Nuclear power: A dream that failed

[bananas]

18. It means your math is wrong - the area needed is TINY.

You wrote:

I am going to assume that the earth's surface gets 100 W for 12 hours a day. This is a pretty rough estimate but it is within an order of magnitude. This means that each square meter gets 12 kWh per day.

69.9 TWh / (1200 kWh/m^2) = 58.25 billion m^2 = 58,250 square km

It should be:

I am going to assume that the earth's surface gets 1000 W for 12 hours a day. This is a pretty rough estimate but it is within an order of magnitude. This means that each square meter gets 12 kWh per day.

69.9 TWh / (12 kWh/m^2) = 5.825 billion m^2 = 5,825 square km

I haven't bothered checking the rest of your numbers, it's a pain in the ass correcting bad math on this forum, I've wasted enough time in the past doing that, especially when these calculations have been done over and over by many people, using varying assumptions, and the results - when they get their math right - is always the same: the area needed is TINY compared to other land uses - for example growing food.

Here's one example, you can look at the original for details of his calculations:

http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

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According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometers of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years.

There are 1.2 million square kilometers of farmland in China. This is 2 1/2 times the area of solar farm required to power the world in 2030.

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