NEI Confronts Politifact on Clinton Statement on Nuclear Costs

Last week, David Bradish posted his take on President Clinton's statement concerning the costs of electricity generated by wind, solar and nuclear energy. After looking at the numbers, David concluded that an analysis by Politifact that rated Clinton's statement as "half-true" was flawed and needed to be updated to "mostly false."

Earlier today, John Keeley of NEI's media team I shared a copy of David's analysis with reporter Louis Jacobson and editor Martha Hamilton. If and when we get a response, we'll let you know.

Are Wind and Solar Cheaper Than Nuclear?

Last week on the Daily Show, former President Bill Clinton asserted that wind and solar are projected to be cheaper than coal in 2-5 years and that both wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear right now.

PolitiFact dug into the numbers and found that the President's statements were only half true. We took their analysis one step further and argue that the President’s statements were mostly false.

PolitiFact cites the Energy Information Administration (EIA).  EIA is a credible source for comparing levelized electricity costs for new generation technologies. PolitiFact is correct that solar is much more expensive than most all other generating technologies including nuclear. When it comes to the cost of wind, however, we think PolitiFact should take another look.

When delving into the numbers, PolitiFact only looked at one set of single-point cost estimates from EIA. In reality, though, the cost of building and operating power facilities falls in a range that depends on many factors such as financing, transmission requirements, available natural resources for renewables and performance of the operating companies.

Wind turbines, like all other technologies, have a range of costs based on many variables.  EIA shows that the upper end of wind’s cost range is more expensive than the lower end of nuclear’s cost range. On the bottom of EIA’s page, a range of costs for each technology is provided (chart below).

As shown above, the low end of nuclear’s cost range ($109.70/MWh) is lower than the high end of wind’s cost range ($115/MWh); therefore wind is not always cheaper than nuclear.

Further, the amount of wind that can be built is limited to specific places in the U.S. that receive adequate wind flow (see map below).

A substantial amount of wind cannot be built in places such as the Southeast due to a lack of natural resources. Areas with low wind resources will produce less electricity from installed turbines which in turn cause higher levelized costs.  Here are SCANA’s estimates for its region which show nuclear is cheaper than gas, coal, wind and solar (different incentives included for all):

Currently, 104 nuclear reactors (101 gigawatts) generate 20% of the country’s baseload power at low operating costs. This compares to 40 GW of wind and 1 GW of solar generating 2.2% and 0.0003% of the country’s electricity, respectively, at intermittent times.

The folks at PolitiFact should reconsider their conclusion about former President Clinton’s statements and change it from Half True to Mostly False.

60 Years of Energy Incentives – An Analysis of Federal Expenditures for Energy Development from 1950-2010

In 2008, NEI published a study based on an analysis by the Management Information Systems, Inc. that detailed the amount of subsidies that go to each energy source. The study has just been updated and now shows 60 years of energy incentives. Here’s the intro:

With concern about the price and availability of energy increasing, public interest in the role of federal incentives in shaping today’s energy marketplace and future energy options has risen sharply. That interest has met with frustration in some quarters and half-truths in others because of the difficulty in developing a complete picture of the incentives that influence today’s energy options.

The difficulty arises from the many forms of incentives, the variety of ways that they are funded, managed and monitored, and changes in the agencies responsible for administering them. It is no simple matter to identify incentives and track them through year-to-year changes in legislation and budgets over the 50-plus years that federal incentives have been a significant part of the modern energy marketplace.

…

The findings indicate that the largest beneficiaries of federal energy incentives have been oil and gas, receiving more than half of all incentives provided since 1950. The federal government’s primary support for nuclear energy development has been in the form of research and development (R&D) programs, one of the more visible types of incentives identified. In the past 10 years, federal spending on R&D for coal and renewables has exceeded expenditures for nuclear energy R&D.

Below are two key charts showing the latest numbers on pages 10 and 12:

And a little bit more on page 17:

The common perception that federal energy incentives have favored nuclear energy at the expense of renewables, such as wind and solar, is not supported by the findings of this study. The largest beneficiaries of federal energy incentives have been oil and gas, receiving more than half of all incentives provided since 1950.

