{"id":261888,"date":"2023-06-13T11:36:45","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T09:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261888"},"modified":"2023-06-13T11:36:48","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T09:36:48","slug":"safe-reliable-nuclear-power-provides-cleanest-greenest-energy-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261888","title":{"rendered":"Safe & Reliable Nuclear Power Provides Cleanest, Greenest Energy\u00a0Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From STOP THESE THINGS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wind and solar generation spreads like cancer. Dilute and diffuse, intermittent and unreliable the wind and solar generators\u2019 demand for land is insatiable. And because every single MW of wind or solar generation capacity has to be backed up by another MW of dispatchable power generation (coal, gas, diesel or hydro) to accommodate sunset and calm weather, the conventional generators will continue to occupy the space they always have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us to nuclear. None of what appears in the paragraph above applies to nuclear power generation. Concentrated, persistent and reliable, nuclear power doesn\u2019t need batteries and it doesn\u2019t need backup. Moreover, it doesn\u2019t need an endless acres of land, as Ronald Bailey explains below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Study: Nuclear Power Is Humanity\u2019s Greenest Energy Option<\/strong>
Reason
Ronald Bailey
10 May 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany idiotically shut down<\/a> its last three nuclear power plants last month. Until 2011, the country obtained one-quarter of its electricity from 17 nuclear power plants<\/a>. As a December 2022 study in Scientific Reports<\/em><\/a> shows, turning off this carbon-free energy source is incredibly short-sighted for combatting climate change and protecting natural landscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European researchers behind the new study do an in-depth analysis of how much land and sea area it would take to implement the Net Zero by 2050<\/em><\/a> roadmap devised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021. The IEA outlines an energy transition trajectory to cut global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels to zero by 2050. The Net Zero goal is to keep the increase of global average temperature below the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the late 19th-century baseline. \u201eThis calls for nothing less than a complete transformation of how we produce, transport and consume energy,\u201c notes the IEA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Scientific Reports<\/em> study finds that implementing the IEA\u2019s roadmap requires that much of the world\u2019s agricultural and wild lands be sacrificed to produce energy. Biofuels, both liquid and solid, are especially egregious destroyers of the landscape. On the other hand, the energy source that spares the most land is nuclear power. In addition, electricity produced by fission reactors is not intermittent the way that vastly more land-hungry solar and wind power are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s go to the figures. The European researchers illustrated the vast differences in the amount of energy that can be produced per unit of land by calculating what percentage of land would be needed to meet 100 percent of emissions-free primary energy demand in 2050. Primary energy refers to raw fuels before they have been converted into other forms of energy like electricity, heat, or transport fuels. They calculate that nuclear power generation could supply all the energy demand in 2050 while occupying just 0.016 percent of the world\u2019s land area. On the other hand, using biomass to generate the same amount of energy would take up more than 96 percent of the world\u2019s land area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to the IEA\u2019s Net Zero roadmap, the team calculates that the amount of land occupied by the stunted trajectory of nuclear power plants in the IEA scenario will expand from 403 square kilometers (156 square miles)today to 820 square km (317 square miles) in 2050. The area devoted to growing biomass for energy production (liquid and solid fuels) expands from 653,000 square km (252,000 square miles) to 2,981,000 square km (1,151,000 square miles). It is worth noting that 208,000 square km (80,300 square miles) is now annually plowed up<\/a> for biofuel production<\/a> in the U.S. The amount of land covered by onshore wind turbines would rise from 79,000 square km (30,500 square miles) to 995,000 square km (384,000 square miles), and the area covered by solar photovoltaic would increase from 9,400 square km (3,630 square miles) to 270,000 square km (104,000 square miles).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201eA sixfold increase will occur in the spatial extent of power generation, from approximately 0.5% of land areas used for electric generation in 2020 to nearly 3.0% of land areas in 2050 (i.e., 430 million hectares of land),\u201c report the researchers. \u201eThe world will be electrified by requiring an area roughly equal to the entire European Union (EU), which is one and a half times the size of India. The major contributor to increasing land use will be related to power generation from biomass.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported earlier this week, wind and solar projects occupying massive amounts of land increasingly get NIMBY pushback<\/a> from disgruntled neighbors. Energy analyst Robert Bryce, author of A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations<\/em> (2020), has compiled a database showing that nearly 500 renewable energy projects<\/a> have been rejected or restricted over the past decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European researchers calculated that nuclear power plants sited on just 20,800 square km (8,000 square miles) of land could supply all of the carbon-free electricity demanded in 2050. That\u2019s less land than is occupied by the state of Vermont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over at Tech Xplore<\/em><\/a>, study co-author and energy conversion researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology Jonas Kristiansen N\u00f8land points out that \u201ethe spatial extent of nuclear power is 99.7% less than onshore wind power\u2014in other words, 350 times less use of land area.\u201c He adds, \u201eAn energy transition based on nuclear power alone would save 99.75% of environmental encroachments in 2050. We could even remove most of the current environmental footprint we have already caused.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nuclear power massively spares land for nature while producing 24-7 emissions-free electricity. That\u2019s why closing down 17 perfectly good nuclear power plants is environmentally stupid.
Reason<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wind and solar generation spreads like cancer. Dilute and diffuse, intermittent and unreliable the wind and solar generators\u2019 demand for land is insatiable. And because every single MW of wind or solar generation capacity has to be backed up by another MW of dispatchable power generation (coal, gas, diesel or hydro) to accommodate sunset and calm weather, the conventional generators will continue to occupy the space they always have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":261894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818206,691818181,691818728],"class_list":{"0":"post-261888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-nuclear-power","9":"tag-renewable-energy","10":"tag-wind-and-solar","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/00NPP.jpeg?fit=1460%2C911&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1680","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":274731,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=274731","url_meta":{"origin":261888,"position":0},"title":"Wind Output Plaguing Texas (ERCOT weathers on)","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/21\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Wind and solar are not reliable enough to maintain grid stability and therefore require dispatchable power sources such as coal, nuclear, and natural gas-powered generation to stabilize the grid. 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The wind and solar cancer that saw South Australia suffer the\u00a0country\u2019s only statewide blackout\u00a0and end up suffering\u00a0the world\u2019s highest power prices, bar none, quickly spread and has now taken hold across the entire\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-25-111416.png?fit=576%2C860&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-25-111416.png?fit=576%2C860&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/0Screenshot-2022-06-25-111416.png?fit=576%2C860&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":264332,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=264332","url_meta":{"origin":261888,"position":2},"title":"Wind Fails Texas Again","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"06\/28\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"One last thing. 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