“To give an idea of the scale of a nuclear facility versus say CA’s most significant source of renewables - solar and wind. Diablo Canyon occupies 12 acres for the plant itself compare that to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay which is almost double the size at 22.5 acres. Sempra Generation's Copper Mountain Solar Facility occupies 4,000 acres. Diablo's nameplate (e.g. theoretical maximum) capacity is 2256 MW with a capacity factor (percentage of the time the plant is generating) sitting in the high 80's % to low 90's %.
Copper Mountain's nameplate capacity is 802 MW, with a capacity factor of roughly 30 %, which is typical for solar. The largest wind farm in the US is the Alta Wind Energy Center in Kern County which is so large Wikipedia cites its footprint in square kilometers but converted to acres is over 32,000 acres. Alta’s nameplate capacity is 1550 MW with a 23.5% capacity factor.
That’s a lot of numbers I just threw out to say the following: nuclear energy overwhelmingly takes up less space, produces a significant greater amount of power at the majority of the time it’s operating. Rain, sun, storm, etc. Doesn’t matter. Nuclear is there.”
https://greenleapforward.substack.com/p/a-bright-spot-for-diablo-canyon
