It takes 175,000 acres of wind turbines to replace one 1000MWe thermal plant and you need to build the thermal plant anyway to pick up the load when the wind stops blowing. Nuclear is cheaper on a lifecycle basis and if fuel rods are reprocessed into mixed oxide fuel the resource will last essentially forever. In addition reprocessing reduces waste volume by 97% and most of it is relatively short lived isotopes. If a podunk country like France can get 80% of its power from nuclear plants and reprocess fuel safetly and economically why not us?
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It takes 175,000 acres of wind turbines to replace one 1000MWe thermal plant and you need to build the thermal plant anyway to pick up the load when the wind stops blowing. Nuclear is cheaper on a lifecycle basis and if fuel rods are reprocessed into mixed oxide fuel the resource will last essentially forever. In addition reprocessing reduces waste volume by 97% and most of it is relatively short lived isotopes. If a podunk country like France can get 80% of its power from nuclear plants and reprocess fuel safetly and economically why not us?