The federal government’s primary incentive to nuclear energy has been in the form of R&D programs, one of the more visible types of incentives identified. Since the end of funding for the breeder reactor program in 1988, federal spending on nuclear energy research has been less than spending on coal research and since 1994 has also been less than spending on renewable energy research.

The analysis takes you back into some good history of U.S. energy policy since 1950. There is a telling story on renewables on page 52 and some interesting incentive figures for each nuclear technology (light-water reactors, heavy-water reactors, gas cooled, sodium cooled and others) on page 35. Make sure to take a gander at the full report.

EPRI Cost Analysis on Energy Technologies

The Electric Power Research Institute has a report out that compares the costs of fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables.

The Integrated Generation Technology Options report provides an executive-level overview of near-term (5 – 10 years) as well as longer term (2025) electricity generation technology costs and performance. The purpose of this document is to provide a public domain reference for industry executives, policy makers, and other stakeholders. This report is based on 2010 EPRI research results and updates the Integrated Generation Technology Options report  published in November 2009.

The key numbers can be found in the two tables pasted below which are on pages 1-11 and 1-12. The first table shows the estimated costs of each technology in 2015, the second table shows the estimated costs in 2025. All dollars are inflated to the year 2010.

The important numbers to look at are the LCOE in the right column which stands for Levelized Cost of Electricity. The LCOE includes the costs for capital, fuel, and operations and maintenance (it accounts for nearly all costs of a facility’s life).

As shown in both tables, nuclear’s levelized costs are estimated to range from $76-$87/MWh. In the 2015 table, the cost ranges that are lower than nuclear are coal and natural gas. Some biomass and onshore wind are competitive but offshore wind and solar don’t look like are in the game quite yet without major incentives.

In the 2025 table, EPRI assumes carbon capture is available for coal and natural gas which adds a bit to their capital and levelized costs. The cost ranges for nuclear, biomass and wind stay mostly the same. And it looks like the range for concentrating solar thermal becomes more competitive.

To add a number of qualifiers to the results, here’s EPRI on page v:

Planning for new U.S. power generation is in a state of flux due to uncertainty associated with recovery of recession-driven declines in electricity consumption, the impacts of anticipated regulations on existing generation, and potential future climate policy. U. S. electricity consumption began to recover in 2010 after back-to-back declines in 2008 and 2009 due to the economic crisis. However, the electric sector continues to feel the impacts of the recession from high unemployment rates, slow recovery of the industrial sector, and tighter credit markets. Anticipated environmental regulations may have significant impacts on existing generation including substantial capital investment in environmental controls retrofits and retirement of older, less-efficient generating stations. Longer-term implications of potential future U.S. climate legislation continue to be a factor in integrated resource planning.

And who said planning for the future would be easy?

SCANA’s Analyst Day - “New nuclear continues to be the low cost alternative for customers”

Yesterday, SCANA held an Analyst Day that mostly talked about the construction of the two nuclear units at their Summer station. Here’s the link to the 164 page slide deck (18 mega-byte pdf). Below are a few noteworthy slides.

The first slide to mention is “Why Nuclear?” If you look at the chart at the top right of the slide below, SCANA provided their all-in cost estimates for nuclear ($76/MWh), natural gas ($81/MWh), coal ($117/MWh), offshore wind ($292/MWh) and solar ($437/MWh). For them, “new nuclear continues to be the low cost alternative for customers.”

Here are two slides, of many, showing construction at the site.

Also worth mentioning is the slide showing where SCANA is purchasing the supplies around the world to construct the units.

And, below is a picture of one of the AP1000s being built in China that is 2.5 years ahead of SCANA’s construction schedule. They are, of course, sharing lessons between each other.

There is definitely much more to peruse in the fat document so be sure to check it out.

56th Carnival of Nuclear Energy: Nuclear Politics, Future Plans and Germany, Germany, Germany

It’s been another contentious week on nuclear and the pro-nuclear blogging community has been right in the mix. This week we have the privilege of hosting the carnival for the fifth time that’s been on-going for more than a year.

Nuclear Politics

To start, Rod Adams at Atomic Insights has a piece describing what’s happening between the NRC, the AP1000 and Friends of the Earth. According to Rod, the NRC appears to be wavering in its commitment to its own established process because some believe that receiving 14,000 emails on the AP1000 design certification indicates a high level of general public opposition. Rod notes that the emails are mainly from a single group, the FOE, who have professionally opposed nuclear energy for 40 years. The group claims credit for orchestrating nearly every one of those emails as part of a campaign against nuclear energy in general, not against the AP1000 in particular. The FOE sources who have identified the cited "technical issues" have questionable professional backgrounds, long histories of antinuclear activity, and little credibility.

