How many nuclear plants we need in the Netherlands if we all drive electrical vehicles

According to the ANWB¹, there are already about 150,000 electric cars in the Netherlands and I am seriously concerned about the irresponsible rapid growth. In the Netherlands, around 8,700,000 cars are registered and now imagine that in 40 years time all these cars run on electricity.

A simple calculation then teaches us that in the favorable case – provided that all car owners drive or charge their car evenly throughout the day – should have five nuclear power plants of the size Borssele. However, the number doubles when 1 in 12 car owners go to work during rush hour between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Then we need no fewer than 10 nuclear power plants in the Netherlands to keep everyone driving.

Because if we are to believe the RDW², cars drive an average of +/- 13,000 km per year in the Netherlands. That is about 35 km per day and if we cannot significantly reduce the enormous energy consumption of these often extremely heavy cars in the coming years from 0.2 kWh per km to, for example, 0.05 kWh per km, then these cars will consume about 7 kWh per day. That is more or less 61,000,000 kWh a day.

The disaster is still manageable if we as a country can ensure that all electric cars drive and charge evenly throughout the day, because then we need the total required kWh per day divided by 24 hours only 2,541,000 kWh of electricity and there our largest The Dutch nuclear power plant in Borssele in Zeeland has been able to continuously produce 482 MWe for over 13 years³, we will only need to build 4 new nuclear power plants in the next 40 years.

In short, we must stop the advance of the electric car while we still can and that is why I call on politicians to immediately stop subsidies on electric cars and stop all kinds of other benefits such as free parking spaces and other incentives.