No, they own/control more land, this is specifically the amount used by the nuclear power plant.
“It occupies 9,818 acres (39.73 km2) of the total 11,800 acres (4,800 ha) controlled by the owner.”
The fenced off area patrolled by armed guards isn’t freely available for other uses. Believe me if they could sell off 5,000 acres to build a subdivision the company would happily pocket that money but no the land really is being used.
is not the same as "it requires" ...
One might ask why a 1977 nuclear plant that produces relatively low power has such a large security perimeter ... that is orthogonal to power production.
In this case walls cost more money than an empty field, both give you time to shoot someone trying to cross them and they went with the cheapest option. Thus the land is in use and cannot be used for a city park or whatnot.
Why is that specific plant so far outside the norm and above the median for others?
Why do other nuclear power generation plants 'require' so much less land?
What makes Wolf so atypical?
Why do you insist on using it as a "typical" case when it clearly isn't?
Tell us more about weasel arguments.
Never said typical it’s literally the second on a list. It’s one of the few locations I’ve seen over 4,000 acres so it’s not typical, though presumably I didn’t randomly find the worst example and most didn’t include the area.
Edit: 12,000 acres + a 7,000-acre reservoir, which eliminates the need for cooling towers though it’s got 2 reactors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Texas_Nuclear_Generating... if you include the water behind the dam I think it’s 19,000 acres generating 2.56 net GW, exclude the water and that goes up but presumably dams also get much more land efficient.
Poking around, you can find various justifications for sites needing more or less land. Palo Verde needs a 85-acre and a 45 acre artificial ponds because of its location in a desert. Anything located near a large body of water gets that for ‘free’ and can also make use of the water as part of its security zone a double win, though not quite as much as a wind farms in the ocean. Add in multiple reactors on one location and you can really jump up the density.
Poking around at the other end there’s much smaller reactors on big sites. China has one 200MW reactor on a site with multiple planned future reactors... Which is the thing, the real world is messy you can’t just think in terms of typical or hypothetical but what’s actually used. And of course each of these sites generated zero power for years under construction and will also generate zero power for years or even decades while being decommissioned/decontaminated.
Much as you yourself have down above where the amount of land owned by a company surrounding a nuclear plant is conflated to be the amount of land required by a nuclear plant.
To be clear, I picture a hybrid energy future and can easily link to pictures of sheep grazing under solar panels - I can also link to pictures of large scale solar farms that directly place solar panels on the ground, and others that elevate the panels but have no dual use of the land.
All in all area used is a bit of a side show.