> Off the top of my head i think a wind farm is also more energy dense than a nuclear power plant, given all the space required around it.
I checked some facts; 2W / m^2 for wind[0], 1000W / m^2 for nuclear[1]. Even if they didn't account for some infrastructure, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't decrease that number 500 times.
Nuclear fission is one of the most powerful energy sources (in energy per unit of mass of fuel) known to mankind, to be replaced only by fusion and annihilation. Renewables on Earth don't even begin to compare.
I always wonder why people disregard nuclear like its low efficiency. It is taking elements that are inherently (in the case of uranium / plutonium, any passive nuclear power source) or situationally (thorium) emitting radiation (photon emissions, a kind of light, which is a form of energy) and using that heat energy to boil water.
And these unstable atoms were made by exploding stars. It is hard to get more energy dense than that. Fusion requires you to put in so much power in the first place to just get to hydrogen burning that it seems ridiculous to not take advantage of the dense energy gifts of destroyed stars.
> It is hard to get more energy dense than that. Fusion requires you to put in so much power in the first place to just get to hydrogen burning
Yeah, that's why a hydrogen bomb uses an atomic bomb as a trigger. But getting a stable, self-sustaining fusion reaction would quickly recoup for initial energy investment.
Unfortunately, as for the third reaction, I don't see much future for us using annihilation large-scale, at least in the coming centuries. It's simple: we don't have any antimatter around in significant quantities [0] and making it is a terribly inefficient process.
[0] - maybe it's fortunate; pure antimatter is probably the most dangerous source of energy out there; one mistake and we'd kill ourselves with it.
My mistake! Clearly nuclear is far more energy dense.. memory failure. TBH i thought there would be a far greater exclusion zone around it than shown on your links (good source, btw)-- obviously fission is going to be off the scale on energy/kg of fuel.
I checked some facts; 2W / m^2 for wind[0], 1000W / m^2 for nuclear[1]. Even if they didn't account for some infrastructure, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't decrease that number 500 times.
Nuclear fission is one of the most powerful energy sources (in energy per unit of mass of fuel) known to mankind, to be replaced only by fusion and annihilation. Renewables on Earth don't even begin to compare.
[0] - http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c4/page_33....
[1] - http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_16...