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I should add, that's just for the largest US plant.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa monster in Japan, with seven reactors, was capable of producing nearly 8,000 MW on just ~1,000 acres. Or upwards of 50 to 80 times what the best utility solar installations today can produce at max output on the same amount of land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Pow...

The Solar Star installation could end up being the best solar comparison right now (completed in June). At max capacity, it might narrow the ratio such that the Japanese plant is capable of producing 50 to 60 times the power on the same land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star




Solar star is theoretically capable of about a terawatt on about 4k acres, so that makes the reactor about 15-20 times as efficient. Still a huge difference, but don't hype the numbers too much.


I can't find any source suggesting the Solar Star is capable of 1 TW output with 4000 acres. SunPower's own fact sheet† gives about 1/1500 that capacity for the 3200-acre installation. Where did you hear this?

http://us.sunpower.com/sites/sunpower/files/media-library/fa...


Gigawatts, not terawatts. My bad.

579mwh ~= .6gwh, on 3200 acres. Assuming a larger 4000 acre site and some efficiency gains on this immature tech, a gigawatt seems reachable.




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