I’m also posting it because of Fukushima. The ancient seaside nuclear power station that was knocked out by a tsunami in 2011. Critics of nuclear power point to it as an example of its dangers. When you respond that only one person was killed, and that was by a non-nuclear explosion — following a once in a millennium earth quake — they may point to the land surrounding Fukushima that had to be evacuated. That’s a huge area of land. Yes… but. Most was evacuated because of the ravages of the tsunami, not the radiation leakage, which in the event was minimal. And we recall that 50,000 people were killed by the tidal wave, not the power station damage. In sum, we nuclear folk might say, what the Fukushima accident reveals is not the danger of nuclear power but its safety! An old technology reactor, right by the sea, gets hammered by 60-foot waves never before experienced, which breached the highest tsunami walls, and all tha pt happened was a Vapor explosion which killed one person. Pretty good extreme test! More recently built nuclear stations are even safer, if not invulnerable to an equivalent natural event.
The above photo in today’s South China Morning Post gives me another angle.
Let’s assume that instead of a nuclear power station in Fukushima, Japan had decided to use solar instead to generate the same amount of electricity, in the same location. The nuclear power station capacity was 3 Gw. That’s 15 times the size of the above array, which is 202 Mw. Look at the picture, scale given by the men at the bottom. Imagine fifteen times the size of that array, marching into the distance. It comes to an area greater than the land evacuated post tsunami. Which became reusable five years ago, while the land for the solar is constantly in use.
Not that I’m against Solar. I’m not. We have a solar array in our rooftop here in Hong Kong. We nuclear folks are “Solar, Wind and Nuclear”. The opposition are “Solar and Wind only”. Not because of a valid scientific objection. But because of fear.
