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Power Company Kills Nuclear Plant, Plans $6 Billion In Solar, Battery Investment (arstechnica.com)
Socguy writes: After being unable to complete the Levy County Nuclear Plant a few years ago, Duke energy abandoned it, leaving rate payers on the hook. Duke is now in the process of settling legal action as a result. As part of the settlement Duke will construct or acquire 700MW of solar capacity over four years in the western Florida area, construct 50MW of battery storage, undertake grid modernizations and install 530 electric car charging stations. "The Levy nuclear plant was proposed in 2008 and ran into hurdles early on," reports Ars Technica. "With cheap natural gas in 2013, Duke Energy Florida became nervous that it might not recuperate costs spent on the nuclear plant, especially with regulatory delays. The company cancelled its engineering and construction agreements in 2013 but said that it was holding open the possibility of returning to Levy someday. Over nine years, about $800 million had been spent on preparatory work for the plant. With Tuesday's announcement, those costs are sunk costs now. But overall, the changes will save residential customers future nuclear-related rate increases. Those customers will see a cost reduction of $2.50 per megawatt-hour (MWh) 'through the removal of unrecovered Levy Nuclear Project costs,' the utility said. The 700MW of solar won't exactly cover the nameplate capacity of the Levy plant, which was supposed to deliver 2.2 gigawatts to the region. But the Tampa Bay Times wrote that Duke 'is effectively giving up its long-held belief that nuclear power is a key component to its Florida future and, instead, making a dramatic shift toward more solar power.'"
considering they are dealing with dangerous materials it would make sense to ensure it was built to code.
Except southern Florida is expected to be underwater by end of the century.
Given Fukushima is still making news I'm sure it's a better feeling roll of the dice for them.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
So then, why do people cheer when a nuclear project gets killed?
I'm sorry, you're confused. It isn't cheering. It's mocking laughter as you FAILED YET AGAIN with your pretenses of the effectiveness of nuclear power.
You can be all principled and turn down the interim treatment while you wait for the perfect treatment. In the meantime you die waiting for the perfect treatment instead of opting to do something now that will buy time.
Yeah, ok, we're still going to laugh when your Voodoo Witch Doctor steals your money and runs back to whatever Caribbean heck hole he came from, and then we're going to piss on your grave.
See, you don't get it, you are ignoring the very thing that is happening. You are looking at nuclear power as if it saved anybody anything, but it has had nothing but failures since George W. Bush touted how we'd somehow perform a miracle. And you can blame the government, you can blame the environmentalists, you can blame the Red, Yellow, and White Martians, but the real fault, the real fault, was always in the corporate boardrooms.
They never wanted it. They just see it as a way to put more money in their hands. And you keep falling for it every time. Go ahead, be gullible. This time, this time, you'll catch that Wascally Wabbit.
You should learn to read. You may hate the government, but as with most things business related, it's all about the company wanting to make money; "regulation" is just their dog whistle to people not smart enough to understand jack shit.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The idea of solar being environmentally friendly is a joke. Ever look at the materials that go into solar panels, and the amount of electronic waste this will produce? Also consider the possible wildlife loss due to the amount of acreage this is going to take. Due to the fact Florida has many endangered ecosystems already due to overdevelopment and it hosting a high biodensity, its actually a pretty poor place for solar. Out west in the desert areas where you have low biodensity would be the least impact. Florida also does have rain and a lot of rain days.
I'd hate to think about what goes into the batteries, the heavy metals and the environmental damage it will cause to mine it all out of the earth to extract these finite resources. The way these things use up rare earth metals its really hard to see how its sustainable.