Nuclear Energy is Frugal in Land Use

Next to the climate crisis, another major concern of our time is biodiversity. Due to human activity, our planet is experiencing the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs. One million species are threatened with extinction. [27] Fragmentation and land-use change can result in the displacement of natural ecosystems, land degradation, and trade-offs between food production, urban development, and conservation. As a consequence, they are responsible for up to 80% of biodiversity loss in many areas. [28] Limiting land-use is thus our greatest lever to mitigate the negative impact of human activities on biodiversity.

The main focus area here is clearly agriculture, which represents around 38% of the global land surface. [29] Energy production only comprises 0.4%, which is comparatively much smaller. [30] Nonetheless, we are on track for an increased global energy consumption combined with a massive deployment of renewable energy sources. If poorly planned, these major changes in our energy sector could have a significant negative impact on biodiversity. Studies have already called for a coordinated planning of renewable energy expansion and biodiversity conservation, as protected areas and key biodiversity areas face increasing pressure to allow infrastructure expansion. [31]

Life-cycle land-use intensity for different electricity sources, from “Land-use intensity of electricity production and tomorrow’s energy landscape” published by Jessica Lovering et al. in July 2022. Nuclear is best-in-class.

There are several sources assessing the land-use intensity of electricity production. One of the most recent ones was published in 2022 by a team of researchers led by the University of Michigan. [32] They considered the full life-cycles. For nuclear, this encompasses the direct impacts from the power plant as well as the indirect impacts from the uranium fuel cycle, spent fuel storage, and the exclusion zones around Chernobyl and Fukushima. Conclusion: the average land-use intensity of nuclear energy is about 15 ha per year, per TWh. Part of that land-use is the vast area needed around nuclear power plants for safety and security reasons, which can actually be used as a natural reserve. The Tihange nuclear power plant in Belgium, for example, has 2 ha dedicated to biodiversity. [33]

To put this number in perspective, consider a country like Belgium with an annual electricity consumption of around 80 TWh. This would represent a land occupation of 1,200 ha, roughly the size of the Brussels airport infrastructure—the largest of the country. The next best thing? Geothermal energy with 140 ha/year/TWh. That’s a difference of almost a factor of ten. Similarly, wind is 170 ha/year/TWh—if only the footprint is considered, and a hundred times more if the spacing is accounted for. Ground-mounted solar goes up to 2,000 ha/year/TWh. Dual use cases, such as agrisolar and rooftop mounted solar, were unfortunately not included in the University of Michigan study. Gas and coal also consume tens to hundreds times more land than nuclear energy.

Other studies arrive at slightly different numbers, but the same orders of magnitude and the same conclusions. Among these is notably the UNECE life-cycle assessment of electricity generation options mentioned earlier, as well as a scientific report published in Nature by a team led by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and a meta-analysis from Leiden University. [34] [35] [36] Interestingly, the UNECE assessment concluded that roof-mounted solar consumed at least 40% more land than nuclear energy. [37] This is the type of counter-intuitive surprise that life-cycle assessments can shed light on.

Nuclear is disruptively more frugal than any other energy source in terms of land use—exactly like what we saw earlier for greenhouse gas emissions. How is this possible? Once again, the answer lies in the massive energy density of nuclear reactions. These enable us to draw a gigantic amount of energy from relatively modest means. This point will be made again a couple more times throughout this book.

What about the exclusion zones of Chernobyl and Fukushima? These cause a severe toll on the land use of nuclear energy, as they keep the same affectation for hundreds of years. Firstly, they are accounted for in the aforementioned land use assessment. Secondly, they penalise human activity, but not biodiversity—quite the contrary.

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is particularly vast, covering an area of approximately 260,000 km2, which makes it the third-largest natural reserve in mainland Europe. It hosts some of the thickest forests in Ukraine, in which roam a wide range of animals from gray wolves and beavers to bison and lynx. Radioactive pollution over the zone is actually quite uneven, originally driven by the wind spreading dust and rain washing it in the immediate aftermath of the accident. That being said, human activities within the exclusion zone did not stop entirely. For starters, the three remaining Chernobyl nuclear reactors resumed their operation after the accident, reaching a staggering 18.7 TWh in 1989 up from 5.5 TWh in 1986. The last remaining operational reactor was shut down as late as December 2000. Furthermore, a few hundreds of residents—the samosely—have chosen to return to their homes inside the exclusion zone where they live in high yet non-lethal radiation levels. You can even order yourself online a nice bottle of Atomik Vodka, guaranteed to be made from crops grown In the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

That being said, nuclear incidents are not the wisest way to protect biodiversity.

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