This is an example of pro-nuclear ignorance. Renewables scale just fine, and are sufficiently reliable with a properly designed energy system. Their huge levelized cost advantage over nuclear means one can afford to mitigate their intermittency with overcapacity, transmission, storage (short and long term) and demand dispatch.
An average 3 MW wind turbine will generate about 6 GWh of energy per year. It's estimated that wind farms can produce around 4 MW per square kilometer, so let's go with around 8 GWh per sqkm.
In 2014 the UK used about 302 TWh of electricity (out of a total energy usage of 2249 TWh). To match the 302 TWh of electricity with these wind turbines you'd need wind farms covering 37,750 square kilometers. To cover the UK's total energy usage, you'd need an area greater than the surface area of the UK to be covered in wind farms.
These are back of the envelope calculations, but they do point out the problem rather well.
Europe in general will have trouble in a solar-powered future, though. Energy intensive industry will migrate to the cheap energy closer to the equator.
* that would mean 17.5MW/sq km. So yes, better than GP figure. No, still not usable (improvement of only factor 4.5).
EDIT: Quick calculation based on numbers here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#/medi... gives me solar utilization factor of 9.5 for Germany in 2016.
Also lots of wind parks are off shore where there’s less vegetation and hills to slow down wind.
And 2249 TWh / 8 GWh = 281,125
>Also lots of wind parks are off shore where there’s less vegetation and hills to slow down wind.
They're more expensive to construct and tear down after. They do generate more power, on average, but in these calculations with average it would only give you a ~20% advantage.
That is poetic justice, given that the Japanese government could have made sure the backup generators were stored securely. They were, as it turned out, fairly important. ;-)
Don't forget that a couple of working diesel generators providing power to keep the cooling working would have entirely avoided the disaster. Some were actually flown there in time, but the connectors were wrong and time ran out.
> This money could have been spent on 50GW of wind capacity instead.
Sure, and when the wind doesn't blow, and the storage runs out, and it's a nighttime cold event - people freeze to death. That's aside from the economic effects on industry from unreliable energy sources.
Wind costs generally aren't being calculated correctly, as reliable backup power is required for any wind that dips into the "minimum baseline" power supply, which is the essential power required for basic needs and industry.
Nuclear is overall one of the safest ways of producing energy, and is the ONLY scalable, reliable power source that doesn't emit CO2. With mass-produced, modular, reactors, it can also be the cheapest power source overall. Cheaper than wind, solar or coal.
The world desperately needs mass nuclear power from a couple of perspectives. If Global Warming is in fact a major threat, there is no choice in the matter. That is my touchstone as to whether or not the "Green" movement has gotten serious about it.