Training Under Way For New Nuclear Plant Operators In S. Carolina 74
"Start thinking about getting your tinfoil hat radiation hardened," writes an anonymous reader, and excerpts thus from ABC News: "Southern Co. in Georgia and SCANA Corp. in South Carolina are the first to prepare new workers to run a recently approved reactor design never before built in the United States. Training like it will be repeated over the decades-long lifetime of those plants and at other new ones that may share the technology in years to come. Both power companies are building pairs of Westinghouse Electric Corp. AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and SCANA Corp.'s Summer Nuclear Station northwest of Columbia, S.C. While the nuclear industry had earlier proposed a larger building campaign, low natural gas prices coupled with uncertainty after last year's disaster at a Japanese nuclear plant have scaled back those ambitions." Getting a new nuclear plant approved is a long haul.
SC Legend (Score:5, Funny)
South Carolina has the largest number of nuclear facilities and radioactive waste in the USA.
Washington DC has the largest number of lawyers.
South Carolina won the toss and had first choice.
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So that explains why they vote Republican! They're suffering from radiation poisoning!
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That is only because of the low population numbers in Mississippi and Alabama, they got you beat in % of racists and morons.
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And the largest number of racists, morons...
Not true, per-capita South Dakota has more racists and morons than any state south of the Mason-Dixon line. They're the only state to elect a murdering rapist [wikipedia.org] to the US House of Representatives and twice to the Governor's mansion.
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Your link for William Janklow says he was accused of rape. He was accused, yes, but given his age and how out of shape he was - from his photos - the gal in question could probably have beat him to a pulp.
The victim was a 15-year old girl against a 26-year old adult male at the time of the rape.
Please consider that Wikipedia will say what the last person to edit it wants it to say.
Incorrect, Wikipedia has a history [wikipedia.org] that can show you everything that was ever on the article, so it says everything that every p
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Boeing built a plant in N. Charleston, SC for the 787 Dreamliner seeking wages and right to work status (not to mention tax incentives). The Dreamliner has suffered from delays and electrical failure, engine and cooling problems.
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Let’s be fair – most of the issues can be traced back to Washington – both state and district.
Re:Better at Nukes? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about just being reasonable. The 787 is having the same sorts of problems that every new plane gets.
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The South Carolina plant has nothing to do with the delays or other problems, having only opened last year. Boeing only delivered the first SC-built 787 a couple months ago, and no special problems have been found. Manufacture of components is around the world, final assembly was exclusively in unionized Washington for the first Dreamliners. That's the source of the issues you mentioned, including delays due to a union strike in Washington.
The problem the unions have with the SC plant is that they won't get
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Sorry, I didn't intend to sound critical, just guessing the most likely reason for the plane comment (unless the GP really was talking about the Wright Bros).
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Could not have been Bacon.
To be a proper revision of US history it must have been done by a woman who was half black and half native american and hailed from Mexico.
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Something from over 100 years ago where they built an airplane that barely flew 4 flights before crashing
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Something from over 100 years ago where they built an airplane that barely flew 4 flights before crashing
That was in North Carolina.
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Not revolutionary (Score:3, Interesting)
The reactors them selves are chernobyl biscuis (/sarcasm).
http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ [westinghousenuclear.com] Commonly known as a pressurized water reactor (PWR).
The only thing revolutionary is the control systems. Its more digitized and automated then ever before. Personally I don't like this, not very warm and fuzzy about the US nuclear commission and the state of the industry. I would like to see other designs implemented.
Re:Not revolutionary (Score:5, Informative)
According to this article though, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor [wikipedia.org], Chernyobyl was graphite modulated, and different then a PWR.
also a certified interplanetary prospector (Score:2)
I've been qualified since 1980 [thenewgamer.com]!
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Actually, the most revolutionary thing in the AP1000s is the passive safety system. Also, the fact that it's a modular design is a pretty impressive thing.
Re:Not revolutionary (Score:4, Insightful)
Compare the safety, reliability, efficiency, and comfort of a car designed and built in the 60s/70s to one from the 21st century... not much revolution, but a whole lot of evolution. Which is better?
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Compare the safety, reliability, efficiency, and comfort of a car designed and built in the 60s/70s to one from the 21st century... not much revolution, but a whole lot of evolution. Which is better?
21st century models, of course, but that's probably not a comparison you want to make. After all, accidents still happen and people still die, every day, in late model cars.
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Don't stretch analogies too far... they're liable to snap back and leave a welt.
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But it's a bit frivolous to complain that there's still a chance of an accident. You aren't just causing risk of harm for no reason after all. There's a big benefit, power being gener
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"Revolutionary" is a stupid word to use, but there is a great deal more to the AP1000 than just its improved control systems.
Most of the newer technologies used in the AP1000 are meant to deal with accidents involving loss of offsite power (E.g., the Fukushima accident). It involves a lot of passive cooling systems, which require no power or intervention to operate, and are really neat.
http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/station_blackout_home/passivecontainmentcooling.html
This website has a remarkably go
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The only thing revolutionary is the control systems.
