By Robert Applegate

Amid the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) latest report¹ on the land requirements of solar power generation, others are taking a look at what is really required to power homes using solar and wind and comparing that to another carbon free source, nuclear power generation.

A nuclear power plant, the biggest reactors currently available would take up less than 2 square miles and produce 3200MW of power.² To achieve this same power output from solar would require 292 square miles, 146 times the amount of land required for a nuclear plant.² A wind farm would need to be 832 square miles, or 416 times the land to create the same amount of power of the nuclear plant.² To put this into perspective, the land footprints are shown over the backdrop of the state of Rhode Island, where the blue is a nuclear plant, the yellow a solar farm, and the green a wind farm all of equal capacity.

Land footprints of a nuclear plant (blue), solar array (yellow), and a wind farm (green) all of equal capacity (3200MW), over the backdrop of the state of Rhode Island.²

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1      NREL Report Firms Up Land-Use Requirements of Solar. Study shows solar for 1,000 homes would require 32 acres. July 30, 2013.  http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/2269.html

2      What Does Renewable Energy Look Like? Clean Energy Insight, 10 Apr, 2010. http://www.cleanenergyinsight.org/energy-insights/what-does-renewable-energy-look-like/