The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]

[Tim May]

At 2:37 PM -1000 12/29/00, Reese wrote:
>At 03:33 PM 12/29/00 -0500, auto58194 at hushmail.com wrote:
>
>>Looking at the queue of plant requests within California they also seem
>>to be obsessed with building them in highly populated areas.
>
>Easy commute for the workers, and a large pool to draw workers from?

Most of the proposed new plants are very, very small. Nearly all in 
populated areas are natural gas-fired plants, with minimal-to-zero 
burden on the local environment. For example, a couple of such small 
plants have been built in the San Jose area in recent years. 
Environmentalists even favor building such a plant over letting Cisco 
expand, to name a recent newspaper issue.

What these new plants ARE NOT is the kind of large nuclear plant 
comparable in size to the highly successful Diablo Canyon Nuclear 
Power Station. That plant was completed more than 15 years ago. It is 
in an unpopulated area, between Half Moon Bay and Pismo Beach, and 
west of San Luis Obispo.

A similar plant was once planned for Bodega Bay, northwest of San 
Francisco, but it was blocked by tree huggers in the early 70s.

>
>Another consideration, for building closer to where the demand is.
>These are self-evident considerations.

Especially for the "micro plants" described above. Economies of scale, etc.

--Tim May
-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
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