Funds Dwindle To Dismantle Old Nuclear Plants 315
Hugh Pickens writes "The Associated Press reports that the companies who own almost half the nation's nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle the reactors, so many plants may sit idle for decades, posing safety and security risks as a result. The shortfalls in funding have been caused by huge losses in the stock market that have devastated the companies' savings and by the soaring costs of decommissioning. Owners of 19 nuclear plants have won approval to idle their reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material. But mothballing nuclear reactors or shutting them down inadequately presents the risk that radioactive waste could leak from abandoned plants into ground water or be released into the air, and spent nuclear fuel rods could be stolen by terrorists. The NRC has contacted 18 nuclear power plants to clarify how the companies will address the recent economic downturn's effects on funds to decommission reactors in the future, but some analysts worry the utility companies that own nuclear plants might not even exist in six decades."
I know! (Score:4, Funny)
Why not let the government bail them out? That is what the government does, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, contractors are capable of creating a great deal of mess, as well. (Look up the history of the Hanford nuclear reservation.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Reminds me of something at school (Score:5, Interesting)
We were touring the research reactor. The topic came up of how many students were majoring in Nuclear Engineering (or maybe it was just a specialization; not sure if it was actually a major). It was noted that there was exactly ONE student. Some people thought it was a strange major, since no plants were being built. Somebody else gave their $0.02 that the guy would be very much in demand--experts would be needed to dismantle plants.
I wonder what that guy is doing now.
Re:Reminds me of something at school (Score:4, Informative)
He could be working for any number of companies that operate power reactors. Or for any number of places that operate research reactors. Or for any number of consultants and analysts on the maintenance/modification of those reactors. Or for the companies that design, build, or do research on the design and construction, of those reactors. ("None being built in the US" != "none being built anywhere".)
Then there is the DoE, in it's regulatory or research branches. NASA does reactor research as well. (And other branches are involved too... The EPA for just one example.)
Then there's the biggie... The Navy's nuclear power program. Between the sub base, the naval shipyard, and the supporting contractors, there's probably a thousand or more within a few miles of me.
The demand isn't large, but there's a lot more to the field than decommissioning existing reactors.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably making a shitload of money working for Westinghouse, GE, Hitachi, or Mitsubishi, Areva on the design side, or maybe Bechtel, Shaw Stone & Webster, Black & Veatch, etc. on the construction side. All of the old nuke guys are hitting retirement age, and new nuke plants are coming [nrc.gov]. There's a significant talent shortage out there right now.
Same as gas stations (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is this treated any different then a gas station?
Gas stations have to put a certain amount in escrow to allow for digging up the storage vessels and decontaminating. Why don't nuclear reactors have to set aside the money before they're even allowed to build?
Re:Same as gas stations (Score:5, Informative)
Why don't nuclear reactors have to set aside the money before they're even allowed to build?
They did. They just set aside the money in the stock market.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why not just require them to build reactors that will teleport themselves into the sun when it is time to decommission them.
It's equally possible.
Re: (Score:2)
hah, there is no such financial vehicle
Re: (Score:2)
>Anyone have any TIPS where one could invest in something safe? You know, protected against inflation, perhaps something insured by the treasury.
Closest thing to meeting your requirements currently is US Treasury Bills. Of course, you have to get out to at least 7 years to get over 3% interest. The real trick is to beat inflation, which is currently very low, but may not stay that way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"They did. They just set aside the money in the stock market."
So nuclear power is perfectly safe as long as your underlying civilisation and economy doesn't do anything outside very narrow margins? And when things do go belly-up....?
Yeah, that's what I thought, and that's why I'm cynical about nuclear safety. If the companies running this stuff can't even manage to cover normal operating and decommissioning costs which are scheduled and predictable... just how prepared are they for really catastrophic event
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nuclear power plants are required by the NRC to put aside funds for their decommissioning during operations. Companies work with federal and state regulators to ensure enough money is set aside. These funds are not under the direct control of the companies and cannot be used for purposes other than decommissioning.
It then lists the types of decomissioning funds in page 3. I assume the issue here is they put the money into an external sinking fund invested in a trust fund. Then the m
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, nuclear power plants are definitely in it for the long haul, so conservative index funds are probably their best bet. I'm willing to bet the 'not enough money' is using very conservative estimates for future earnings and very pessimistic values for how much it'll cost to decommission.
