Solar requires the clearing of huge amounts of land, with the associated destruction of wildlife. To the best of my knowledge there has been no progress made in figuring out what to do with solar panels at the end of their working lives either and they all use lots of toxic heavy metals. Wind doesn’t leave lots of toxic waste but it does kill millions of birds and bats a year, disproportionately effecting large birds with long generation times, most of which are predators like eagles. Hydroelectric is at least less soul crushingly ugly but the environmental effects of flooding huge amounts of land are hardly positive. It’s also basically played out in developed countries. All of the suitable sites for hydroelectric power have been developed. Besides turning mountain ecosystems into lakes HEP is hideously dangerous in ways that are basically unavoidable. The failures of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams killed 170-230K people in 1971[1]
Solar, wind and hydro all entail a lot of damage to the environment, far more than is necessary from nuclear, just because they require much greater areas as they’re less energy dense.
I don’t deny that nuclear is more expensive on those grounds. I just think that relative safety is more important. So by the most expansive counts Chernobyl killed 4,000[2] people while air pollution kills about 7 million a year, every year[3]. Germany’s closing of its nuclear power plants has lead to an additional 1,000 deaths a year[4]
Nuclear is safer than any alternative source of energy, wind, solar and hydro included. If you include those costs nuclear looks amazing in comparison[6].
Put the panels on lakes, reservoirs, and at sea, and of course, roofs.
Particularly for reservoirs, panels can provide shade for fish, and theres the potential for pumped-hydro storage with tiered reservoirs - or at least substitute hydro output when the sun shines.
As for toxic metals in solar panels, they're locked away in the panel. Rather like vitrification for nuclear waste encapsulation. Just make some solar-panel-only landfills, which will become future toxic-heavy-metal mines - this stuff all came out of the ground, it can temporarily go back.
Wind power kills fewer birds per unit energy than coal, and it kills orders of magnitude fewer birds than domestic cats, which we're apparently fine with.
Plus, the big growth in wind power will probably be offshore: there's more wind and fewer NIMBYs there. There is also a lower density of birds.
Wind turbines kill animals cats don’t. You think a cat is going to kill a golden eagle, a vulture or a stork? Different animals have very different generation times and life cycles. Wind power kills fewer animals per KWH than coal but it kills different ones and that matters.
> Fatalities at wind turbines may threaten population viability of a migratory bat
> Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities. However, population-level impacts are unknown as we lack basic demographic information about these species. We investigated whether fatalities at wind turbines could impact population viability of migratory bats, focusing on the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), the species most frequently killed by turbines in North America. Using expert elicitation and population projection models, we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction. For example, the hoary bat population could decline by as much as 90% in the next 50 years if the initial population size is near 2.5 million bats and annual population growth rate is similar to rates estimated for other bat species (λ = 1.01). Our results suggest that wind energy development may pose a substantial threat to migratory bats in North America. If viable populations are to be sustained, conservation measures to reduce mortality from turbine collisions likely need to be initiated soon. Our findings inform policy decisions regarding preventing or mitigating impacts of energy infrastructure development on wildlife.
Solar, wind and hydro all entail a lot of damage to the environment, far more than is necessary from nuclear, just because they require much greater areas as they’re less energy dense.
I don’t deny that nuclear is more expensive on those grounds. I just think that relative safety is more important. So by the most expansive counts Chernobyl killed 4,000[2] people while air pollution kills about 7 million a year, every year[3]. Germany’s closing of its nuclear power plants has lead to an additional 1,000 deaths a year[4]
Nuclear is safer than any alternative source of energy, wind, solar and hydro included. If you include those costs nuclear looks amazing in comparison[6].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
[2]https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...
[3]https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollu...
[4]https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/german-nucl...
[5]http://papers.nber.org/tmp/26395-w26598.pdf
[6]https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...