Chernobyl only took out 10,000 square miles because they got lucky.
The Chernobyl exclusion zone is a tenth of that - 1,000 square miles. 10,000 square miles is the total from one accident per decade and an average exclusion zone duration of 100 years.
If they didn't drain water tanks it could have exploded making a huge portion of the continent uninhabitable.
It would have made a large part of the continent have higher radiation doses, but even with linear-no-threshold I don't think that France/UK/Spain/Italy would have been uninhabitable. Or even close to that. And the point was, even with the most incompetent leadership we've seen at a nuclear power plant, that didn't happen.
Also, using 17,500 square miles doesn't equal damage. The land could be reclaimed in negligible time by removing the panels, unlike nuclear contamination.
Well, sure - you can take the solar panels and move them somewhere else if you want. But if you're using solar for power, you can't really get rid of them - just move them around.
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The Chernobyl exclusion zone is a tenth of that - 1,000 square miles. 10,000 square miles is the total from one accident per decade and an average exclusion zone duration of 100 years.
It would have made a large part of the continent have higher radiation doses, but even with linear-no-threshold I don't think that France/UK/Spain/Italy would have been uninhabitable. Or even close to that. And the point was, even with the most incompetent leadership we've seen at a nuclear power plant, that didn't happen.
Well, sure - you can take the solar panels and move them somewhere else if you want. But if you're using solar for power, you can't really get rid of them - just move them around.