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.'"

Comments

Well....

[johnsmithperson123]

There goes the wildlife preserve that was doing so well. Honestly, why not build another nuclear plant there? It's all shielded anyway.

Re:Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, why not build another nuclear plant there? It's all shielded anyway.

Because solar is walk away safe.

Re:Well....

[angel'o'sphere]

Animal life is doing quite well.
Only if you count the numbers of animals that live there now in relation to how they where hunted before.

Quite well implies healthy and long lived: and that they are not. Animal life is healthy no it is not healthy. They live about 2/3rd of their natural life span and die to cancer (longer living ones, rabbits which die after 4 or 6 years probably die to early anyway to have a measurable effect besides birth defects) or unknown reasons, sudden immune system collapse etc. The rate of birth deformations and still borns is very high.

Workers

[tsotha]

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.

Re:Workers

[ledow]

Entering Chernobyl (the town) isn't instant death.

People have been working there almost every day since the disaster.

People are working there now.

People are building the shells over the plant itself still.

So long as you monitor your exposure levels and don't spend weeks at a time close to the place, you're fine.

Re:empty waste land not equal to best location

[darthsilun]

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious––

I don't know what the numbers are, but apparently not having to build the connection to the grid makes it worthwhile.

People have talked about building solar+wind in the Sahara, but the cost of constructing the connection to the European grid is prohibitive. You could produce a lot of electricity, but who would you sell it to? I.e. who would you sell it to at high enough prices to make an ROI that justifies doing it in the first place. It would appear that Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya aren't the answer.

Re:empty waste land not equal to best location

[AchilleTalon]

Power transportation and distribution already exist on this site. Your comment 'but that was years ago' is totally irrelevant.Building distribution lines is expensive, they are already on site. It is not like you have to build them to an isolated site in the middle of nowhere.

Re: 4GW vs 1GW

[mspohr]

Solar is half the cost of nuclear (per kWh) and getting cheaper.
Nuclear just keeps getting more expensive.