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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: Cogito who wrote (62913)	5/2/2008 7:48:16 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) of 541986

I am not totally opposed to nukes, of course. I just think that if you can build a five hundred megawatt solar thermal plant in less than two years, which you can, for less money than an equivalent nuclear plant costs, which you also can, then the solar plant makes a lot more sense to build than the nuclear plant. This assumes that you do have the space for the solar plant. If you don't, well, maybe the nuclear plant is a good idea. I figured I'd throw some numbers into the conversation. The world's largest solar plant is under consideration in Arizona. It would produce 280 Megawatts at a cost of $1 billion and be operational in 2011. The backers say that construction hinges on renewal of the energy subsidies that expire at the end of '08. solveclimate.com OTOH, NRG Energy applied for the first nuclear license in 30 years last year. This plant will have a capacity of 2700 Megawatts and cost between $6 and $7 billion but wont be online until 2014/2015. snl.com One other interesting number I came up with....the area used by the solar plant in Arizona is about 3 square miles. I looked up the total energy supplied by coal in the US and it is 333,000 Megawatts. Assuming that solar plants can scale linearly, that would mean that we would need a piece of land about 60 miles by 60 miles to replace all of the countries coal production. That isnt nearly as bad as I would have figured. Slacker

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