- 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!!