First, trash is a very low value fuel, being mostly paper. So large amounts of it have to be processed to get anything useful. Then, it starts out dispersed through the community, and its collection is very expensive. Moreover, the plasma reactor is a very highly capital intensive device. Finally the fuel itself is highly variable both in quantity and composition, and this makes control of the process an engineering nightmare.

So, the overall costs are prohibitive, and the process is guaranteed to fail.

Back in the 1970′s, people tried to get energy out of so-called “free” trash by burning it. This is a much simpler and much lower cost technology than the one described above. And several plants were actually built.

The result was electric power costs literally ten times what the regional power companies asked, and the process was much less reliable power.

One of the risks of trash is that variability mentioned above. Municipal trash often contains explosive material like cans of waste gasoline or paint. You will even get the occasional bag of gun powder or ammunition or even dynamite or ammonium nitrate. As a result, you get about one explosion every 300,000 tons or so. The explosions occur during the shredding process.

When Columbus, OH, was burning trash (very expensively and very unreliably) at least one of their four shredding stations was done every day because of explosions. It takes months to get one back up and running. The shredders were there to reduce transportation costs, so the lack of at least one shredder drove up costs significantly.

Columbus finally shut down its whole trash-to-electricity system and ate the bonds that it was supposed to pay for. If I remember correctly, they lost about $200,000,000. Nowadays, Columbus’ trash goes into a landfill, unshredded and unsorted. Excess recyclables from the City’s recycling program often join it.

The landfill does produce modest amounts of methane, some of which is used for space heating in the nearby jail.

The engineering problem is sweet, but the pseudo-solution won’t fly. It’s just another example of environmental/socialist delusion.