Last edited Fri Mar 22, 2013, 11:58 AM - Edit history (1)
but the first plant at Windscale, England generated 50MW. It probably had a similar footprint to Hinkley.
For comparison, the footprint of Hinkley is suitable for 6 modern 2.5MW turbines, at a starndard separation of 300m x 900m. 2.5MW is nameplate capacity; wind's capacity factor is roughly 30% so on average that windfarm will generate .3 x 2.5 x 6 = 4.5MW. Wind turbines are well-along in their evolution, but you can see that the actual energy generated from that farm is 1/10 of the very first nuclear power plant, and 4.5/ 3200 = 1/710 the power which Hinkley will generate. This is not even considering the footprint of peaking gas plants which would be required to back up the turbines when the wind isn't blowing.
There is a finite amount of physical energy the wind in a given area of land can possibly provide. If we were able to tap every joule of a hypothetical hurricane-force wind blowing across the land at Hinkley - a windfarm that is 100% efficient - it wouldn't come close to the 3.2GW that the two reactors will be churning out day and night, nonstop. And these reactors are, in nuclear energy terms, pathetically inefficent at capturing the energy stored in the uranium within - only a fraction of 1% becomes electricity. There's far more room in improvement in nuclear, from a physical standpoint, than wind.
The point is not to be smug but to show that wind has a footprint, and it's huge compared to nuclear. Nuclear generates 13% of the world's electricity, and the space required to generate that same amount using wind would require more land area than the exclusionary zones of Chernobyl and Fukushima combined.
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