Comment by toomuchtodo
11 hours ago
> Why not build the plant in LA? Is it more efficient to ship electricity instead of gas; or is it just more politically convenient to pollute Utah instead of LA?
Great question. It is easier to rely on existing transmission at Intermountain than it is to build a gas turbine in LA (along with whatever infra is needed to provide a reliable supply of fossil gas to the generator site). You can even add batteries, solar, wind etc in the future at that site; coal sites are being remediated and turned into battery storage colo in many situations to rely on that existing transmission infra.
Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_27 (first two paragraphs are relevant to total transmission capacity to LA from Intermountain, ~2.4GW at ±500kV)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Department_of_Wate...
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64604
(consider the fungibility of electricity vs other energy mediums)
I read somewhere that old coal plants would in theory be trivial to drop-in upgrade to nuclear: you just need to replace the heat source with a nuclear one, but the rest of the infrastructure can continue to be used.
The problem is that coal plants are sprinkled with a whole bunch of radioactive fly ash, and normal radiation level for a coal plant would violate the hell out of regulations for a nuclear plant.
Also that trivial issue of actually building a nuke plant for under $15 billion and in under 10 years, which hasn’t been done in “the west” for decades.
15b over 10 years is small money these days in terms of public infrastructure.
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This is currently being attempted in Wyoming, but required both state and federal reg changes. Currently timeline is for it to be online by 2030. https://wyofile.com/natrium-advanced-nuclear-power-plant-win...
There's also a good case for geothermal plants at these sites, if the geology permits it. There has been a good deal of development, and more sites are usable.