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat discusses the NRC Inspector General’s report on the NRC Chairman’s use of budget guidance on the review of the Yucca Mountain license. According to media summaries of the leaked IG’s review in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the Chairman issued controversial budget guidance to his staff to stop the work and brushed off complaints from other commissioners about it.

Rick Maltese at Deregulate the Atom pointed out that the NRC should not get all the credit for nuclear energy's decades of safety.

The Institute for Nuclear Power Operations in the US and the World Association of Nuclear Operators deserve a lot of the credit for improvements in safety and other design improvements. They are the Nuclear Industry’s self regulating bodies. And most of the accomplishments were made within the 10 or so years after the Three Mile Island accident. I point this out to set the record straight about who and how the excellent record of safety that has come about in the nuclear industry is not at all understood.

Meredith Angwin at Yes Vermont Yankee reviewed a new blog started by Vermont Law School (VLS) about Vermont Yankee’s legal actions. VLS has been advising the State of Vermont on how to shut down VY. Meredith notes that lawsuits on the subject are breeding like rabbits and VLS is not exactly doing a great job of reporting on them.

Steve Aplin at Canadian Energy Issues asks: Why is Iran stepping up uranium enrichment? Tension over Mid-East nuclear security increased this week when Iran announced it would install additional uranium enrichment capacity. Is this a headlong rush to a nuclear bomb, or a new negotiating position? Aplin argues that it could have everything to do with Libya, and that recent history might offer clues as to how to negotiate a resolution of this issue.

New Construction and Future Plans

Jeff Madison at Cool Hand Nuke notes that one “of the most dramatic resurrections of a stalled nuclear reactor construction project is unfolding in Hollywood, Ala. There, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is getting ready to formally ask its board of directors this August to approve completion of the 1,260 MW PWR plant [Bellefonte] which halted in the late 1980s.”

Alan Rominger and Steve Skutnik at Neutron Economy have two posts to mention. Alan explains the connection between the recent idea for "charter cities" where small modular reactors located at the bottom of the ocean can provide sustainable, independent power for such efforts. And Steve explains why he ultimately went from being a physicist to a nuclear engineer. Steve encourages other nuclear professionals and advocates to tell their stories of how they came to be involved in nuclear energy as well (I’m reminded of this example).

Charles Barton at Nuclear Green asks: Why Is Renewable Energy So Expensive, While Molten Salt Reactors will be So Cheap? He finds that an examination of input materials for wind generation systems and solar PV generation is greater than the input materials for an Advanced High Temperature Reactor. The study he cites reveals that the AHTR, a near relative of the Molten Salt Reactor, has big advantages by the little amount of resources needed. MSRs can potentially offer the same material input advantages over renewables, and thus may generate electricity at very competitive costs.

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat posts that Areva plans to push spent fuel recycling plans in the US. Areva’s CEO, Jacques Besnainou, sees startup of the effort by 2015. Besnainou said the firm is already in discussions with several nuclear utilities about a consortium to develop a plan and design for such a plant. Along with Areva, Besaninou said the group “would advocate more loudly for a recycling center in the U.S. … We’re going to be much more vocal by the end of the year.”

Brian Wang at Next Big Future reports that Lawrenceville Plasma Physics’s (LPP) research team has sorted out several issues on their dense plasma focus fusion project which should enable them to substantially increase power.

Germany, Germany, Germany

Margaret Harding at 4 Factor Consulting, with her cynical glasses on, looks at Chancellor Merkel’s decision to acquiesce to Germany’s apparent desire to abandon nuclear power. Margaret notes that it is a brilliant move politically that puts Merkel’s government into a win-win. Doesn’t matter if they succeed or fail at nuclear power, Merkel can look the hero.

Michele Kearney at her Nuclear Wire points out that Germany’s nuclear exit failed to give Chancellor Merkel's party a boost. As well, she also points out a piece from IEA on Germany’s “real costs of zero nuclear.”

