In February 2021 it produced 400 TWh low-carbon electricity since it started in 1984, with no accidents or leaks.
The plant occupies 0.4 km2 and is surrounded by farm fields.
Just for comparison, to replace its nameplate capacity of 1430 MW you would need 286 wind turbines 5 MW each, occupying 476 km2 in total. That's around the area shown on this screenshot, all filled with wind turbines.
But then, that's *nameplate* only, so 100%. In reality, on-shore wind has ~20% capacity factor, so the area needs to be increased 5x to *actually* get the same amount of energy (kWh).
2383 km2 of wind turbines to replace a single 1430 MW nuclear power plant.
@kravietz To what extent is surface area a limiting factor, vs the initial costs, operating and maintenance, etc.
Even that big number is only 0.002% of the land.
Mother nature brings fuel to the wind turbines for free, can't say the same about the uranium mining, enrichment, transportation, and other support infrastructure needed everytime the power plant gets refueled.
> fuel to the wind turbines for free
This is why we use lifecycle surface power density to estimate land surface use per W of power delivered, which includes mining, manufacturing, operations and decommissioning.
> France's fuel rods have a lot of embodied energy
That's why we calculate greenhouse gas emissions in lifecycle
@kravietz If this is anything like what i've seen before they would be described as "estimates" not "calculations".
If its the IPCC report, tracing the refernce of the reference used for those numbers, its a self-reported estimate of embodied co2 by the nuclear plants themselves.
Calculating co2 is nearly impossible without acquiring trade secrets and proprietary data across industries. Cost is used as a proxy but is skewed by subsidy - eg geopoltiical value of a nation being a nuclearpower
@kravietz Before you can use this metric, establish why this metric is even a valid one for comparison.
WHere is the report saying "Land use is the most critical limiting factor in electricity generation. M^2 / watt should be the primary metric in evaluating electricity generation technologies" ?
That's basically the first thing that comes up in DuckDuckGo when you search for "surface power density" and I've linked the publication like 100x of times already.
Just in case:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518305512
@kravietz So that report doesn't take into account the intensivity of what the land is used for.
Digging 1 hectare into a pit mine is different than 1 hectare of selectively logged forest for biomass, or as that very report pointed out using 1 hectare of renewables shared with other uses, like grazing land or rooftops.
I don't see any implication that the rest of industry is ignoring these costs. Only in particular cases like a land shortage would this metric by additoinally weighted
Just a few examples from UK, France, German, Norway
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/08/25/wind-turbine-project-draws-protests-in-the-dordogne/
https://earther.gizmodo.com/anti-wind-farm-activism-is-sweeping-europe-and-the-us-c-1829627812
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-windfarm-politics-idUSKBN1WA177
@mlg LOL haven't noticed it but it's a really good catch 😂
@kravietz I just spent some time looking at a map and population density numbers. The US is so different, a turbine or solar panel bothering a rich person's view is the exception rather than the norm. in the US there are 1000s of acres of extremely low population density low value land, often already with nearby transmission infrastructure because power generation is already in the "undesirable" area.
The more limiting factor is cost not space but that doesn't seem to be the case in the UK.
I agree, geography in US is more favorable than UK and also most of EU. Not only due to population density but also latitude which gives slightly better capacity factor for PV - in UK they operate at rather miserable ~13%, a few percentage points more in central Europe.
@kravietz A screenshot of a chart or graph doesn't really mean much without an attached report.
It's not that the data is false, but the report authors may be presenting the data for different purposes or with different assumptions than this argument.
For example, if you're talking about smokestack emissions in operation, nuclear is low carbon. If you're talking about planet-wide systems thinking, or energetics, France's fuel rods have a lot of embodied energy from that was consumed in Canada