[neilpointer]

I'm simply pointing out that nuclear power has by far the best land-use:power-generation ratio available to us. Japan is geographically constrained. It insults the intelligence of his readers for the author claim that had Fukushima been populated with renewables instead of nuclear, everything would have been fine. Sure, there'd have been no meltdown, there also wouldn't be enough electricity either, so it's a silly argument.

I think a better argument (which you're alluding to) is that for $1T, Japan could have purchased the electricity it needed from its neighbors and avoided the catastrophe altogether.

[Zigurd]

Not counting the unusable land, right?

[neilpointer]

Not sure what you mean. I'm saying if Fukushima Nuclear Plant had never been built as the author is advocating, and instead the entire site had been used for renewable energy production, it wouldn't have contributed nearly as much electricity to Japan's grid to serve as a suitable replacement, so it's not a very strong argument. It's annoying to have the author say "if x had never happened, y would not be a problem is a facile argument" and then make the same facile argument with a different x and y.

[Zigurd]

The Fuk exclusion zone is about 150km^2. If it were covered in solar cells, that would be about 22,000 MW. Fuk, with all reactors producing at capacity, is about 4,500 MW.

"X" did happen. And it made that much land unusable.