A Solar Grand Plan

Here.

Excerpt:

Some 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic arrays would have to be erected. Although this area may sound enormous, installations already in place indicate that the land required for each gigawatt-hour of solar energy produced in the Southwest is less than that needed for a coal-powered plant when factoring in land for coal mining.

I'd like to see more details to back up that second sentence. I'd also like to see a convincing argument that this solar plan makes more sense than going nuclear.