But I am not a fan of giant fields of solar panels. Or worse, taking arable land and covering it with solar panels.
Why are there any negatives here? A field of solar panels is far more valuable than a field growing corn to feed to cows.
Nuclear (smallest geographic footprint
This doesn't matter, there is no shortage of land. People living in high rises in the center of big cities think there is, but once someone looks at a map they see how much land is actually out there.
smallest overall environmental impact
According to what metric? You can't put a nuclear plant anywhere, you have to be able to cool it.
there are always environmental impacts to land when we deprive it of sunlight, which is why picking the low hanging fruit of covering man-made structures with panels would be preferable over large fields
Since there are environmental impacts of land use, it seems we should maximize the return from each unit of land, to minimize the impact per unit of benefit.
Now, compare the value returned by an acre growing feed grain, to an acre collecting solar energy via PV. The latter has enormously higher return.
The argument you are making is not an argument against freestanding PV, it's an argument against agriculture. And yet, it is selectively applied to PV.
Why are there any negatives here? A field of solar panels is far more valuable than a field growing corn to feed to cows.
Nuclear (smallest geographic footprint
This doesn't matter, there is no shortage of land. People living in high rises in the center of big cities think there is, but once someone looks at a map they see how much land is actually out there.
smallest overall environmental impact
According to what metric? You can't put a nuclear plant anywhere, you have to be able to cool it.