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The American Southwest has some of the best solar resources on the globe. Nevada, with abundant land and sunshine is becoming a hot bed for the solar industry. The result is green jobs and billions of investment dollars.
Solar Panel Manufacturing
The opening of Ausra’s solar thermal power factory earlier this week in Las Vegas is a prime example. As the largest plant of its kind in the world, it employs 50 factory workers. At full capacity, the plant can generate 700 MW of solar panels, which could produce enough power for 500,000 homes. This quantity of panels would create an estimated 1,400 solar plant construction jobs.
The factory will produce giant mirrors and absorber tubes that are used for solar power plants. This technology uses the sun to generate heat and spin turbines, thus creating electricity. The giant mirrors follow the sun and reflect it onto fixed absorber tubes that are mounted above.
“Nevada is poised to be a leader in the clean energy revolution,” said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “This facility will help position our state as the premiere place to invest in these new technologies. As the factory expands operations and we continue to invest in clean energy, we’ll create thousands of good-paying jobs and keep our outdoors pristine for future generations.”
By Max Lindberg •
June 25, 2008
It All Depends On Who You Ask
Las Vegas Water Offical Warns Radioactive Levels Rising
Sunday’s news was a bit disconcerting, when I read a small story at Tri-State Online. Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority was quoted as saying measurable quantities of uranium are showing up in Colorado River water, something difficult and expensive to remove before passing it on to consumers in Las Vegas.
She blames upstream uranium mining, especially in the Moab, Utah area, so I decided to take a look and see what’s happening up there.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no operating uranium mines in or near Moab, UT, or anywhere in the state of Utah. So, I felt Ms. Mulroy was referring to the uranium mill tailings just outside Moab, where they’ve been for decades after the failure of the Atlas Minerals Corporation mill.
By Max Lindberg •
June 4, 2008
As promised in a podcast interview on February 11th,
Edward Sproat, manager of the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, filed a license application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Years of legal wrangling have finally produced a long-awaited report on the current and potential effects of climate change on the U.S. And it should come as no surprise that regions already hurting — Alaska and the arid Southwest — are among the areas expected to feel the greatest pain from continued climate change in the future.
The report, Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States, was released today by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. According to the Government Accountability Project, the study was “years overdue under a requirement of law” and was prepared only after a federal court order last year set a release deadline of May 31, 2008.
Among the report’s highlights (or lowlights, depending on your perspective):
By Keith Rockmael •
March 21, 2008
Even though the calendar displays spring, a lot of us aren’t ready to hit the beach just yet. In fact, we’re still hitting the slopes. Is it possible to think sustainably when we strap on our bindings? There’s no way around the fact that snowboarding and skiing (much like golf) aren’t sustainable but the world just can’t wipe out all the ski resorts. So we decided to check out the sustainability of some resorts.
Kirkwood, [...]
Not one to ever stay out of the news for one reason or another, Wal-Mart this week unveiled what it calls its most energy-efficient U.S. store yet: the HE.5 prototype.
The store, located in Las Vegas, is said to use up to 45 percent less energy than your basic Supercenter. It’s also designed specifically for the Southwest’s typical climate conditions.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
February 22, 2008
Las Vegas, Nevada - The current period of sustained growth in the American Southwest is putting tremendous demands on important resources like water, wildlife habitat, and, with the light beaming from the top of Las Vegas’ Luxor Hotel as a reminder, electricity. Nevada currently gets about 90% of its electricity from fossil fuels, and the majority source fuel is natural gas. As natural gas prices are predicted to rise, a debate is stirring about whether the state needs to build new coal-fire power plants to meet current needs, or whether it should tap its renewable resource potential. For that reason, Acciona Energy could not have picked a better time than today to dedicate their new 64 MW concentrating solar power plant (CSP) in Boulder City, Nevada, less than thirty miles from the Las Vegas strip. And with a star-studded collection of speakers like Ed Begley Jr., NASA astronaut Dr. Sally Ride, and Apple co-founder and tech whiz Steve Wozniak, the Spanish-based Acciona dedicated the facility in true Las Vegas style.
The 300-acre site in Boulder City uses parabolic trough collectors to generate electricity. The 760 mirrored troughs track the movement of the sun’s path, and their 184,000 mirrors face the sky and concentrate the sunlight to a large metal and glass receiver in the middle of the trough that holds circulating oil. The oil travels to heat exchangers, which heat water and create steam that spins a turbine.
At 64 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity, Nevada Solar One is the largest CSP plant to be built in 16 years and it makes Nevada the largest per capita producer of solar power in the country. After roughly a decade of little growth for the industry, CSP is coming back strong, as is further evidenced by today’s announcement by Abengoa Solar that they will be building a 280 MW concentrating solar facility in Arizona.
The absence of any new CSP over the last 16 years leaves many people scratching their heads and asking themselves, why?
By Max Lindberg •
February 20, 2008
I was reading some recent headlines about Yucca Mountain, claiming the federal government will face heavy penalties and judgments if the project isn’t finished. Read beyond the headlines my friends, “we” fund the government, the money comes from our pockets, and it isn’t chicken feed.
The latest estimates are, that if Yucca Mountain isn’t finished until 2017, “we” will owe the utilities an estimated $7 billion in penalties, provided by law, because the repository isn’t finished. Bump completion time up another 3 years, and the bill goes up to about $11 billion.
By Max Lindberg •
February 11, 2008
That’s the question I posed to Ward Sproat, the DOE’s manager of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. His agency is in charge of the Yucca Mountain waste repository project in Nevada.
This is the classic “Not in my back yard” battle, even more understandable since Nevada was the site of nuclear weapons testing beginning in 1951. There were 100 atmospheric tests until they went underground in 1962, when 828 devices were exploded. [...]
By Max Lindberg •
January 23, 2008
This is the third and final segment of our interview with Robert Loux, Director of the agency for Nuclear Projects in Nevada.
In our previous podcasts, Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Case Podcast, Part One, Mr. Loux talked about his agency, it’s mission and why the state is so critical of the DOE and it’s practices.
In the second presentation, Yucca Mountain: The Nevada Cast Podcast, Part Two, he talks about the regulatory process and unsuitability of the mountain as a long-term repository for high-level nuclear waste.
By Max Lindberg •
January 21, 2008
I’ve been going on for some time now about the nuclear industry, the possibility of more nuclear power stations going online, and especially what to do with radioactive waste that’s been piling up for 50 years.
The answer to the waste situation was supposed to have been Yucca Mountain, a remote natural structure some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Since it’s inception nearly 25 years ago, Nevadans have fought creation of a long-term storage facility in their back yard.
I wanted to know more about Nevada’s opposition to the Yucca Mountain project, so I picked up the phone and talked with Robert Loux, Executive Director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects in Nevada. He’s been going head-to-head with the DOE and other agencies for a long time, and has some interesting things to say about the project and the DOE.
