Probably not quite profitable due to line losses, unless someone comes up with a room temp superconductor that doesn't require high amounts of rare earths. And of course, even a room temp. superconductor that uses the most expensive elements possible hasn't been found either.
So there's generally an economic sweet spot between plant placement to users, and transmission distance.
I've actually used this as an example. With current exclusion zone limits, a 1-2GW electric nuclear plant is about 1/2 a mile on a side. We would need about 4000 GW to fully replace all of our energy with synfuels and electric. That is an area about 1000 square miles.
To put in perspective, the:
nevada test site is....1350 square miles
White sands is...3200 square miles
Line losses to distribute the ~1.25 TW to the rest of the US (average distance about 1500 miles) using EHV lines is about 5-10% and are included in the above calculation
That's based on using 1.1MV EHV lines, distributed over individual lines carrying 500A each (3-phase 1.6GW per line-set), with a resistance of ~0.16ohm/mile (or 240ohms, or about 60 MW loss per GW cable)
Burnup of 50 GWd/ton metal in reactors requires 80 tons of fuel per day, 30,000 per year. Using breeder reactors, that means our ALREADY MINED stockpile of DU would last 15 years supplying ALL our energy needs (including synthetic gasoline and diesel).
BTW, it's possible to extract uranium from seawater at about $300/kg...so the above fuel would cost $10 billion per year for an effectively infinite supply (Uranium is present at about 3 tons/cubic km of the ocean, so the above consumption would mean 10% of the uranium in the ocean would be able to supply the US for 100,000 years. Even assuming our energy needs double ever 7-10 years (a FAST economy), this is enough uranium to supply an exponentially growing US for about 2500 YEARS, or the above growth rate for the ENTIRE WORLD for 500-1000yrs.
Crazy no?
