alt Hacker NewsYou have a point. However, the requirement estimate of 45000 acres is off by 10 times ! I have seen some of these tanks - even accounting for spacing between them; at best one needs maybe a total of 5000 acres.
BTW - If everyone followed Elon Musk's projection of 100 x 100 miles of Solar; then the US would not need these fossil fuels. See : https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1vq0uu6/solar_i...
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Retric • today at 8:00 AM
Being realistic is the opposite of being off.
As the article points out fire is a real concern here, which is one of many reasons making salt caverns so appealing. But it’s also a major driver for distance between each above ground tank, you want to isolate risks so a single failure doesn’t propagate across the facility.
It doesn't really matter. 45,000 acres for a tank farm, or multiple tank farms, would be basically free by the standards of this project. Yes it's "an area the size of Washington DC" but it wouldn't be in Washington DC, where rent is expensive, it would be on some low-value desert land that the military might otherwise use as an artillery range.
Storing it in underground salt caverns is more secure, not necessarily cheaper.