There have been a lot posts recently about nuclear power. A lot of people have the knee jerk reaction that all nuclear power is simply too dangerous. I mean after all, if the insurance companies won't offer liability insurance for it... But that's not really true. Let me describe my nuclear reactor.
1. it has already been built.
2. It is delivering 36000 Terawatt hours of power to the United States every day. That is 6200 times the projected yearly electricity demands in 2030.
3. The power is really free -- all we have to do is capture it.
In case you are wondering, what I am talking about is the sun.
Those numbers come from the following raw inputs:
Average solar power is 4KWh/day/sq meter. This is actually the low end. Most of the US gets between 4 and 7 KWh/day/sq meter (DOE NREL estimate).
Land area of the United States is about 9 million square meters (several sources found by Google).
The projected annual electricity demand for 2030 is 5800GWh (DOE EIA estimate).
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