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World's Largest Solar Power Plant Planned For Chernobyl Nuclear Wasteland (electrek.co)

Posted by BeauHD on from the technical-ironies dept.

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.'"

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. empty waste land not equal to best location by sittingnut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:empty waste land not equal to best location by Pentium100 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And one such factor is that the are currently sits unused and cannot be used for pretty much anything else. It also is probably safe from being taken over by Russians (who would want uninhabitable land), unless they prepare to occupy the whole country (in which case the location of this power plant does not matter). Also, as the summary states, there are high capacity power lines in the zone already and repairing them probably is cheaper than building brand new lines.

      While you could built it, say, near Odessa and be 500km closer to the equator (which presumably would result in more sunlight), that area is in danger of being taken over by Russians (and also is in the "pro-Russian south"). The land is most likely already in use for agriculture or something like that.

  2. The forest was killed by radiation by mdsolar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    https://www.thestar.com/news/w...