[blueplum]

25% of the cost was for pollution controls - amazing.

[TweetEBird007]

20%

[zeestephen]

Interesting post.

I had no idea new USA coal plants were being constructed.

All I read about is old plants being shut down, and permits for new plants being denied.

[alloysteel]

But-but-but....it still produces CARBON DIOXIDE!!

Won’t that make most of southern Illinois burst into a huge sheet of flame? And won’t the flame burn all the way to the little children playing in playgrounds and back yards?

(Oh, dammit, do I STILL have to use the “sarcasm” tag?)

[VaRepublican]

Illinois??? coincidence?

[BobL]

“25% of the cost was for pollution controls - amazing. “

Actually more than that. The entire plant is designed around controlling pollution, due to the many old laws. This extra billion dollars was just for the new crap from the EPA.

[Venturer]

Sounds a lot like the cost of your new car.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Illinois bituminous coal is high in sulfur and is usually not the fuel of choice. Western low-sulfur subbituminous coals are preferred, but, as the article points out, they require huge transportation costs. This is the biggest new "greenfield mine-mouth" coal-fired plant built in the US in the last 20 years.

It doesn't sound like the plant has mercury scrubbers -- rather surprising.

How in the world did Obama not get around to bankrupting this project and Peabody coal? That's another campaign promise broken.

Video of the plant on Bechtel's website at www.bechtel.com. Just look at all the construction workers building the plant! Real jobs, not bogus "green jobs."

[DUMBGRUNT]

The Department of Energy sees coal remaining the dominant source of power for electricity generation for decades, even though it predicts that its use will drop from 45%...

The DOE has amazing powers of prognostication!

Just look at their long list of successful selections!

The ROI,oh it's good to be king!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

• 1,600-MW Prairie State Energy Campus has two 800 MW supercritical boilers by Babcock & Wilcox (my alma mater!)
• On-site coal mine with 200 million tons of recoverable coal. Approximately 35 square miles of an 8-foot-thick coal seam located directly beneath the plant and the surrounding area.
• 4,000 people involved in constructing the plant, including <1,000 Boilermakers. Boilermakers put in five million man-hours.
• The campus covers over 2,400 acres of surface. Five hundred acres are fenced at the plant and 200 at the mine.
• Emission controls systems comprise >50 percent of the plan area of the power block and include nitrous oxide scrubbers, selective catalytic reduction, limestone scrubbers, and wet and dry electrostatic precipitators.
• 50 months from full-notice-to-proceed to commercial operation of Unit 1. (compare this to WTC!!)
• 19 months from first pressure part erection to hydrotest (water-testing boiler components for leaks).
• 70,000 tube welds; 32,000 field welds without a leak. Weld rejection rate for the project is 1.15 percent. (amazing!)
• 5.3 million man-hours worked (by all crafts) without a lost-time accident

I spent five years starting up power plants like this world-wide. It is great to see American can-do is still alive when the damn government finally gets accommodated enough to step aside and let things get built.

Note construction crew cars and trucks in foreground parking lot!!

[Western Phil]

Lively Grove, Illinois about half way between Carbondale & St. Louis.