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Re:Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy by slothtrop on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @09:19AM (#30162699)
> solar and wind are now beating nuclear and projected to continue to do so

Projected is the operative word.

One useful concept that was introduced a decade ago is a "cubic mile of oil", or CMO. To yield the equivalent power, one would need to produce 250,000 roof-top solar systems a day for 50 years, or 1200 turbines a week for 50 years, or 1 nuclear power plant a week for 50 years. Innovation is still desperately needed here. Nuclear has been unfairly sluggish in this department.

Re:Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy by StillBored on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @10:52AM (#30164113)
One nuke plant a week for 50 years sounds like a lot, but they aren't really that complex, and 52 a year isn't really that many construction projects worldwide. Your talking 2600 plants.

If every mid sized+ city in the world started building one today, and it took 5 years to construct, and they started a new one every other year (so they were being built in parallel). The problem would be solved within a decade.

A year or so ago, I looked at the cost of South Texas Project in Texas, and how much power it generates and figured out that for roughly a single year's state budget one could build 10x those plants, which would remove all natural gas, and coal electric production in the state. Do it a second time, and there would be enough to actually move a significant part of the cars to electric too.

Re:Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy by Aeolun on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @09:42AM (#30163043)
Or, to give a counterexample.

You would need ~1.4 million barrels of oil per day for 50 years.

Re:Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy by slothtrop on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @10:05AM (#30163395)
Guess what? - https://www.worldometers.info/oil/

edit: it is still weird to see Venezuela at the top spot and just how badly they squandered it