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They're not going to build a port "just 5 to 11 kilometers from telescopes" (from TFA) when the telescopes are 15km from the ocean. A chemical plant wouldn't be inland either because it will want access to the port.

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You think a port and industrial plant that requires 3/4 of a gigawatt of electricity will be built within a limit of less than 4000m from the ocean port? Every port I’ve seen took at least a few kilometers of inland space. I also don’t think a few kilometers makes much of a difference to the light reduction, basically any light at all will harm the telescope.

I am surprised at the “meh” response from the commenters here, they want to build an industrial plant in one of the best places for astronomy. Can’t the plant go elsewhere? The telescope cannot go elsewhere.

The problem is that, remarkably, there’s always a reason not to build. A different site in Chile will probably have some obscure species of beetle, or rocks that someone has interpreted as an Indigenous site, or some minor highway that can’t handle the traffic, etc etc etc, so that we can’t build there either.

Well then I guess we’ve run out of land!

The world is trade offs. Some are worse than others

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