Personally, I'd be building a bunch of new nuclear reactors to help compliment the other green sources. Nuclear power provides power when YOU want it, and it's very economical compared to the other green so
because laws change faster than finances do (Score:2)
We have family friends who own a franchised gas station. Well they wanted to do some upgrades which meant new tanks; they purchased an old mostly hard case store. Well to make a long story short.
You cannot out pace the ability of feel good but short sighted politicians to impose fees/levies that simply make some business unsustainable. In other words, their best option was to rotate each store into a sub type structure and then let the subs who were burdened by feel good laws to bankrupt.
See, if they wan
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably because back when they built 'em, decommissioning wasn't an issue.
There is an alternative... (Score:2, Funny)
Lease the plants, specifically the plant's basements. In an year or two the required payment will more than pay off the costs, proving be quite a substantial investment for everyone. While some will be quick to argue that such an act would leave the subterranean structures flooded with geeks oozing from radiation, the Army will soon discover that it has enough material to bottle up and send straight to Communist Russia.
Stock markets as savings? (Score:3, Interesting)
What idiot came up with *that* idea?
Hey, we got these huge savings that can help us when we need it. Let's put it into the stock market. Because that one is known for its century-long stability. And the value of our stocks will hold perfectly stable, even in the worst times.
Protip: USE SOME FREAKING REAL GOODS! Gold, silver, countries, or things that go *up* in bad times. (Like bank manager incomes!)
Re: (Score:2)
Clarification: "go *up*". ;)
Not "blow *up*". (That's only for the times, when you have no savings left.
Re: (Score:2)
And watch, it's going to happen again. With the Dow on the upswing we're going to see people dumping their interests into the hazard yet again but it is nothing more than a bubble based on employee cuts and assets sold for these businesses to stay afloat. The fat they gained in the last quarter will quickly be squandered if people buy into the
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What idiot came up with *that* idea?
Remember when our last President thought it would be a great idea to replace Social Security with individual investment accounts?
Remember the people who were championing it? Maybe not the same people as those running the nuke plants, but they wore similar clothes and have similar titles. Is it really that surprising they'd think this way?
Why Decomission?? (Score:2)
Unless the plants in question are simply too difficult/expensive to upgrade, nobody should be decommissioning any nuclear power plants!
Cripes! Here we are looking at Cap & Tax legislation allegedly attempting to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, and they want to decommission power plants that have among the lowest rates of CO2 emission?
Makes one wonder if the goal isn't so much to reduce CO2 emissions as it is to raise the cost of electricity and raise taxes, along with making certai
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Many of them are already on extended licenses. The issue is that steel gets weaker when exposed to radiation for decades, so to keep operating a plant, you have to rebuild much of it, which is pretty close to decommissioning it.
The Gundersens have been watching this (Score:2, Informative)
Too Dangerous to Fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like the nuclear industry looked at the big bank "too big to fail" strategy and liked it. Why bother cleaning up the mess when they can just let the taxpayers pay for the clean-up.
A temporary dip in the stock market, and you're talking like this is the subprime/default credit swap debacle. These decommissioning funds have been around longer than you have been, and being invested in the stock market, they took the same hit everyone else did. Fortunately they're in it for the long haul, not the next 'go
Rods? (Score:2)
Gosh (Score:2)
if only we had a way to reprosses the waste until it has a short half-life~
Motive? (Score:2)
Owners of 19 nuclear plants have won approval to idle their reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material.
What a ridiculous assertion of motive. That might be what is in the press releases, but the important part is that it is long enough for the current executives and boards of directors to not be adversely affected. With any luck, they'll get big bonuses for successfully kicking the c
Yawn. Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:5, Informative)
As the article says, nuclear power plants keep dedicated funds for decomissioning those plants. These funds are in the stock market.
The stock market took a beating.
Greenpeace and other anti-nuke wackos found an opportunity to say idiotic things like:
It's like a sitting time bomb. The notion that you can just walk away from these sites and everything will be hunky-dory is just not true."
Speaking as someone who works at a nuclear power plant, uh, yeah, for various definitions of 'walk away', you can do just that.
If by walk away you mean:
1) Defuel the reactor, offload all fuel into the spent fuel pool.
