I would have no problem with building one outside our city. And frankly compared the land clearing one would need for solar/thermal or the blight of enormous windmills, I’d prefer it. What you may be really asking is whether people are comfortable with the risk of turning into the next Chernobyl. I feel that risk is quite low, especially for new builds.
Aesthetically, I'd offer a counterpoint that incredibly high aspect ratio white carbon wings are quite beautiful, relative to monolithic concrete blocks. They are also approachable in the landscape (I love mountain biking beneath them).
I agree with your point that nimbyism shouldn't be a relevant factor in new build decisions though. The real issue is not whether you would want to live next to a new nuclear reactor, but whether you would want to live next to one in the process of being decommissioned at minimum cost contracts (or pay for the same, which is not being factored in to operating expenses). Or, live next to one of the wholly inadequate storage facilities for the hottest waste which we still have little idea what to do with.
I cannot understand how anyone would prefer an enormous grey concrete building with a large exclusion zone and large cooling towers blocking the skyline, to otherwise untouched natural or agricultural landscape dotted with wind turbines.
Wind turbines allow you to enjoy more of the countryside because they take up very little space (you can walk around them). Furthermore, they seem to be quieter: https://youtu.be/zKgN2G9d0dchttps://youtu.be/hEMImNj_c44
When you compare the energy densities & land required there is nothing at all enormous about a nuclear plant. It is by far the most space efficient energy source we have (especially once you factor in the upstream footprint of mining & shipping ops)
That depends on how you measure land use; are you counting the amount of space that becomes otherwise unusable, i.e. the relatively small area occupied by the towers, or the entire area of the fields in which the wind turbines are placed? (which can still be used for other things like agriculture).
Personally I think wind turbines look quite majestic, and I like to see them when I go for a drive in the countryside.
This isn't directly related to the original question of living next to a nuclear power plant vs a wind farm, but as you mentioned, nuclear power stations require large mining operations to supply them with uranium (you have to mine a lot of land for a small amount of uranium), whereas wind turbines do not.
And finally, wind turbines can be erected in the sea where they don't displace any land at all.
You don’t need to mine much land to get very large amounts of uranium - they tend to be underground mines, and produce a truly staggering amount of energy by mass mined. Tailings can be problematic - but even the largest uranium mines have had tiny tailings piles compared to even small wind farm footprints.
That link doesn't mention anything about the amount of land required to mine the copper needed for wind turbines.
It must be far less than is needed for mining the uranium needed to generate the same power. Think about it; the copper required for the wind turbines is a fixed one-off cost that lasts the lifetime of the turbine, and can be recycled. Nuclear reactors need a continual supply of uranium (about 27 tonnes per year for a 1GWe reactor: http://bit.ly/3voR0II).
Furthermore copper concentrations are typically around 100 times higher than uranium concentrations, which means you need far more uranium ore than copper ore to produce the same weight of metal. Copper has been extracted with relative ease for thousands of years.
And then of course, there's all the metals and concrete that are needed to build the nuclear power station.
> It must be far less than is needed for mining the uranium needed to generate the same power. Think about it; the copper required for the wind turbines is a fixed one-off cost that lasts the lifetime of the turbine, and can be recycled. Nuclear reactors need a continual supply of uranium (about 27 tonnes per year for a 1GWe reactor: http://bit.ly/3voR0II).
A single wind turbine can contain 3.6 tons of copper[1], so using your source for uranium used by a nuclear power plant in one year. Just seven and a half wind turbines use as much copper as a nuclear power plant uses uranium in one year.
If you replaced the ~100GW of nuclear power capacity in the United States you would need about 360,000 tons of copper. It would take the current US nuclear fleet ~133 years to use the equivalent amount of uranium. The above also assumes that wind turbines runs at 100% capacity which we all know they won't. So your going to need an additional 2 - 4 times more turbines and copper to replace the current US nuclear fleet.
> Furthermore copper concentrations are typically around 100 times higher than uranium concentrations, which means you need far more uranium ore than copper ore to produce the same weight of metal. Copper has been extracted with relative ease for thousands of years.
