(OILPRICE.COM) — The wastelands around Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant are about to begin their transformation into a large-scale solar power farm, capable of generating half the energy that Chernobyl did.
Solar power generation is the only way the no-go radiation zone around the disaster site can be used productively, as the land will not be fit for farming or anything else over the next few hundred years. Luckily, there is abundant sunshine in the area, making it easier to convince finance providers to fund such a project.
Initially, Ukraine’s Ecology Minister Ostap Semerak announced plans to turn Chernobyl into a solar farm in the middle of last year, saying 4 MW of solar power should be installed by the end of 2016, to bring the country’s total to over 570 MW from 453 MW as of end-June. Eventually, installed solar capacity should reach 1 GW, which would require US$1.1 billion in investments.
