UN crowns nuclear as lowest carbon electricity source

I couldn't help myself, and did some sloppy napkin math to figure this out, albeit based on US numbers. But I think they should give something of an idea.


US Nuclear power: Power generated per worker commute

Assume low end of 500 workers per plant, 250 work days per year, yearly production of 8700 GWh/plant (809.4 TWh Generated in 2019 / 93 plants).

Without co-commuting the number of yearly commutes (roundtrips, to and from work) by workers is: 500*250 = 125000.

The number of commutes per generated unit of electricity is: 8700 GWh / 125 000 commutes ~= 70 MWh/commute.


US Wind power 2019: Power generated per worker commute (roundtrip for workers, back and forth to work)

105 600 cumulative wind turbines with a total generation of 300 000 GWh, 2019 in the US.

Assume the pessimistic 3 checkups per turbine per year. Assume you need 2 technicians a full working day per checkup (I'm making this one up, I don't know how many turbines are covered each day, by how many technicians).

Without co-commuting the number of yearly commutes (roundtrips, to and from work) by workers is: 105 600 turbines * 3 checkups per year * 2 technicians = 633 600 commutes/year

The number of commutes per generated unit of electricity is: 300 000 GWh / 633 600 commutes ~= 474 MWh/commute


Note, the wind energy napkin math makes some extremely pessimistic assumptions about nr checkups per turbine, and nr of turbines per workday by technicians (if technicians can chug through 2 or 3 turbines per day, this number is divided by 3.) A second thing is, some wind energy may require transportation over water.

Anyway, ultimately, this kind of thing has to be brought up. It's possible that nuclear requires 10 times more commuting than wind. And of course, this completely ignores the fact that you need a highly trained workforce to run nuclear power plants.

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