Barakah nuclear power plant in UAE reaches full output
The Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE has reached full capacity, which will now generate a staggering 40TWh of electricity annually
This monumental energy generation by the first nuclear plant in the Arab world supplies 25 percent of the nation’s electricity needs.
To put this into perspective, this amount of clean energy is nearly equivalent to the entire annual electricity consumption of New Zealand!
Imagine the scale: to match this output with wind energy, you’d need 3,510 giant Siemens SG5.0 turbines, each with a colossal rotor spanning 145 meters.
Building such a wind project in 11 years would mean manufacturing, transporting, and installing one turbine every 27 hours—an unprecedented feat.
For solar energy, an equivalent project would cover 100 square miles. This would require 46.2 million solar panels, each providing around 380 Watts.
Over 11 years, this translates to installing a panel every 7.5 seconds, or 11,500 panels per day—a mind-boggling unmatched rate sustained over 11 years.
And to make these renewable sources dispatchable, you’d need at least 400 GWh of batteries, equivalent to the batteries in 5.3 million Tesla Model 3 cars. Considering Tesla’s current production rate, it would take over five years of manufacturing just to meet this battery demand.
At $150/kWh, the cost of these batteries alone would be $60 billion, not to mention the additional costs for the turbines or solar panels and the necessary power lines.
Moreover, while wind and solar installations last 15 to 25 years, the Barakah nuclear plant is designed to operate for 60 to 80 years.
This means you’d need to multiply the previous figures by three, resulting in $180 billion just for batteries, plus three times the cost of building the turbines or solar panels.
In comparison, the Barakah plant’s $24 billion price tag seems like a bargain. It’s clear why the UAE is thrilled with this project and eager to build four more reactors.
The Barakah nuclear power plant is a testament to the incredible potential of nuclear energy to provide massive, reliable, and clean power for decades to come.
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Nuclear is the only viable option to power the world without natural gas or coal. Nuclear is not without risk though, and no matter how redundant the safeguards, a combination of incompetence, complacency and greed always leads to corners cut. Always has, always will.
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