$6+ billion for less than 1000 MW?

Feinstein and Boxer are probably so conflicted right now it hurts.



They HATE the idea of anybody being able to use desert lands for anything (other then nature hikes).



But they LOVE big government "green" projects.



Me, I LOVE confused hippies, they are so fun to watch.

I wonder what the rates will be from that thing?

 

if the price tag is anything to go off of... absolutely retarded i think will be a good adjective





 

That's still higher than the average nuke reactor on the grid today. And this one doesn't cost anything to feed.

Heh, the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act is going to kill half a million megawatts of generating capacity by the end of next year.



Thus far, I think Texas is the only state that said "fuck you." The rest of y'all should probably invest and a good propane generator and hope you can ride out the blackout.

I'm working at the solar addition at the Indiantown plant here in Okeechobee FL . It's quite pretty looking , but a mess since it was built .
600 acres of mirrors for 75 mw , not a very effecient use of space .

As I understand it, it is being built by a German company.

Damn.   That is a lot of taxpayer money.

Doesn't count the cost of NG power for when the sun isn't shining....

I've looked into Nuke plant costs, and they're $6-10B for ~2300MW of power (dual AP1000s). And they can run at night.

About 90% of the costs for nuclear plants is building it.

So I wonder if that means it actually costs $9 billion and it's only $6 billion for the company..

I bet it cost-overruns by 25-50% regardless.

Do they have to pay someone to go around cleaning bird shit off the mirrors all day long?

somewhere around $60-100 per taxpayer.

/but I'm agreeing with you

Since it's solar I imagine the average capacity of it will probably be in the 40% range (50% for night, and the rest for weather and twilight, maintenance, etc.).... meaning over time it will only make as much power as a 400MW nuke plant.

the other 600MW from it's "1000MW" capacity will have to come from the rest of the grid when the sun isn't shining, and the West Coast grid is already laughably fragile to begin with... Meaning more NG plants or Coal power from Wyoming (with all the hilarious transmission losses) to make up the difference..



We need fucking Thorium Salt reactors.... we could get Thorium for our coal, use some of the energy to convert it to liquid, and still have enough left over to sell for power. In a few decades with our massive coal reserves we'd be an energy superpower just as the rest of the world is beginning to run out of their fossil fuels.

I advocated for several years that plants just like this ought to be built all over our Federal desert land. Look, all the politicians want to do is spend our money. Insted of big bank and corporate bailouts, use the money to build these. Create the plants here to make all the mirrors and glass tubes and use only these domestic produced parts. It really would create jobs.... everone from janitors to scientist could be employed. It also helps us get of the foreign oil a bit more and helps us work on our power grid. I know it's a green energy feel good project but it does work  and we don't have more spent nuclear fuel to deal with in the future..... just some of the good points. At least when they do this it'll employ people and that adds to the tax base reducing our tax burden and unemployed. Do this in several different desert states and you put alot of people back to work. I know it's not the Feds job to create jobs but if they are hell bent on spending our money at least this project could be helpful on a number of levels.

Foreigners seem to do well when it comes to bidding for mega projects in California. Will there be unions involved with this or is it like the Chinese and the Golden Gate bridge?

On the downside nuke plants have an 80ish% capacity factor and currently need long-term on site spent fuel storage.  Still the best bet IMO.



This plant is three times larger than any other plant in the world.



 

Solar won't be really lucrative until we are a spacefaring race and can build solar farms up nice and close to the sun and beam it to where it's needed.


The solution is the one I posted above. Thorium Salt reactors. Thorium is present in coal in enough quantities to separate it from the coal during a coal-to-liquid fuel process, and use it for fuel for the separation itself, and even with enough of a surplus to generate electricity as well. The US has the world's largest coal reserves, almost 30% of the world's total, in terms of BTUs, this contains more energy than all of the Oil and natural Gas in the middle east combined. China also will run out of it's coal and it will wreck their economy, they are ravaging their reserves at an unprecedented rate, much of the growth of the last 20 years has come from being able to increase it's energy consumption by 10% a year, something that will change very soon. The Thorium in the coal contains 10 times more energy than the coal itself! The makings of the US as an energy superpower is staring us right in the face.

From 1890 to about 1960, the US generated 40-50% of the world's energy. we can do so again.
Today we consume about 20%, and make about 16%.


Until we get nuclear fusion. Maybe we'll get lucky and the Polywell fusor will go Q>1.

None of the nuke plants take up that much space

85%.. AP1000 1000MW nuke plants are actually ~1150MW, they can run 1000MW all day.

Solar plants will only operate at a 55(summer)-35(winter)% rate average. 1000MW during the day and 0MW at night, 350-550MM average total.

WHy not just hire people to dig holes in the desert and then pay them to fill them?

You may not have to feed it, but you have to clean mirrors, change them when they break

and are damaged by sand and animals. I bet an earth quake would screw it up.



 

No, I'm talking about time that a nuke plant is actually producing power.  For example, due to refueling/inspections Indian Point nuclear power station's reactors  only produced power 80-90% of the time (I forget the actual number, maybe 82%).  That said, it is still the cheapest power source in all of NY.



 

Well since regular solar would cost $145,000 for my modest home never paying itself off and since this is a Fed/Ca project, a mega fuck load.