Top all-time · #3019
Hannah Ritchie
Personal blog · hannahritchie.substack.comsciencedata
Hannah Ritchie writes By the Numbers, a personal blog at hannahritchie.substack.com about science and data. Since 2022, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Using data and research to understand what really makes a difference. Click to read By the Numbers, by Hannah Ritchie, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-04-03
- Electric cars are better for the climate than petrol or diesel2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-13
- /p/ai-footprint-august-20252 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-04
- Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-05
- EV batteries would have cost as much as a million dollars in the 1990s2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-30
What Hacker News says?
I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds (thinking about the noise insulation here) and especially if there's even a little bit of wind. This is clearly designed for localized city driving. I suspect that it's also more (though not totally) pedestrian friendly in that the kinetic energy stored will be far less given any kind of impact. I personally love that it is running counter…
Comment linking /p/global-car-economy
on “Citroen revives the 2CV for an electric age”Submitted One in ten people are older than 65. Three in four live under a leader who is as a story · 70 points
HN discussionwhat's Germany's highway speed limit again? and how is their per-capita rate compared to other EU countries with, well, any speed limit at all? you're also claiming a multiplier for fatality rates for car sizes. and there is a significant difference ( https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/global-car-economy ) but the fun fact is that all cars around the world are getting much heavier - the US isn't even the leader in…
Comment linking /p/global-car-economy
on “Allow babywearing carriers on planes”Submitted Electrification efficiency: The world will need less energy after the transition as a story · 11 points
HN discussionHow certain are you of your prediction? What odds would you give me if I bet against you? 10:1? 100:1? Background: The BWRX predecessor, the ABWR, holds the record for the fastest construction time of a commercial nuclear power plant ever: just slightly over 3 years to first criticality, 4 years total to commercial operation. Fun fact: it was the success of this first Gen III reactor that caused EDF to predict the E…
Comment linking /p/nuclear-construction-time
on “NRC issues first U.S. construction permit for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor”Submitted Is Europe having a bad wildfire year? as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> replace less than half of that since the electric process is more efficient. This is right. This shows 63% wasted (as of 2024). https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2026-08/2... I remember this was 67% just a few years back. May have gone down because of increase in solar. sustainabilitybynumbers (Hannah Ritchie) had an article talking about this, that we need only 25%-ish in renewables. I am unable…
Comment linking /p/electrification-energy-efficiency
on “Sustainable energy without the hot air (2008)”Submitted Do more Europeans die of summer heat than Americans die of guns? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHumans have been working on this for centuries and we've never harvested more food than the present moment. https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/food-projections-2025
Comment linking /p/food-projections-2025
on “How Climate Resilient Are the Largest Cities?”Submitted How much electricity does AI consume? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNuclear reactors typically take about 100 months to build--and that's just the construction phase, not the pre-construction design and permitting--so no, they won't help in the next 5 - 10 years. 1. https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...
Comment linking /p/nuclear-construction-time
on “$60/MWh for advanced nuclear electricity is achievable: GE Hitachi Executive”Submitted Bees are more than just honeybees as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction Uranium extraction has not negligible effects. Recent case: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230124-french-uranium-miner-l... > Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages Maybe, however the big picture seems clear: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicl...…
Comment linking /p/lithium-electric-vehicles
on “Nuclear power plant leaked 1.5M litres of radioactive water in Minnesota”Submitted Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOP says one query uses 0.3 Wh. Driving an electric car for 10 miles = 3,000 Wh which is roughly 10,000 Wh per hour. I'm not sure how many queries is equivalent to an hour of Claude code use, but maybe 5 seconds, which means an hour of continuous use = 216 Wh, or ~50x less than an electric car. OP has a longer article about LLM energy usage: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footprint-august-202...
Comment linking /p/ai-footprint-august-2025
on “Does that use a lot of energy?”Submitted EV batteries would have cost as much as a million dollars in the 1990s as a story · 2 points
HN discussionShe's employed by Our World In Data. She is also a published author of printed books. Her substack does not have paid subscriptions enabled (or at least it did not as of last summer; see this post [1]). Our World In Data is funded by donations: https://ourworldindata.org/funding [1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/reflections-on-substack
Comment linking /p/reflections-on-substack
on “Does that use a lot of energy?”Submitted Are meat substitutes better for the environment than meat? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe author Hannah Ritchie works on Our World In Data and also publishes the fantastic Sustainability by Numbers substack. It's in the same vein as the late, great David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air . This tool has its own recent substack post. See the comments too, especially the one by Chris Preist that contextualizes the energy usage of streaming video (a topic that has also been discussed on HN…
Comment linking /p/does-that-use-a-lot-of
on “Does that use a lot of energy?”Submitted Most people are individually optimistic, but think the world is falling apart as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> the reactor in Belarus was built in 8 years That’s slower than average [1]. Striking, considering how much where you build influences timelines as much as who’s building. (I doubt Minsk subjects Rosatom to community input, labor requirements or environmental reviews.) [1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...
Comment linking /p/nuclear-construction-time
on “Australia Is Quitting Coal in Record Time Thanks to Tesla”Submitted We could produce a lot of electricity on the land used for biofuels as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months. These things aren't comparable without putting it together as a system. > A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years. You're thinking about wild outliers there. It's around 6.5 years median [1]. [1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...
Comment linking /p/nuclear-construction-time
on “Australia Is Quitting Coal in Record Time Thanks to Tesla”Submitted How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ev-fossil-cars-climate This even compares cars built in an unrealistic 100% coal grid, and fuelled on 100% coal grid. Driving 14k miles a year for 10 years a Tesla Model 3 built under those extreme conditions beats a gas Fiat 500
Comment linking /p/ev-fossil-cars-climate
on “Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe”Submitted Average range of electric cars has more than tripled since 2011 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHere’s some real data. https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/heat-cold-deaths
Comment linking /p/heat-cold-deaths
on “Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning”Submitted China is adding solar and wind faster than many of us realise: three charts as a story · 1 points
HN discussionLLM inference uses on the order of 1 Wh per query. That's under 10 meters of driving on an EV or running air conditioning for under 5 seconds. https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footprint-august-202...
Comment linking /p/ai-footprint-august-2025
on “The Last Gasps of the Rent Seeking Class”Submitted Electric cars are better for the climate than petrol or diesel as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
