I assume 300W is actually 300MW. If that's correct, solar panels are still much more convenient, also considering that power plant will require many acres of land for the building, pipes, etc. Solar panels have zero waste too. What am I missing?
We're also talking Canada, which isn't the best for consistent sunlight.
Nuclear plants also need decommissioning of course. Seems to be expensive due to all the radioactive material.
Canada has plenty of sun. Most of the populated parts are at the same latitude as central Europe. They have hydro and wind too. And not a very large population.
Also, latitude is irrelevant. If central Europe got as much snow as Canada they'd probably have far less solar panels.
Nobody talks about recycling coal. Not a thing. You burn it, it's gone and added to our atmosphere. Burning the equivalent in coal for even a single solar panel's life time production in energy, is probably quite a lot. Latitude is very relevant. Germans put lots of solar on their roofs for the same reason that that is probably a popular thing in Canada. Because they are at the same latitude.
Toronto is at 44 degrees latitude. Berlin is further North at 52 degrees latitude. Madrid would be 40 degrees latitude. Most of the US is below 49 degrees latitude. Most of Canadian populated areas get more than enough sunlight.
You might have a point with northern Canada or Alaska. Though those too get awesome amounts of light in the summer, which is why you might find people investing in solar there too. Just lots of economic benefits even if they work less well in the winter (or not at all in the polar circle). As it is, it makes plenty of sense for Germans to put solar on their roofs.
They are being warehoused against the time that they may be sold.
Until night hits. Then it turns out you need a ton more solar panels to overproduce in the day to store energy in your expensive energy storage system. Which is inconvenient.
Solar aligns very well with daily energy demands, and storage helps smooth it out. In the end we will have a massive energy surplus and finding ways to use that extra energy will be big business.
At higher latitudes, the sun doesn't shine nearly as long, and the days are often overcast for weeks on end. Your storage needs to smooth over weeks, not hours!
The cost of that storage, and the solar array, would be much higher than the nuclear plant.
Optimally, you build an energy mix for the worst day of the year, not storing *electrical energy for the long term (other types like heat/pimped hydro may make sense at those timescales)
Saskatchewanian here! Your use of the word "energy" here is critical. We use a ton of _energy_ non-stop through the winter. Looking through the last year worth of statements, my wife and I used 1,794 m^2 of natural gas in Feb 2022, and 59 m^2 of natural gas in June 2022. Conversely, we seem to average about 700-800 kWh of electricity every month, but last August we used 1,456 kWh and the most recent bill had 1,159 kWh (electric air conditioning).
We use a crap load of natural gas to heat our homes throughout the winter, and that basically drops to nil during the summer (only the hot water heater). Electricity varies less, but there are huge summer spikes.
What nuclear does, from my PoV, is give us not only a road out of burning coal (ick) for our base load electricity, but also makes electric-heat-conversion a more viable proposal. While the temperatures do get cold enough sometimes that a heat pump/HRV loses its effectiveness, getting to a point where we have a COP of 3-4 using the heat pump and backing it up with resistive heating is a huge win if the electricity powering those devices isn't coming from a coal-fired plant.
Typically the coldest days are near peak darkness with clear skies and no wind.
They sit still for 22-23 hours per day allowing making them perfect as long as we have chargers wherever you park your car. Which should be an easy mandate to enforce.
You also need to modify (heavily) the electricity distribution lines and infrastructure to add the capacity to actually power such a large number of chargers.
Well, people don't but heating does. It is quite popular to produce heat for floor heating during the night (because there are tariffs where night energy is cheaper) and disable it at (part)day - floor heating has large inertia and keeps the house (or at least feet) warm for longer.
Solar has this issue, that a lot of people mount them and the highest amount of electricity produced is during the same period of time and during summer, where you have the most production you don't need heating - some use air conditioning, but it is not necessary in cooler parts of the world (and it uses less energy than heating).
Edit: I wonder why you had to copy/paste only part part of the line. They literally address this in the next word:
> ...provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land needed was free and the sun shone steadily
Oh, and bonus, wildfire smoke blotting out the sun regularly in the summers now!
Seems sensible to pick a power source that doesn't depend on the sun with that many variables.
Even during overcast or rainy days, you'd be surprised how much sun energy still comes through.
Storage cost.