Re: Solar Thermal

I was never a fan of the NG peaking model.  It works, it's low cost, but it's short range thinking.  Now it's time to pay for shortsightedness.

Nuclear plants are baseload, period.  Their license to print $$$ is based on maximum up-time, and demand over baseload.

The $300MM figure is what caught my eye... Do you know that the US uses >$660 million worth of electricity *every day*  So the increase you're discussing is less than 12 hours worth of electricity. 

Given the total budget we're talking about that's actually pretty reasonable...  OK it's an overage, and that's bad, but they're not alone when it comes to going over-budget on a major overhaul.  It's all in perspective.

I still want to install solar-thermal panels at every powerplant nationwide.  They all use border land, and that equates to millions of kilowatts of available energy, and easy access to the grid.  Even if it only offsets 1% of the fuel that a plant consumes that's a nice chunk of energy!