By Mark Waite

SolarReserve refuted concerns circulated over the Internet by a Colorado environmental group that evoked fears of a catastrophe from an explosion from the molten salts used in a future solar power plant at Crescent Dunes.

Emails from FriedCranes.org state sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate are highly explosive saltpeter, not benign molten salts as SolarReserve touts in its company press releases.

SolarReserve has already begun construction for their 110-megawatt, concentrated solar power plant on 2,094 acres on Pole Line Road, 13 miles northwest of Tonopah.

Their proprietary technology will use 17,500 mirror assemblies on the ground to focus thermal sunlight on a receiver on top of a 656-foot tower. In the receiver, sunlight heats molten salt to more than 1,000 degrees. The heated molten salt flows into a thermal storage tank, where it can be pumped to a steam generator to produce power.

The environmental group derives its name from the fact that SolarReserve plans to build two, 656-foot solar towers eight miles from the Baca National Wetlands Wildlife Refuge in Colorado — where Great Sandhill cranes reside.

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FriedCranes.orgclaims SolarReserve will store 12 million gallons of these highly explosive chemicals in two tanks adjacent to 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The group claims the 91,000 tons of the explosive material stored on site will be equivalent to the amount of three, 190s era atomic bombs. It compares that to the 2.5 tons of explosive and diesel fuel used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

“Not one reporter in Tonopah has the temerity to criticize the slip-shod engineering foisted off on the citizens of their Nevada town, nor to at least warn their friends and neighbors that an incendiary bullet fired into those massive tanks from a mile or two away outside their purported secure, perimeter fence patrolled by an alert security guard would be sufficient to trigger the tragic explosions,” FriedCranes.org states.

At the suggestion of the environmental group, an online check by the Pahrump Valley Times found sodium nitrate is used as an ingredient in fertilizer and pyrotechnics. Potassium nitrate is used as a fertilizer and a main component in stump removal; it’s also an oxidizing component in gunpowder.

SolarReserve had a ready answer to the group’s argument: The project is “fully permitted and completely safe.”

SolarReserve spokesman Andi Plocek said the questions over molten salt were put to rest in the environmental impact statement. She said other solar projects use molten salt storage, though most don’t have the solar tower that will be constructed at Crescent Dunes.

“Despite the claims by our ‘friends’ in Colorado, saltpeter won’t even burn, let alone cause an explosion. You must take this substance and add charcoal and sulfur to saltpeter in just the right proportions to make it explosive. Saying our salts are explosive is like saying all you need to make a cake is flour,” Plocek said in a written statement.

The company statement adds:

“Our salt certainly has none of these additives. It can’t burn, nor explode by itself. You could hit it with a bullet or a hand grenade or a stick of dynamite and it just sits there. In addition, the vastly large amount of molten salt and high temperatures makes it impossible to add the necessary amount of additional chemical to make it explosive. To make an explosive substance from our plant, a terrorist would literally need to bring in rail cars full of these other additives and find some way to mix the added chemicals with 1,000 degree molten salt, clearly an impossible task.”

The record of decision issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior for the SolarReserve project last December requires the company to come up with an avian and bat protection plan out of concerns for the golden eagle expressed by the Audubon Society.

SolarReserve had attempted to build a project at Mud Lake, closer to Tonopah, and Peavine Creek, near Hadley, but the U.S. Air Force objected the project would interfere with their radar.

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FriedCranes.orgfurther claims the only locals to get jobs at the SolarReserve plant, expected to employ 50 permanent workers, will get low wage, part-time, mirror-washing positions.

The project is expected to employ 600 construction workers.