The nuclear industry doesn't like "revolutionary". They are risk-adverse and prefer reliable, proven, known technologies over more exotic options. Sorry... but no regional power company is going to commit billions to implementing a Gen IV design [wikipedia.org] at commercial scales until this stuff is much, much further along. Not that the NRC would let it happen at this point anyways. The hurdles to any new nuclear development are enormous enough without this sort of fantasizing.
That said, I think you're overlooking th
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improvements (Score:2)
among them are reduced need for pumping water to cool the AP1000, it is claimed that in shutdown, as long as there is water in the machine, it convectively cools without pumping.
Why is it different? (Score:2)
Other than digital controls the article doesn't say how this design is different.. is it just the controls?
Re:Why is it different? (Score:5, Informative)
It's the first "3rd generation" reactor design to be approved, and is supposed to have much better passive-safety features than previous generations. For example, in a reactor scram, the core would be cooled by a gravity-driven cooling system that works without power.
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Did you even read what the GP said? "Coolant leak" implies that the coolant has gone, so no amount of natural circulation will help.
It emerged a month or two ago that in fact the cooling system at Fukushima was damaged by the earthquake, so even if power had been available it was compromised. We don't fully understand what happened there yet.
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Did you even read what the GP said? "Coolant leak" implies that the coolant has gone, so no amount of natural circulation will help.
It emerged a month or two ago that in fact the cooling system at Fukushima was damaged by the earthquake, so even if power had been available it was compromised. We don't fully understand what happened there yet.
I did, and the design of the AP-1000, unlike Fuku's BWR design, is designed to recirculate a coolant leak within primary containment and the core. Even in Fuku's case the real issue was not the loss of coolant accident but the lack of power to recircualte it via pumps.
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Errr, it *IS* a passive cooling system..
You basically have to open a few explosive bolts on the reactor, and the reactor building along with the reactor enters passive-cooling mode using gravity and convection. The only "non-100%-passive" requirement is someone tops up the water cistern on the top of the building once in a while as it is used to cool *the building* and keep the convection going inside the building.
It is quite a nice design actually.
Reactors like this remain PWR because these are cheaper (bu
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"...and we just hope that there is no coolant leak."
If there is a coolant leak, you just pump in more coolant. Or hava a passive reservoir supply more. If it is a REALLY major breach, you're probably SOL anyway.
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Depending on the flow you need, and the conditions under which the flow must be provided, a pump *is* better under many circumstances.
However, in a harsh environment, with no power, and an absolute need for a certain amount of flow, gravity/convection driven systems may be a whole lot more desirable.
Re:Why is it different? (Score:5, Informative)
On top of the digital controls, it has vastly simpler mechanical and electrical design, yielding significant reductions in the amounts of safety-related piping, cabling, valves, seismic building volume, etc.
Something that should be appreciated, but is seldom mentioned: the design work has been conducted using modern computers and software incorporating vastly improved analytical methods for nuclear, thermal, mechanical, civil, and electrical analysis. The last round of plants built in the US were designed in the 60s and 70s using tools that seem positively ancient by today's standards.
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Is it going to be standardized? In a previous /. story I read that US nuclear power plants are usually designed by an architect, so every plant ends up having a different layout from the next even if the core components are the same. In France, on the other hand, they're all built to the same design, so operating procedures etc. all transfer from one plant to the next.
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An architect? No. Nobody cares if the containment is built to the golden ratio.
Engineers? Yes.
Meaning it should be torn down but will not fall down.
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The AP1000 is different than previous designs in that emergency cooling does not rely on backup AC power to function. Instead, cooling relies on 'passive' features like gravity and convection. For example, in the event of a severe accident, water stored in a 750,000 gallon tank above the reactor building, is released and cascades over the exterior of the containment vessel, cooling it through evaporation. This evaporation in turn sets up convection currents inside the containment vessel that cools the re
Touch Screen (Score:2)
I heard it has touch screens and supports multitouch.
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why the does the core have a popcorn button.
New designs are great (Score:1)
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What-Could-Possibly-Go-Wrong (Score:1)
South Carolina, Nuclear Plant.
This should have a what-could-possibly-go-wrong tag.
Simpsons reference? (Score:2)
37 comments and no Homer Simpson reference? Slashot is slipping.
mr burns is to cheap to have a internet link to th (Score:2)
mr burns is to cheap to have a internet link to the plant.
Long haul? (Score:3)
To be fair, it was only three years from submission to approval and publishing in the register, not bad really. But then Westinghouse submitted several revisions over the succeeding years, triggering more reviews and approvals.
Why not solar? (Score:2)
If they habe the money to build two nuclear plants, why can't they build a solae thermal one? A molten salt based ne that also generates energy over night?
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Actually, it's a valid point. I don't know about the cost in the US, but I've seen figures for European nuclear plants to be built (we'll se if it actually happens), and they end up being a lot more expensive than wind turbines per kWh (probably similar for solar if you are a bit closer to equator than we are in Scandinavia) because the whole thing is so damn complex.
Now before someone chimes in with "base load", remember that consumption isn't flat like the output of a nuclear plant. Meaning that either yo
critical training test #1: (Score:2)
pass: run a 4-minute mile.