Military Blocks Massive Solar Power Project in Nevada
A vacant piece of land in the Nevada desert gets year-round sunlight and has existing transmission lines left over from a mining operation – plus, there are no issues with wildlife. It seems like the perfect place to build a solar power operation.
But a solar project by Los Angeles company Solar Reserve that would have featured a vast field of mirrors, a molten-salt storage facility and a 600-foot ‘power tower’ has hit a major roadblock: opposition from the United States military.
Why would the military want to block the $700 million project, especially with an administration that is so keen to advance renewable energy? It turns out that piece of vacant land is too close for comfort to Nellis Air Force Base, and officials say it would compromise classified aspects of the Air Force’s training range.
From The Washington Post:
The Nevada plant was supposed to be a showcase for SolarReserve: one of the largest solar plants in the world, using heat-transfer technology developed for space rockets by United Technologies. A field of mirrors would focus sunlight on a receiver on a tall tower, where it would heat the molten salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than other solar plants using similar technology. The molten salt would then flow to a storage tank, where its heat would generate steam and power conventional steam turbines similar to those in coal plants.
“We’re trying to build a facility that runs 24 hours a day,” said Kevin B. Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive.
But Belote said the solar plant would compromise classified aspects of the Air Force’s training range and would interfere with radar. He said the Air Force would tell the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which owns most of the land in the state, to reject the proposal. (The bureau controls more than 20 million acres of land with wind energy potential and more than 30 million acres with solar potential.)
SolarReserve officials “did a lot of research with publicly available tools,” Belote said. “But when they came back for an official look the answer was, ‘Man, that’s still too close.’ And because of the sensitivity of information, I can’t tell them why. . . . Unfortunately for them and us, there’s stuff on the Nevada testing range we don’t tell anyone about.” Belote suggested they try another site, either 100 miles to the southeast or about 80 miles to the northeast, near the town of Mesquite.
SolarReserve is understandably upset, considering that they were pointed to this site by the air Force after an initial site was rejected as too close to the training base. They’ve spent 18 months in negotiations.
Of course, this just makes people intensely curious about what goes on at that Air Force training base, doesn’t it? The gears are turning in the minds of UFO believers.
Link The Washington Post
Related posts:
- Solar Energy from Africa Could Power Europe
- The World’s Dirtiest Power Plants
- Solar Lighting Set – Eco Deal of Day
- Great Green Job of the Week: Solar PV Installation Instructor/School Director, Solariv
- Autonomie Project Flip Flops for Eco Threads Thursday
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Consciousness, Green Living, Health, Science, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