And to add, Gail Marcus at Nuke Power Talk examined the recent decisions by Germany and Switzerland to withdraw from nuclear power as well as the rumblings in Japan who may move in that direction. In her piece she points to some of the implications of these actions, both within those countries and elsewhere.

Nuclear Stats and Competitors

Brian Wang at Next Big Future reported the latest nuclear generation stats in the developed countries. “The IEA's Monthly Electricity Statistics for March 2011 showed nuclear generation at 185.6 TWh (1.2 % ahead of March 2010). For the year to date up to March 2011, the OECD is 13.5 TWh ahead of the pace of 2010.” Japan's nuclear generation in April was 17 TWh, three TWh lower than March.

Another post worth mentioning from Rod Adams at Atomic Insights is his discussion on the IEA’s new gas report. A recent meme floating around the media is that we are entering a "golden age for natural gas". Atomic Insights wants to start a new meme - the golden age of nuclear energy. There is no way that any other fuel or power source can compete with uranium or thorium fission on anything close to a level playing field. The fuel is extremely dense, is the cheapest source of fuel per unit of heat, and is clean enough to power sealed submarines for long periods of time.

Fukushima-Daiichi

And last but not least, Will Davis at Atomic Power Review has the latest on Fukushima-Daiichi. As we noted before, if you’re not following Will, you’re not following what’s really going on at Fukushima.

Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for next week’s carnival to be hosted at the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Grist’s Anti-Nuclear Campaign Distorts Reality (Part 1 of 3)

Over the past week or so at Grist, it’s been hit-jobs galore against nuclear. A fellow by the name of Arne Jungjohann published four negative pieces loaded with jaded contentions to stir up discussion. Later in the campaign, another fellow by the name of Paul Gipe brought up a flawed study on nuclear costs and risks to add to Grist’s polemic.

Here is the first of what will be a 3-part series of responses:

Grist’s Part 1 - Why is the United States so obsessed with nuclear power?

To begin, here’s Mr. Jungjohann’s dramatic start to his series:

Fukushima provides enough grounds to take every single nuclear power plant on the face of the Earth off-line. Regardless of whether the cause is an earthquake, a tsunami, a flood, a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or simple human error, failure of the emergency power system leads to uncontrollable consequences.

Enough grounds? Uncontrollable consequences? Although Fukushima Daiichi is still recovering, an historical tsunami is the the real disaster. The latest numbers (pdf) show there are almost 24,000 people dead or missing (3 at Fukushima). At Fukushima, there are zero radiation-related deaths and the most severe health effects appear to be two workers who have received doses above emergency level limits. Here’s IAEA last week (pdf):

To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident.

While radiation data will continue to be analyzed and based on what we currently know, the results are unlikely to change.

Interesting enough, Mr. Jungjohann never mentioned these facts in any of his posts and the nuclear critics deliberately or blindly ignore them.

Farther down Mr. Jungjohann’s first piece, the following paragraph appears:

One is centralized, capital-intensive, ponderous, outdated, and anti-democratic, whereas the other is flexible, smart, labor-intensive, and open for community participation.

Nuclear, of course, is meant to fit his negative adjectives, renewables the positive. Many of the negative adjectives, however, can easily fit his favorite technologies and the positive adjectives can fit nuclear.

For instance, on nuclear being “outdated,” Mr. Jungjohann may not know that wind has been around for more than 2,000 years compared to nuclear energy which has been around about 100 years. As well, on nuclear being “ponderous,” other technologies are not immune to start-up delays as well (who hasn’t heard of Cape Wind?).

On being “anti-democratic,” everyone has the opportunity to comment to the NRC on virtually every aspect of nuclear, whether it be license renewals, design certifications, new plant applications or megawatt enhancements. How is that not democratic?

Does nuclear fit any of the positive adjectives that are described for renewables? Let’s see.

Nuclear is clearly “smart.” Below is an artist’s rendering of Korea’s SMART 100 MW reactor they’re planning to build.

 

Here’s a picture showing nuclear’s “labor-intensity.”

And here’s another on “community participation.”

On to Mr. Jungjohann’s last bit from his first piece that we’re going to discuss:

As a German living in Washington, D.C., you can't help asking in return: Why is the accident of Fukushima perceived as something far away without consequences for a broad discussion of the future U.S. energy infrastructure? Why does the myth survive that America depends on nuclear power and must do so in the future? And overall, why is American society so pro-nuclear?

