As I have said many times, collaboration between Environmentalists and Industry is never a good idea because the Environmentalists have to sacrifice some of their integrity to participate. We have no time for that now. Every little bit of the Earth that is unsullied is now sacred.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FutureGen
How can a project that has 2 of its own web sites and a Wikipedia listing be so wrong? Well let’s see COST?
Officials vow to
not give up on
FutureGen
Durbin blames politics for decision to scrap plant
By DAVID MERCERTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHAMPAIGN — Officials promised Wednesday to fight the Department of Energy’s decision to scrap a futuristic, low-pollution power plant planned for central Illinois, but the leader of the state’s congressional delegation seemed resigned to its end.Sen. Dick Durbin said he hopes to fund the $1.8 billion FutureGen power plant through earmarks in the federal budget, but wasn’t optimistic it would work.“If the administration doesn’t support it, we’ve seen that this president is willing to use his veto pen over and over again,” Durbin said. “Without the support of the administration, it’s an uphill struggle.”Durbin spoke not long after Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said publicly what he’d told members of Illinois’ congressional delegation and Illinois economic development officials in a private meeting Tuesday.Rather than spend money on FutureGen, which was to have been built by a consortium of coal and power companies in Mattoon using mainly federal funds, the DOE plans to put its finances into a handful of projects around the country that would demonstrate the capture and burial of carbon dioxide from commercial power plants.“This restructuring … is an all-around better deal for Americans,” Bodman, an Illinois native, said in making the announcement to scuttle the program.The department will now solicit industry applications for participation in the new projects. The idea is for the government to pay for building the carbon capture and storage facilities and industry to build the modern coal-burning power plant. Each project would be designed to capture 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas linked to global warming, officials said.The coal and power companies planning to build the plant, known as the FutureGen Alliance, issued a statement saying it “remains committed to keeping FutureGen on track” but it was unclear how that would be possible without the federal funding.FutureGen was envisioned as a unique research project that would trigger development of a virtually pollution-free coal plant where carbon dioxide emissions would be captured and buried deep beneath the earth.
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For a listing of the last ten AP postings on FutureGen go here.
Click on the Length of Search box and pick Archive, the type in FutureGen in the submit Box and click submit.
The Project escalated in cost from 750,000 million $$$ to 1.8 billion $$$ in a little less than 5 years. That is more than enough to build a “new generation” nuke on the same site. But think about this. What would it actually cost. We all know that typical Utility Construction Projects come in with at least 20% cost over runs and sometime as high as 40% is acceptable. Which means that the real cost would likely hover at just under 3 billion $$$. Can anyone say Too Cheap To Meter???
