ML062650456
| ML062650456 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Oyster Creek (DPR-016) |
| Issue date: | 09/14/2006 |
| From: | Miazza M - No Known Affiliation |
| To: | NRC/ADM/DAS/RDB |
| References | |
| %dam200612, 71FR34969 00022 | |
| Download: ML062650456 (2) | |
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In this plan, Fla. garbage is toast
$425M Sunshine State plant would vaporize 3,000 tons of trash and create elerty BY BRIAN SKOLOFF ASSOCIATED PRESS FORT PIERCE, Fla. -
A Flor ida county has grand plans to ditch its dump, generate electricity and help build roads - all by vaporizing garbage at temperatures hotter than the sun.
The $425 million facility ex pected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first such plant in the nation oper ating on such a massive scale and the largest in the world.
Supporters say the process is cleaner than traditional trash incin eration, though skeptics question whether the technology can meet theJlofty expectations
-The 100,000-square-foot plant, srad to be operational in two years, is expected to vaporize 3,000 tons of garbage a day. County offi cials estimate their entire landffil 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978 -
will be gone in 18 years.
No byproduct will go unused, according to Geoplasma, the At linta-based company building and paying for the plant.
Synthetic, combustible gas pro duced in the process will be used to run turbines to create electricity about 120 megawatts a day - that will be sold back to the grid. The facility will operate on about a
-third f the powerit generatesfree from outside electricity.
About 80,000 pounds of steam per day will be sold to a neighbor ing Tropicana Products Inc. facility to power the juice plant's turbines.
- Sludge rnom the county's waste water treatment plant will be va porized, and a material created from melted organic matter - up to.600 tons a day -
will be hard ened into slag, and sold for use in road and construction projects.
"This is sustainability in its tru est and finest form," said Hilburn Hillestad, president of Geoplasma, a subsidiary of Jacoby Develop ment Inc.
For years, some waste-manage ment facilities have been convert ing methane - created by rotting trash in landfills - to power. Oth ers also bum trash to produce electricity.
But experts say population gwth will limit space available for future landfills.
"Welve only got the size of the planet," said Richard Tedder, pro grm administrator for the Florida Department of Environmental Pro tection's solid waste division. "Be cam of all of the pressures of de velopment, people don't want land
- 11. It's going to be harder and er to site new landfills, and it's oig to be harder for existing dmls to continue to expand."
, The plasma-arc gasification fa ty in St. Lucie County, on cen ragFlorida's Atlantic Coast, aims rotve that problem by eliminat the need for a landfill. Only two facilities are operating in
.world - both in Japan - but
%ure -aslf' garbage on a much iller scale.
'Up to eight plasma arc Sipped cupolas will vaporize year-round, nonstop. Gar ge will be brought in on conveyor Its and dumped into the cylindri
,cupolas where it falls into a ne of heat more than 10,000 de s Fahrenheit.
"We didnt want to do it like ev rbody else," said Leo Cordeiro, e county's solid waste director.
We knew there were better ways."
No emissions are released dur the closed-loop gasification, Ge plasma says. The only emissions Ill come from the synthetic gas powered turbiris&_tat create_
electricity. Even that will be cleaner than burning coal or natural gas, experts say.,
Few other toxins will be generated, if any at all, Geoplasma says.
But critics disagree.
"we've found projects similar to this being misrepresented all over the country," said Monica Wilson of the Global Alliance for Incinerator
ýAtematives.
Wilson said there aren't enough udies yet to prove the companys
,laims that emissions will likely be ess than from a standard natural gs power plant.
"I think this is the time for the sidents of this county to start I
LDKWAS#/AS01AT1D PESS Leo Cordeiro, let St Lucle County solid waste director, and assistant director Ron Roberts stand at fth landflD In Fort Pierce, Fla.
s some tough questions," Wil
ýon said.
Bruce Parker, president and
,TO of the Washington, D.C.
xased National Solid Wastes Man igement Association, scoffs at the iotion that plasma technology will liminate the need for landfills.
"We do know that plasma arc is i legitimate technology, but let's we first how this thing works for
- t. Lucie County," Parker said.
"It's too soon for people to make
.I d claims that we won't need
- dfllls."
Louis Circeo, director of Geor Tech's plasma research divi on, said that as energy prices soar cd landfill fees increase, plasma I technology will become more ffordable.
'municipal solid waste is per aps the largest renewable energy resource that is available to us,"
Circeo said, adding that the pro cess "could not only solve the gar rage and landfill problems In the nited, States and elsewhere, but it
.ould significantly alleviate the cur-rent energy cris."
He said that if large plasma fa ctes were put to use nationwide vaporize trash, they could theo a
generate electricity equlva tent to about 25 nuclear plants.
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