Energy
[Slideshow] Powering New York
[Slideshow] Powering New York
Imagine that overnight all power infrastructure in New York were to disappear. Then, starting from scratch, we could build anything we wanted: a giant solar array that stretches to the horizon, the world’s biggest windfarm, or a mega nuclear facility.
What would it take to power the Big Apple for a year with each individual energy source?
We’ve crunched the numbers for oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, solar, wind, and hydro. Then, we visualized what is needed for each to be hypothetically feasible as the city’s only source of energy. (Note: we’ve included some notes on our calculations at the bottom of this page.)
The results are quite mind boggling. For example, to facilitate New York City’s average power needs, you would need 12.8 km² of solar panels, enough to cover a good chunk of New Jersey. The average distance one can see into the horizon is 5km, which means that one would be able to see solar panels as far as the eye can see.
Another interesting example: powering New York City with hydroelectric based on average power needs would mean 14 Hoover Dams, each which produce about 4.2 billion kWh per year in energy. Using wind power, about half of Long Island would need to be converted into the world’s biggest wind farm to power New York City. That’s exponentially bigger than the current biggest wind farm in the United States, which is in the Tehachapi-Mojave region in California and has a nameplate capacity of 1,320 MW.
Quick notes on calculations
This presentation is for visualization purposes, and isn’t fully realistic on a technical basis because in reality, the supply and demand of energy is not constant. The city’s power needs fluctuate during base and peak load times. In terms of supply, the wind is not always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining. We based our numbers off of average electricity consumption, assuming that energy can be banked in times of surplus and used during times of deficiency.
We used some assumptions for the efficiency as well. For example, that a power plant burning oil has an efficiency of 533 kWh per barrel, or that our wind farm uses 1.5 MW turbines that have a capacity factor of 25%.
Use and share this presentation
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If you use this, it is appreciated if you can give attribution credit back to Visual Capitalist
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Energy
How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?
Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the U.S.
How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?
This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium. The bill must pass the Senate before becoming law.
In this graphic, we visualize how much the U.S. relies on Russian uranium, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA).
U.S. Suppliers of Enriched Uranium
After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported.
Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the United States. In 2022, Russia supplied almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel America’s fleet of more than 90 commercial reactors.
Country of enrichment service | SWU | % |
---|---|---|
🇺🇸 United States | 3,876 | 27.34% |
🇷🇺 Russia | 3,409 | 24.04% |
🇩🇪 Germany | 1,763 | 12.40% |
🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 1,593 | 11.23% |
🇳🇱 Netherlands | 1,303 | 9.20% |
Other | 2,232 | 15.79% |
Total | 14,176 | 100% |
SWU stands for “Separative Work Unit” in the uranium industry. It is a measure of the amount of work required to separate isotopes of uranium during the enrichment process. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
Most of the remaining uranium is imported from European countries, while another portion is produced by a British-Dutch-German consortium operating in the United States called Urenco.
Similarly, nearly a dozen countries around the world depend on Russia for more than half of their enriched uranium—and many of them are NATO-allied members and allies of Ukraine.
In 2023 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry paid over $800 million to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, and its fuel subsidiaries.
It is important to note that 19% of electricity in the U.S. is powered by nuclear plants.
The dependency on Russian fuels dates back to the 1990s when the United States turned away from its own enrichment capabilities in favor of using down-blended stocks of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium.
As part of the new uranium-ban bill, the Biden administration plans to allocate $2.2 billion for the expansion of uranium enrichment facilities in the United States.
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