Climate Energy Politics

Nuclear power needs the least land

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The original article can be read as “Schlumpfs graphic 129” in the online Nebelspalter of 21 October 2024.

A week ago, I showed here that electricity from nuclear power plants has the lowest resource footprint of all low-carbon electricity generators. Today I’m adding to that theme by looking at some aspects of the land use of different electricity sources. Based on figures from the United Nations, the result is again clear: nuclear power requires the least amount of land.

What is important:

  • Nuclear energy is the form of power generation that requires by far the least amount of land per amount of energy produced.
  • In addition to the space required for the power plants, the land consumption for the procurement of resources for the construction, operation and decommissioning of the plants is also taken into account.
  • In contrast, solar power requires four to 63 times more land.
  • In the case of wind power, where the calculation is controversial, it can be up to several hundred times more.

My post is based on the article “How does the land use of different electricity sources compare?” published by British data scientist Hannah Ritchie on “Our World in Data” 2022 (see here). I highly recommend visiting this comprehensive data website: The team around founder Max Roser is committed to the motto: “What do we need to know to make the world a better place?” (see here).

The less land per energy source, the better

There are three areas in particular where we should be thinking about the impact of land use for energy sources: Do we have enough land for growing energy use? How do we assess the changes to the landscape? What are the environmental impacts of land changes? Irrespective of individual questions within these areas, the following principle applies: the less land a particular energy source requires, the better.

In her article, Hannah Ritchie draws on the corrected version of the comprehensive report “Integrated Life-cycle Assessment of Electricity Sources” published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in 2021/22 (see here and here). The UN researchers have summarized the results for the total land consumption of the various electricity producers in different regions of the world (geographical influence) in an overall table. In the following graphic from “Our World in Data”, Hannah Ritchie has taken all the values from this table, with the exception of wind power – where she has made her own calculations

Flächen Ohne Wind
Source: Our World in Data / UNECE

Land consumption is shown in this graph in square meters per megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity per year. Each line shows the range between minimum (white dot on the left) and maximum (white dot on the right) land requirements for twelve electricity sources. The red dots (including numbers) indicate the global average values.

Nuclear energy with maximum energy density and minimum space requirements

The graph clearly shows which electricity sources have the highest energy density. High energy density means lower resource requirements and, above all, less land consumption: nuclear and gas-fired power plants perform best (at the bottom of the graph). Nuclear energy is clearly in the lead with an average land requirement of just 0.3 square meters per MWh and a very small spread. In contrast, gas-fired power plants require two to eleven times more space.

But how do the other low-carbon sources of electricity, solar photovoltaics (PV) and hydropower, fare? In the case of solar energy, a distinction is made between rooftop systems (installed on roofs) and ground-mounted systems (installed on-ground). In the case of rooftop systems, only the land consumption required for the production of these modules is taken into account, but not the installation area itself, as this is already covered by the building.

PV electricity from rooftop systems requires ten times more space than nuclear power

In addition, a distinction is made between silicon and cadmium telluride in terms of the composition of the modules. Silicon, which is mostly used in our country, performs worse. According to the graph, the polysilicon roof systems predominant in our country show a range of area requirements between 1.6 and 5 square meters per MWh. With an average value of 3 square meters, they require ten times more land than nuclear power plants.

For ground-mounted PV systems, it is 63 times more land than for nuclear power plants

Of course, the balance of PV electricity becomes even worse in terms of space requirements when it comes to ground-mounted systems – whether on agricultural land or in the Alps. The graph shows a range of 12 to 37 square meters for silicon modules. This wide variation is a consequence of the different levels of solar radiation in the various regions of the world that were examined. With an average of 19 square meters per MWh , 63 times more land is needed for electricity from such systems than for electricity from nuclear power plants.

Water flow has the largest land requirement

Land consumption is also high for hydropower . On average, it is almost 50 times greater for large hydropower plants than for nuclear power. And for smaller hydropower plants under 360 megawatts, the land requirement for electricity beats everything shown in this graph: at 33 square meters per MWh, this hydropower requires 110 times more land on average worldwide than nuclear power.

And what about onshore wind power? Because there is a lot of controversy here about how land consumption should be assessed, Hannah Richtie has carried out her own calculations (see here). She has summarized these in the following graphic:

Flächen Wind
Source: Our World in Data

It distinguishes between the space required directly for the construction of a wind turbine (bottom line) and the space that must be available around a turbine, because otherwise the wind cannot develop its power properly. The easiest way to calculate this is to place several turbines next to each other in a wind farm. However, it is controversial whether this additional area should be attributed to wind power as an energy source or not, as some of the land can still be used.

Wind power would require 28 to 800 times more land than nuclear power

This shows that, at 0.4 square meters per MWh , the space required for construction alone is only slightly larger than the  space required for nuclear power. However, if the land areas between the wind turbines are also included (top line) ,  the space required for onshore wind power would increase to 28 to over 800 times the space required for electricity from nuclear power plants. In practice, it will probably have to be decided on a case-by-case basis how the land consumption of wind turbines is calculated.

Conclusion: Of all low-carbon electricity sources, nuclear energy not only performs best in terms of material and resource requirements – as shown a week ago – but it is also the technology with the lowest land requirements of all electricity generators.

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