Land Needs for Wind, Solar Dwarf Nuclear Plant’s Footprint

[Marlin]

This is a little political but not enough for PolySci I think. Just ammo for discussion.

 

Land Needs for Wind, Solar Dwarf Nuclear Plant’s Footprint

https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwarf-nuclear-plants#:~:text=Wind%20farms%20require%20up%20to%20360%20times%20as,require%20up%20to%2075%20times%20the%20land%20area.

They're Paneling Paradise to Put Up Solar -- a Lot

The Biden administration’s goal of supplying 40% of the nation’s energy from the sun by 2035 means covering millions of acres of forest and desert habitat with vast solar panel installations fenced off like prisons. It would require 8,800 square miles of land, or 5.6 million acres, to generate that power (leaving out small installations on buildings and the like) -- about the size of Rhode Island and Massachusetts combined.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/04/28/theyre_paneling_paradise_to_tap_into_solar_-_a_lot_829303.html

[hamsamich]

The concept of solar power has captured the imaginations of so many people and sounds wonderful, but actually turning it into infrastructure that works as well as what we have today on a large scale isn't so fun to think about and looks impossible without better storage options, let alone the amount of space it will take up.  But that has always been the case with pie in the sky types of ideas.  Nuclear power was a little like that (too cheap to meter) but ended up delivering in the long run.  Certain parties don't talk much about solar's issues but love to tout all the pros.  A few rows of shiny panels powering the world sounds so nice but no....it doesn't work like that.  What happens when we need to replace 5.6 million acres of solar?  Will "they" overlook the expense and environmental issues?  I'm guessing yes, because it sounds oh so wonderful without including those pesky problems.

[GLW]

old news, and an inconvenient truth,....

between the Wisconsin Dells and Madison on I-94 there has been a massive windfarm installation spanning approximately 50 miles, oft times on both sides of the I-94 corridor, as a setpiece example of wind power,....

ostensibly, wind power saves trees,....

except the trees which have to be cutdown to make way for the windfarm,....

50 miles of trees, a swath 200 feet wide,....

stacked as cordwood every 100 yards or so, each stack roughly equal to 1,250 cords of firewood,...

17 stacks per mile, 1,250 cords per stack, 21,250 cords of trees cut down to build a tree saving wind farm,....


but,......


I'm not done,....


to build the windfarms the construction crews need corduroy access roads so that the construction vehicles do not get bogged down in mud or snow or sand,...

those access roads are built not with the the trees felled and stacked as cordwood,....

those newly dead trees are not uniform or strong enough for the heavy duty needs,....

so, the wood ties are trucked in from a place where large, symmetrical, strong, living trees can be cut down and milled into ties of uniform size and strength ties to build a corduroy access road,...

a road which runs in ten mile lengths with two or three mile breaks along the way,...

a road twenty feet wide, 1.5 feet high,....

another 32,500 cords of trees sacrificed to save trees,...

from a windfarm which, after continuous construction efforts for better than a year, has yet to get one windmill spinning,...

and yet, has quickly and efficiently killed  53,750 cords worth of living trees,...

your subsidy dollars at work,...

putting power on the grid and saving trees,....

well, at least good intentions to put power on the grid and save trees,...

some day, somewhere, in some alternate reality,.....


 

[Marlin]

old news, and an inconvenient truth,....

Enviromentalist dreams of this is old but Bidens administration full of Chicken Little climate extremists in power is not. I did hear him the other day advocate nuclear so there is that. Would like to hear more about hydrogen (nuclear generated) from him though I don't think his wind-wind-wind and solar-solar-solar appointees will change their one track mind.