Word: coal
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...have about 30% more generating capacity than they need, far more than the 20% to 25% generally considered sufficient to meet unusual weather-caused emergencies or to assist neighboring utility companies. In response to the lower energy demand, some utility companies slowed or halted construction of new plants, whether coal or nuclear...
...multibillion-dollar projects than to abandon them. That assumption sometimes proved erroneous. Constructing nuclear plants has proved very expensive. In the early 1970s, says Charles Komanoff of the New York City-based consulting firm Komanoff Energy Associates, there was little difference in the construction costs of nuclear and coal-burning plants...
Nukes cost $200 per kilowatt (kW) to build, coal plants around $175. But nuclear construction prices quickly began climbing. By the late 1970s, Komanoff says, nukes cost $700 per kW, compared with $500 for coal plants. Now, with post-T.M.I. requirements pushing the price of nuclear construction even higher, coal plants are clearly more economical. According to Komanoff, a coal-fired plant with state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment can be built today for around $1,200 per kW; a nuclear plant costs $3,000 per kW. Says Komanoff: "The power industry may really have made only...
...danger of radiation release makes the precision required in putting up a nuclear plant much greater than the accuracy needed in an ordinary coal-fired facility. "It's like building a giant Swiss watch," says David Freeman, a director of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates two atomic plants. Many nuclear construction crews tried to build these Swiss watches with little more than the skills needed to hammer together a coal burner. Delays and repairs have led to catastrophic cost overruns, which have plagued many plants completed in recent years as well as some of those currently under construction. Florida...
Compared with coal burners, nuclear power plants generate little waste. A 1,000-MW coal-fired facility produces 30 lbs. of ash per sec., which comes to 423,040 tons a year, or enough to fill 2,568 trailer trucks. The waste from a nuclear plant of the same size would fit into a refrigerator...