Surprisingly, this argument is wrong. I have once verified the math for replacing all of vehicles in Germany with electric vehicles. Charged with 100% solar. The required surface area for solar farms would be about a tenth of what is currently used for the ethanol additive for unleaded (used typically in personal cars, AFAIK freight and public transport run on diesel without such additive).
But yeah, according to EU studies a zero-emission grid with nuclear for base load is way cheaper than without it.
To be fair, that is a metric fuckton of land to start with. In the end there's only so many watts per square meter available and a physical limit on conversion efficiency, so you eventually have to expand outwards to to compensate for ever growing demand + land used for battery capacity (which may or may not be negligible). Meanwhile population increases also keep continuously driving up the scarcity of land.
Sounds like an interesting calculation though, do you still have any notes on that?
> Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar
Works at night, works in winter, doesn't take up half the country in surface area, has a constant output throughout the day, costs slightly less per kWh (may vary), provides waste heat that can be used for central heating, etc.
Now sure if you live on the equator where it's always sunny and happen to have a large reservoir nearby you can use for pumped hydro storage, then yes it's probably the better choice.