Re:All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected
by pdonis on Sunday October 31, 2021 @03:44PM
(#29059770)
> the new reality is that wind/solar are cheaper than the old baseline plants
Not if you take into account land use. A single nuclear plant can supply about a GW of electrical power. The equivalent capacity in wind and solar--even without taking into account the overprovisioning that, as you note, is required because of the lack of reliability of those sources--takes up far more land than that nuclear plant. That has a huge environmental impact that nobody takes into account when figuring the actual cost of wind and solar--though of course the same people are quite happy to hunt down every last little environmental impact of nuclear and point out how it increases the actual cost.
(The requirement for massive amounts of storage, which others have pointed out, is another environmental impact of wind and solar that nobody takes into account when figuring the actual cost.)
Not if you take into account land use. A single nuclear plant can supply about a GW of electrical power. The equivalent capacity in wind and solar--even without taking into account the overprovisioning that, as you note, is required because of the lack of reliability of those sources--takes up far more land than that nuclear plant. That has a huge environmental impact that nobody takes into account when figuring the actual cost of wind and solar--though of course the same people are quite happy to hunt down every last little environmental impact of nuclear and point out how it increases the actual cost.
(The requirement for massive amounts of storage, which others have pointed out, is another environmental impact of wind and solar that nobody takes into account when figuring the actual cost.)