Looking to mine every resource it can from every scrap of land, there are reports Ukraine will be transforming Chernobyl into the world’s largest solar farm. The hope is that the contaminated nuclear wasteland as a solar farm will be able to produce a third of the electricity the plant generated when it was working at its height almost 30 years ago, as reporter by The Guardian. A presentation about the project revealed the Ukrainian government will only be using 6,000 hectares of “idle” space with the site’s 1,000 square km exclusion zone.
It seems like a somewhat risky situation, but the Ukrainian government believes they can use some of the land for solar, biogas and heat and power generation. Tens of thousands of people in Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Russia had to evacuate after the Chernobyl reactor became unstable.
Some still live in villages outside of Chernobyl, and if you have seen recent photographs of the site, it doesn’t seem like a picturesque place. But the Ukrainian government believes there are still resources to be produced as they believe 1,000MW of solar and 400MW of other renewable energy can be mined from the area:
“There has been a change in the perception of the exclusion zone in Ukraine. Thirty years after the Chernobyl tragedy [it] reveals opportunities for development. A special industrial area is to be created in compliance with all rules and regulations of radiation safety within the exclusion zone.”
Time will tell if the site can still produce sustainable energy, but Hollywood would have us believe this may not be a good idea. But there have been worse things than the Chernobyl disaster.
(Via The Guardian)