I don’t know what Mr. Jungjohann is reading but Fukushima is not something perceived as far away. There are 23 units in the US like Fukushima and the industry and NRC are analyzing and verifying that all plants are appropriately protected. The industry has been doing this since day one of the accident and there are clearly many folks and critics overseeing this.

Further, what myth is he talking about? Study after study has shown that nuclear needs to be an important part of the mix and it is currently the only energy source that’s been able to compete against and displace fossil fuels.

Below are two charts from the International Energy Agency (pdf) showing how nuclear worldwide has replaced a portion of fossil’s market share in energy and electricity over the last 30 years while renewables have remained flat (in the chart, “TPES” means total primary energy supply).

Many here in the US know that planning for the future also means not necessarily relying on technologies that haven’t been demonstrated on a large scale. Perhaps American reliance on clean, domestic nuclear power today and in the future, what Jungjohann calls a myth, is in fact the reality.

As for Mr. Jungjohann’s third question, is it that hard to believe that people can be in favor of nuclear? My question is: why is Germany so anti-nuclear? Germany didn’t grow to be one of the world’s largest economies without reliable electricity supplies.

Grist’s Part Two - The nuclear industry has powerful backers and weak opponents in D.C.

Mr. Jungjohann’s second piece was our favorite here at NEI. That’s basically because it was an attempt to smear our organization and nuclear companies for lobbying. The piece, however, clearly shows ignorance of how energy politics work in the US.

Living around Washington DC, Mr. Jungjohann should know that in the US, every energy industry has a trade association that represents itself here. Perhaps he’s heard of the American Gas Association, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Wind Energy Association, and the Solar Energy Industries Association? Not only that, hopefully he’s aware that trade associations spend money on, among other things, informing policymakers, petitioning Congress and federal agencies, and yes, on lobbying.

For comparison, after doing very little digging, here’s what AWEA (the wind energy lobby) spent last year:

The association has a yearly budget of $35 million, and last year spent almost $2.5 million in lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill, down from the peak of over $4 million in 2009 … Through its political action committee, WindPAC, campaign contributions in the 2010 election cycle totalled around $320,000. … That compares to campaign donations of just under $30,000 in 2000.

That’s nearly identical to NEI’s spending according to the Politico article Mr. Jungjohann cites:

NEI, the industry’s biggest voice in Washington, for example, spent $3.76 million to lobby the federal government and an additional $323,000 through its political action committee on a bipartisan congressional slate

Looks like Democrats and Republicans in Congress also “feed” into the wind industry’s “trough,” as Mr. Jungjohann says about nuclear in part three. We don’t even need to go into the money spent by fossil industry groups for lobbying, those sums are much greater than wind and nuclear’s combined.

Mr. Jungjohann may also be unaware that the utility companies he mentions (Exelon, Duke, FPL and Entergy) are the same companies that will be building the renewable technologies he wants. FPL is currently the largest renewable energy company in the US. The lobbying dollars from these companies weren’t spent just on nuclear, they were spent to represent each company’s interests which includes many different technologies.

On to the next one:

The anti-nuke movement is as weak as the nuclear lobby is strong.

Our jobs would be much easier if that were true. Unfortunately for the public, the anti-nukes are strong on distorting information, skewing opinions and creating fear, uncertainty and doubt. Crying “poor antis” doesn’t work here, they are a vocal community that’s been well-trained in using catchy sound bites to manipulate the discussion. They also engage in lawsuits and file untold numbers of petitions to intervene in various federal and state proceedings, usually on rather thin grounds.

Stay tuned for more of our critique of Grist’s anti-nuclear campaign.

Energy and Electricity Data on Japan

The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan has an informative brochure on Japan’s current and future energy plans (pdf). It provides stats on the 10 companies that service Japan, the country’s long-term supply and demand outlook, lifecycle CO2 emissions, and the hourly supply and demand electricity curve. A few images from the pdf are pasted below.

This is just some of it. There are tables on all of the power plants by fuel type, maps of the locations of power plants and transmission grid, details on their nuclear fuel cycle and much more. It’s an excellent short and sweet piece on the country worth checking out.

