Actual McGuire Nuclear Station takes up more land then the amount that the 21.5 MW solar field will take up, (McGuire is sitting on 586 Acres, and is using the water that is backed up from one of those enviroment destroying dams, without that dam, the nuclear power plant wouldn't exsist as it does).

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Lake Norman was built in the early 60’s as a hydroelectric dam. McGuire simply takes advantage of the lake for cooling water. Without the huge dam, it would be a simple run of river cooling system or at most, a much smaller dam.

McGuire also generates about 1/6 of the electricity used in both North and South Carolina.

Actually McGuire is on a 290 acre campus, which includes Duke Energy administrative offices, an “EnergyExplorium”, a portion of the dam, two lakes making up about 60 acres, and about 70 acres of wooded land. So about ½ of the lot is available for wildlife habitat.



" GIS Link"

Parcel ID#: 00119103 GIS ID#: 00119103

Owner Name:
DUKE POWER CO AND % TAX DEPT - PB05B

I don't necessarily think there's some hidden agenda behind them digging their heels. I just think it's ignorance of Nuclear power. They are afraid of it because they think it's dangerous and they have some bizarre ideas about storage problems.

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Actually that is not true, McGuire provides 44% of the Nuclear electricity in the state of NC. The state gets 18% of it's electricity from nuclear, meaning that that site generates 8% of NC's total electric needs, that's 1/12 for one states, not 1/6 for both.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...s/sept04nc.xls

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Sorry to return to this so late - i was thinking of LPG used as fuel, so therefor burned.

I also assumed LPG from Natural Gas resources.

Apologies if this has already been discussed at length, i have to fly and don't have time to read the dozen or so pages

I stand corrected. My stats were from Duke energy alone.

That’s a heck of a lot more than solar could ever produce, unless we roofed over every parking lot with PV cells. (If the damn things were affordable, then I would enthusiastically support that.)

No problem here friend. My issue with natural gas can be summed up like this:
1. Methane (natural gas) is under pressure in the ground, and therefore leaks out into the atmosphere. The more pressure, the more will leak.
2. Methane is 20 times more damaging as a “greenhouse gas” that the CO2 produced when it is burned. Natural gas is therefore a natural pollutant.
3. Reduce the gas pressure by drilling and extracting, therefore less “natural pollutant” will vent to the atmosphere. Distribute the gas to be used as a fuel, converting it to a much less harmful CO2.
4. Along with the environmental and economic benefits, lives and treasure may also be saved. It is now widely speculated that “Bermuda Triangle” type events are caused by methane eruptions. If gas pressures are reduced the eruptions should be less frequent.

Let me run some numbers

Solar's current effiecency is about 15%, or 200 W/m2 (watts per meter squared), those two powerplants at McGuire produce 2,300 MW (24/7/365). So for a solar field to hold the same amount of power it would need to be 11,040 MW (2300*24/5, because the Nuclear plant runs 24 hours a day and the solar would run 5 hours a day). 200W/m2 = 200 MW/km2, so we get 55.2 km2, or 13,800 acres, for those that can't picture how big this is, it is about a square chunck of land 4.5 miles on each side of the square. (in AZ, were you average 6.5 hours, you'd only need 10,600 acres, freeing up over 3,000 acres just based on location).


Just to show where I got the hours of total sun a day, Cape Hatteras (5.31), Greensboro (4.71), Charleston (5.06), so I averaged 5 for the area. And these are yearly averages, not just summer.


But what you are missing is the growth that solar has been experiencing. Effeciency up 600% in 40 years, cost down 96% in 40 years, that comes out to averageing 7.5% drop in price each year, with a 5% increase in efficency each year, No other power source can come close to that growth.

Meaning that if it keeps to it's 40 year average, than in 10 years, it will be about 63% more efficent (meaning that the land needed would be cut by over 5,300 acres) and the cost would be less than 1/2 (about 46%) of what it is now.

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

That works great in AZ where land is useless, but here in NC that would displace wildlife or farmland. Plus, it provides no electricity for most of the 24 hour day. What would a solar farm that size cost anyway?