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Comment by stuff4ben | Hacker News Reader

Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems.

Plus, from the article: "...to build enough wind turbines and solar panels to supply at least half the electricity needed for global consumption 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.'"

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/if-you-want-renewable-en...

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> Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems.

I take no issue with people such as yourself advocating for nuclear power, but this particular argument is nonsense. You could generate all the energy used over a year in the US (100 quads or so) on roughly the amount of land that is currently used to produce corn for ethanol. Yeah, that's a lot of solar panels, and it may not be the way to get all our energy, but running out of land is NOT the issue.

No we won't.

There are plenty of studies on the topic. Those areas are there and already identified. Wind alone would just double to manage the Energiewende by 2050: https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/flaechenve...

I don't get your other argument.

If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors, you can create an industry at home. Create massive amounts of jobs and improve on the technology.

It's already happening and those improvements are way faster than everything we've seen with nuclear in the recent decades.

> If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors

--- start quote ---

Ernst & Young (EY) has found that an average power and utility megaproject is delivered 35% over budget and two years behind schedule

Of the megaprojects surveyed, 64% were delayed and 57% were over budge. Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,

--- end quote ---

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projec...

"Data shows the avg. 50MW PV construction project delays cost $2M. The average solar construction project is delayed by about 20% with the consequences hovering around $2M in costs."

https://percepto.co/solar-construction-delays-budget-overrun...

> nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,

Ahem.

Let me fix that quote for you:

"Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,".

ALL OF THEM. Not just nuclear.

You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard.

Nuclear is… just another mega project, just like the rest.

You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense when it's everything including your darling.

> You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard.

Do not ascribe words to me that I didn't say or imply

> You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense

I literally said nothing of the kind

Even ignoring all those words you used meaning to me what I said they mean (and hence unavoidably "implying" even if you now wish to say you were misunderstood, which is totally a thing I get and have experienced in reverse):

You know we can see your comments, right?

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=illiarian

And you've got a… distinct… writing style, so I recognised you from a few days ago before seeing your user name:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35618522

> You know we can see your comments, right?

Yes, I do.

> And you've got a… distinct… writing style

Ad hominem is not as good an argument as you think it is.

So. This is what I actually wrote, and not what you pretend I wrote.

The original statement was this: "If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors"

To which I replied: "Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average"

Which means only one thing: renewable projects are just as prone to time and buget overruns as nuclear. That is it.

How you imagined what you think I wrote, I cannot even begin to comprehend.

This:

> Ad hominem is not as good an argument as you think it is.

Makes this:

> is totally a thing I get and have experienced in reverse

A case in point.

I'm not even going to bother now with the rest; the abrasiveness you approach this topic with is uninteresting to me, and does not help me learn new things.

That's also not an ad hominem, by the way; it's a critique, sure, but not even intended as a response to the attempted argument.

So you chose to ignore his points re: the required fossil fuel inputs to create these clean renewable sources?

The world burns that much coal — which is apparently enough to make enough renewables for 50% of global electricity needs — every three months, and we don't, not even accidentally, set fire to wind turbines or solar cells at anything like that rate.

> Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables.

No, you won't.

> 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.'

Fantastic! The world burns that much coal every three months, so after 6 months we could close all the mines and coal power plants, and thereafter all the future PV will be made by renewable powered grids.

Except you won't have enough solar and wind alone to generate the needs of the world's power demands. I don't get why some people like yourself are so against nuclear when combined with solar and wind its the best of both worlds? We're all in agreement that coal needs to go, but switching to just solar and wind is not the sole answer and never will be. You will run out of land at some point. No one wants to look at fields of spinning turbines and solar panel arrays when you can get the same effect in a much smaller footprint.

I'm relatively positive about nuclear power: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659464

Thing is, the best time to build it was the 60s. Now? There's a few cases where I think it's still the best option — ignoring politics, it would be great for shipping, and I'd be really happy if that somehow becomes a standard outside the military — but for most cases, it's just the most expensive solution to greenhouse gases, or joint-worst if you use LiIon as the storage solution.

And if you do want to ignore the political dimension, for example but not limited to the way that Israel will bomb any Iranian reactor just in case the latter might be weaponised, then to compare like-for-like you have to ask the same about a global HVDC grid — my fantasy-football solution, in that it's technically possible but still extremely unlikely.

> You will run out of land at some point

Ah, no. Not at present power use per person. Even England, which is not at all well-placed for solar, has enough land to be (electrically) powered by solar alone. Remember, civil infrastructure — buildings, rail lines, car parks, etc. — already has a huge footprint and PV can fit on almost any roof and between almost any gap.

(Also the wind can be offshore, apparently that's great for people who don't like the look of them on hilltops, less so for radar).

> Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables.

I'm from Northern Germany where all the wind turbines are and you are wrong

> Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables.

Ramping up from 40% to 100% increases land use by orders of magnitude? Did I miss something?

nope. you didn't miss anything.

we'd already be there if Bavaria and similar states hadn't blocked building wind farms in Bavaria, because of the bad looks, or myth busted infrasound, or myth busted bird mass extinctions, or very real existential angst of Munich's Siemens...

Isn't Siemens in the wind power business as well?

nuclear transforms mining rights into money, so does coal or oil or gas.

wind transforms the decentralized location of the plant into energy, so does solar. wind and solar transfer the heart of the profits from mining to decentralized, local communities.

in that context Siemens is publicly traded, and does what the board wants it to do. they had fig leave wind investments.

Germany has divested from solar production, battery production and wind plant production. _di_-vested.

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