Zero-Carbon Electricity
PLAN A: RENEWABLES
100% Wind, Water and Solar. Mainly hydro with wind and solar. Wind turbines and solar panels require large amounts of land and materials to generate a few megawatts of electricity.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/
It would take more than a million wind turbines to power the US and would have huge environmental impacts. Many access roads, wind towers and transmission lines cluttering the countryside, transmitting unreliable electricity from distant sunny or windy areas.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/12/18/how-many-wind-turbines-would-it-take-to-power-the-us/
We are removing dams and hydro facilities, not building them. Dams occupy valuable land, block fish migrations and sediment flows, sometimes fail catastrophically and eventually fill with sediment.
https://www.americanrivers.org/2023/02/dam-removals-continue-across-the-u-s-in-2022/
PLAN B: CONVENTIONAL NUCLEAR REACTORS
Many large 1000+ MW nuclear reactors are planned, costing maybe five billion or more dollars each. Delays balloon the cost. Since nuclear fuels are extremely energy dense, nuclear reactors use minimal amounts of land and materials and for their size, have minimal environmental impacts.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx#:~:text=Today%20there%20are%20about%20440,capacity%20of%20about%20390%20GWe.
PLAN C: SMALL MOLTEN SALT REACTORS
Simple, safe, efficient reactor that ran reliably for four years in the 1960s but then abandoned. Many companies are now developing these reactors.
https://www.ornl.gov/blog/ornl-review/time-warp-molten-salt-reactor-experiment-alvin-weinberg-s-magnum-opus
Copenhagen Atomics recently bid four billion dollars for 25 small molten salt reactors, totaling 1000 MW. Thus each reactor would be 40 MW and cost about 160 million dollars.
https://www.nucnet.org/news/danish-companies-sign-agreement-for-usd4-billion-thorium-smr-in-borneo-5-1-2023
Copenhagen Atomics recently bid four billion dollars for 25 small molten salt reactors, totaling 1000 MW. Thus each reactor would be 40 MW and cost about 160 million dollars.
https://www.nucnet.org/news/danish-companies-sign-agreement-for-usd4-billion-thorium-smr-in-borneo-5-1-2023
PLAN D: MICRO REACTORS
Simplify conventional pressurized water reactors and build many micro-reactors in factories for fast, low-cost, quality construction. Truck to installation sites to provide reliable energy independence everywhere with no need for long transmission lines.
Proposed 20 MW micro-reactors will cost about 100 million dollars each so 10,000 reactors would cost about a trillion dollars. We propose to spend twice that each year for renewables.
https://climateanalytics.org/press-releases/2-trillion-a-year-needed-to-triple-global-renewables-by-2030-double-current-investment