How much steel and concrete for the fabrication of windmills and nuclear reactors?

	EPR nuclear reactor	Typical modern windmill
Power	1,600 MW	2 MW
Coeff production (h/an)	7000 h (80% of 8760 h)	1750 h (20% of 8760 h)
Life time	60 years	15 years
Total production in TWh (over entire lifetime)	670 TWh	0.053 TWh
Tons of steel	40,000	150
Tons of concrete	200,000	1000
Tons of steel per TWh	60	2830
Tons of concrete per TWh	300	18900

For the same amount of electricity produced, windmills require 50 times more steel and 60 times more concrete than nuclear reactors.

This is with the EPR reactor which is a rather "heavy" reactor (more steel and concrete than its’ competitors, such as the AP-1000).

EFN / Bruno Comby / 7 02 2007

Per Peterson provides a different comparison kinder to wind but using old wind technology. He compares energy cost of building plants: Nuclear, Wind, Coal, Natural Gas.