Also copper concentrations in typical copper ore is not 100 time greater than uranium concentrations. Copper concentrations are about 0.6%[2] and uranium is 0.1% - 0.2%[3].
> Also copper concentrations in typical copper ore is not 100 time greater than uranium concentrations. Copper concentrations are about 0.6%[2] and uranium is 0.1% - 0.2%
Sorry, your right, 100x is too high, that was a rough guess. It should be more like 30-60 times higher when compared with enriched uranium (which is what a nuclear power plant uses); it takes 10 tonnes of natural uranium to produce 1 tonne of enriched uranium [1].
So 100GWe of nuclear power capacity uses around 100x25 = 2500 tonnes of enriched uranium per year. The same amount of digging would likely produce between 2500x30-2500x60 = 75,000-150,000 tonnes of copper, lets take the middle value: 112,500
So in 3.2 (360,000/112,500) years the 100GWe of nuclear power capacity has produced the same amount of digging required to produce 360,000 tonnes of copper. Multiply that by 3 to take account of wind turbine inefficiencies and that takes it to 9.6 years.
Current wind turbines last around 20 years, so even if we assume they only use newly mined copper (not recycled), and we ignore all the metals and other materials used to build the nuclear power stations, then the nuclear power stations are still going to require about twice as much earth dug up for mining.
Large turbine farms are an eyesore, IMO, that dominate entire landscapes. Visually destroying the countryside is probably better than emitting 30 billion tons of CO2 each year, though. But yeah, I think a nuclear plant (as I have seen them) would be preferable, visually, to the enormous turbine farm needed to produce an equivalent amount of power. How much would that be? Avg nuclear plant generates 1GW in the US. Average turbine generates 1.67 MW. So about 600 turbines at about an acre a piece. So a square mile of turbines.
I have driven passed it many, many times. I can tell you that the visual impact is minimal, and the area around it is "untouched natural or agricultural landscape". Blocking the skyline? How tall do you think the cooling towers are? Wind farms have a much larger visual impact.
:) fair play to you. At least the real estate prices will be good.
I won't go for low risk when it comes to nuclear and not let my family grow up next to it. Only no risk would be acceptable to me when it comes to nuclear, quite some tail risk in this case.
Let’s keep in mind that not doing nuclear is subjecting you and your family (and subsequent generations) to the long term issue of ever-increasing CO2 output. While waiting for workable battery tech at 3% avg y/y improvement - which means a looong wait for truly reliable at-scale FF displacement. The promise of renewables is great, but planning for a battery miracle in the short term is no plan at all. IF we appropriately monetize the cost of going deeper into fossil fuels every day (which is what the globe is doing right now, still), I think the risk of nuclear is put in a better context. So it seems to me we’re talking about the global risks of continuing on current track or localized risk of nuclear plant accident. Out of 440 operable on-grid plants, how many accidents have you heard of that would have impacted you or your family?
I don’t think “no-risk” exists for any power gen tech, fwiw. There are always going to be trade-offs.
Do people even read the ariticles they respond to?
For interviewee points to the fact that new nuclear is significantly more expensive than solar and wind. In fact, even existing nuclear’s base running costs are higher. And here’s the kicker. Solar/wind + existing battery tech is also cheaper than nuclear. And we don’t even need battery until solar/wind generation has increased by an order of magnitude.
So $1 spent on nuclear will do a lot less to reduce CO2 than $1 spent on wind/solar. Further, that $1 spent on nuclear will still take up to a decade to start helping reduce CO2, while the solar/wind options will likely be active within a year or so.
The article may be wrong about all these facts, but in a response to it one needs to at least show why they are wrong instead of pretending the claims were never made.
Plus, what never gets factored into this, is a sane discussion about industrial uses. Switching off industrial users in extreme events (light winds/cloudy for multiple weeks) has a cost, but that could also be factored in to the costs of relative power strategies.
We already have these kind of contracts — perhaps we should be more aggressive in pursuing that?
There is no storage solution for this. How do you store daily power needs of a large metro area x 3 days? Batteries? Thermal? The capacity isn't there today for a viable installation. Maybe in rural areas that can give up a ton of land mass for a relatively low population.
