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World's Largest Solar Power Plant Planned For Chernobyl Nuclear Wasteland (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Electrek: Chernobyl, the world's most famous and hazardous nuclear meltdown, is being considered for the world's largest solar power plant. Even though nearly 1,600 square miles of land around Chernobyl has radiation levels too high for human health, Ukraine's ecology minister has said in a recent interview that two U.S. investment firms and four Canadian energy companies have expressed interest in Chernobyl's solar potential. Electrek reports: "According to PVTech, the Ukrainian government is pushing for a 6 month construction cycle. Deploying this amount of solar power within such a time frame would involve significant resources being deployed. The proposed 1GW solar plant, if built today, would be the world's largest. There are several plans for 1GW solar plants in development (Egypt, India, UAE, China, etc) -- but none of them have been completed yet. One financial benefit of the site is that transmission lines for Chernobyl's 4GW nuclear reactor are still in place. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has stated they would be interested in participating in the project, 'so long as there are viable investment proposals and all other environmental matters and risks can be addressed to the bank's satisfaction.'"
this seems such a great idea at 1st, but why build a solar plant there?
just because land is wasted and unused? but so are lands in much hotter places 'wasted'? there is no inherent reason why that place should be chosen over any other place with unused land. (ok its position in power-grid integration may have had some validity because there was a power-station there, but that was years ago.).
decision to build or not a solar plant should be made based on factors (such as weather) that make that location better than others.
There goes the wildlife preserve that was doing so well. Honestly, why not build another nuclear plant there? It's all shielded anyway.
The plant's not going to build itself, which means thousands of people kicking up dust over those six months, and even after it's complete there will need to be people there to maintain it.
Workers being exposed to radiation while building might make this project a little less easy in practice.
Exchanging health for dollars never being a good idea.
It will be the first twenty four hour solar power plant since the place already glows in the dark.
If you compare the energy needed to make all the concrete to do a half-assed job of sealing the place, to the electricity produced by the reactor upto it's mishap, The whole exercise looks very pointless.
English.... do you even speak it?
They didn't think much about when they would need to do maintenance on it, isn't it...
Actually, I thought it was ionising solar radiation that degraded solar cells.
I thought Solaren was putting a space-based solar array up by 2016. Wait, we are 2016 and not a single bolt is up yet? Well I thought we'd 3D print solar cells by now? Um, but Russia beat us into space, surely they must have all those space spinoffs and gotten seven rubles back for every ruble spent?
That's obviously @realDonaldTrump.
Add wind towers at the locations that have a steady breeze.
The de facto nature reserve around Prypiat has more biodiversity than just about anywhere else in Europe. But fuck the thriving ecosystem there. Solar panels are green and make us feel good! Also, northern Ukraine is about the same latitude as northern Quebec, which is also pretty empty, but nobody is thinking about building solar plants there.
To me what is interesting is the old nuke plant put out 4GW and the new biggest ever solar plant produces 1, and if the 1 is peak, then most of the time it is pumping more like 500MW and only during the day. I wonder if they costed out putting in a new nuke instead vs the solar and which was more expensive per watt.
https://www.thestar.com/news/w...
Solar is cheaper per Watt, and more importantly per kwh.
No, even the base of the ecosystem has been disrupted. https://www.thestar.com/news/w...
"You liberals" is just as much a convenient box as anything. To me, European person living in Europe, not involved in the USoA head honcho election circus and farce show, the whole thing is exactly that, and "liberals" means something entirely different than what you appear to think it means. But even if it didn't, I'm quite sure plenty of people that might consider themselves grouped under the monniker are not bringing up mr Trump in every topic here. So you're really feeding the trolls and showing yourself to be not quite as open-minded as you would apparently like to think. IOW, you're not thinking really, but letting yourself get dragged down to the troll's level, with a little hautain superiority that immediately shows itself threadbare thrown in for good measure.
If you and your adversary actually do extrapolate to the whole USoAian voting population, the point is a meta-point and that is that there is simply no interesting discourse to be had anywhere in your wonderful country, not from any side on any debate. It's all "you liberals" and "you conservatives" and that's the end of the depth on any side. And I thought the politicians here were vapid and content free. They are, but apparently on your side of the pond, the voters are too. Pax Americana indeed.
The irreparable damage is already done, but the other three reactors at the station are in perfectly fine order. In fact, they continued to operate for 14 years — and were shut down for reasons political rather than technical.
Instead of sending thousands of people to install solar panels in the vast dangerously polluted lands, it would be far more sensible — and cheaper too — to reactivate the reactors already there.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Out of 12 months a year that region might have seven months in which construction is possible. Ice and snow take up almost half a year so a one year period is simply not at all realistic. Imagine trying to keep the snow off of those panels to generate power in the cold months over there.
As I said in my post, it depends. Wikipedia and other sources note nuclear/solar depends on the study and what factors are accounted for. Batteries alone cost more per kwh if you need to store the juice. It is a complicated problem and everyone seems to pick a side and hrumpf away.
It will be the first twenty four hour solar power plant since the place already glows in the dark.
Nice. I think you just figured out how to create hybrid nuclear/solar. Before construction, nuke the location from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.
Aren't workers installing panels going to be traipsing around a radioactive area for a prolonged time?
In the past, silicon semiconductors have been found to be degraded by radiation, leading to the adoption of gallium arsenide. That was a consideration for satellite design. Not sure how well silicon solar cells would do in that radiation environment.
Chernobyl is at 51 degrees North latitude. That far north, the angle of the sun and the earth's tilt significantly reduces the the available solar power throughout the year. It's about the same latitude as Germany, which only manages a solar capacity factor of about 0.10 (i.e. if you have a fixed panel with 100 Watts peak generating capacity at that location, over a year it will on average generate 10 watts). Capacity factor incorporates weather, night, average angle of the sun, and less sunlight reaching the ground because it has to travel through more air due to its oblique angle through the atmosphere.
The continental U.S. sits closer to 40 degrees North latitude, and has an average solar capacity factor of 0.145. The best locations for solar are closer to the equator, and in arid environments with few clouds. Solar capacity factor in Southern California and Arizona for example is about 0.185. That is, you can get nearly double the energy production of Germany for the same surface area of panels, simply by putting them in a better location. Chernobyl sits along Ukraine's northern border. Unless there are huge differences in average cloud cover, Ukraine would be much better served by building the solar plant along its southern border.
World's first solar power array with panels aimed at the ground...
Now what you going to do with radio active electricity. Sorry had to that because I have been sorting out the tripe from the wanna be de pres camps.