Renewables did not surpass nuclear in 2010

Cleantechnica has a post referencing a report (pdf) from the Worldwatch Institute that claims renewables (wind, solar and biomass) have surpassed nuclear energy. This is only true if we were to look at one metric: capacity additions (megawatts). A more important metric, however, is output (megawatt-hours). Here’s the Institute’s claim (page 4):

In 2010, for the first time, worldwide cumulated installed capacity of wind turbines (193 gigawatts*), biomass and waste-to-energy plants (65 GW), and solar power (43 GW) reached 381 GW, outpacing the installed nuclear capacity of 375 GW prior to the Fukushima disaster.

Good job for those technologies. They still have a long ways to go, however, to be able to match the same output as nuclear.

Below is a chart showing the electric generation fuel shares worldwide from the International Energy Agency’s 2010 Key Stats report (pdf).

Nuclear provided 13.5% of the world’s electricity in 2008 and renewables provided 2.8% (excluding hydro). The Other category includes the same renewable technologies as the Worldwatch’s report plus a few others. Yet, despite renewables “outpacing” nuclear in capacity in 2010, the actual output was more like one-fifth of nuclear’s output. If renewables were to surpass nuclear in output, then the amount of capacity needed would be almost five times as much.

Further, Cleantechnica and the Worldwatch’s report referenced an analysis from a Duke University professor (prepared for NC WARN) claiming solar is now cheaper than nuclear. The New York Times even picked up on the Duke report. But what they probably missed was that the NY Times had to distance themselves from the analysis and that the actual report had flaws in and of itself.

If Worldwatch wanted to provide a meaningful report, then they should use some of its efforts for analyzing nuclear and apply it to other technologies for comparison. There are a lot of folks who would be interested to know the historical performances of wind, solar and other techs. I’m sure we’d find that other technologies do not have rosy histories either. Otherwise, Worldwatch's annual regurgitation of nuclear statistics does little to provide readers with any perspective.

Update 4/22, 1 pm EDT: I left the following comment at 10 am on two posts at Cleantechnica's site and they haven't shown up yet three hours later. A few other comments have been approved since then. Hmmm...

When it comes to actual production, renewables are far from surpassing nuclear worldwide. Folks here may be interested in a different take: http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2011/04/renewables-did-not-surpass-nuclear-in.html

David Bradish
Nuclear Energy Institute

Analysis of Replacing Japan’s Nuclear Plants With Other Technologies

Over at Forbes’ blog, Sara Mansur has dug into the numbers to see what it would take if nuclear were phased out in Japan:

If nuclear power were to be completely taken out of Japan’s power supply, the country’s carbon emissions would rise by at least 414 million tons over current emissions [assuming nuclear is replaced by coal and gas]. Carbon emissions would increase by at least 10% and as much as 17% across the entire economy, while power-sector emissions would soar by 29% to 49%, depending on the mix of replacement power.

What about renewables instead?

the 203 gigawatts (GW) of installed solar capacity required to replace Japan’s current nuclear fleet would cover roughly 1.3 million acres, according to a land area calculator created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States. That’s the equivalent of roughly 52% of Japan’s total land area.

Using an estimate of $5 per watt of installed solar PV capacity, installing this 203 GW of solar capacity would cost the country at least $1.01 trillion.

Alternatively, replacing the generation lost from a complete phase-out of nuclear power entirely with wind energy would require wind generation to increase from its current levels, 3.257 billion kWh (0.3% of total electricity), to 267 billion kWh (27% of total electricity).

This would require 152 GW of installed wind capacity, at a total installation cost of $375 billion (using an estimate of $2,466/KWe). According to NREL’s wind farm area calculator, the installation of these wind turbines would require 38,000 acres taken out of production on a wind farm, and a total of 1.3 billion acres for the entire wind farm. This represents over 50 percent of Japan’s total land area.

And that’s to replace the existing Japanese nuclear fleet. By 2030, Japan had set a goal to double it. Check out the rest of the Forbes analysis to see what it would take if other technologies met that 2030 goal instead. Hint – there’s a reason why Japan is big on nuclear.

Update, 5/2: Looks like there was a serious calculation error on the amount of land needed for wind and solar. The land space needed for solar or wind to replace Japan's nuclear fleet would take up a few percent of the country's land space, not 50% or more.