2) Drain all primary systems of water and process it (A daily occurance at any plant anyway)
3) Maintain enough staffing to secure the facility and watch the THREE relatively small pumps and TWO heat exchangers required to keep the fuel safe until it can be safely stored in a dry cask.
4) Store the dry casks on site until Yucca opens, or they can be re-processed.
(While they will be guarded, these dry casks are not a significant security risk. Terrorists aren't running around with the heavy rigging equipment required to handle these casks, and they most certainly will never control any facility for the hours required to get any nuclear material.)
That's the nuclear definition of 'walk away.' We take our jobs much more seriously than Greenpeace clowns take anything. They're a professional agitation group who currently only exists to generate enough attention to collect enough funds to continue to exist.
You might have to keep some fans running in contaminated areas until they're cleaned up, but compared to actually operating a nuclear power plant, the safe long term shutdown of a plant requires minimal resources.
I love this part too:
Last week, British officials reported on a 2007 leak in a cooling tank at the decommissioned Sizewell-A nuclear plant. If the leak had not been promptly discovered, officials said, nuclear fuel rods could have caught fire and sent airborne radioactive waste along the English coast, harming plant operators or the public.
The job of the people there is to promptly discover these sorts of things. There are loud alarms available to help them with just that. It's not a lucky happenstance that the leak was promptly discovered.
What else?
Sixteen more are being reviewed, and the commission expects to receive 21 more applications in the next several years. To date, the NRC hasn't turned down any license extensions.
In case anyone was wondering, the reason the NRC hasn't turned down any license extension applications is two fold:
1) The standards the plants have to meet are published, and not a secret.
2) The NRC bills maybe $250 a man-hour for the thousands of hours required to review these applications.
No utility is going to pay the NRC millions of dollars to review their application unless they're sure they meet the published NRC standards.
and one more:
Plant operators appear to benefit from NRC rules that don't require them to set aside money to store old nuclear fuel...
because nuclear power plants pay ongoing fees to the federal government to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. $25 billion dollars have been paid so far pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 [cbo.gov] and the federal government only has the Yucca Mountain debacle to show for it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yawn. Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:5, Informative)
That's a fair question. I'm not a finance guy but I'll answer to the best of my ability.
Finance cost: 0. Everthing should be paid for. Capital costs required to maintain or even replace three pumps, two heat exchangers, and the associated piping should be minimal.
Land use & taxes: ~$100,000 (guess) Whatever property taxes are. Varies from zero to millions for an active nuclear power plant. The facility would not generate any profits, so property taxes would be the only ones applicable.
Utilities: less than $325,000 / year (Assuming 1,000 hp in total pump power, based on the required pumps installed in my plant. In reality, much smaller pumps would be required to cool just the fuel, and would be installed as the first-year savings would pay for them entirely.)
Staffing: ~$1.6 million per year. (assuming 3 technicians at all times, 5 crews required for 24 hr coverage, $80,000 a year salary, + 1/3 for benefits & taxes.)
Security: ~$1.6 million per year. (more people would be required than staffing, but Security guards are paid less than technicians, and the required number would vary with the plant layout. I'm assuming the high security area would be relatively small compared to the area required for an operating plant.)
Equipment replacement & expendables: ~$100,000 a year, average, high side guess.
Insurance: $250,000 a year, Wild-ass guess. Everything is so over-built, and the insurance companies visit us frequently to evaluate their risk, so I doubt it would be much more than that.
That adds up to about $4 million. As per the nuclear industry standard, I've probably vastly overestimated everything.
If you use a time value of money calculation ending 60 years out, given a 6% rate of return (from the article), assume $0 value at the end, paid quarterly, then about $64 million dollars should do the job.
(calculator here. [zenwealth.com] )
That doesn't account for inflation, but since i've probably guessed high on everything I'm not going to feel too bad about that.
Further, after two decades, all your fuel can go into dry cask storage, changing your yearly utility cost down to maybe $10,000 a year for lights and air conditioning.
This would also reduce the staffing required on site even further. Purchasing the canisters and the concrete bunkers to store them in will be expensive, but let's assume that the savings on utilities and personel for the remaining 40 years will cover this as well.
So, there's a rough answer for you: A $64 million dollar fund should be sufficient to maintain a nuclear power plant safely shut down for 60 years.
Now if you want to wipe the power plant from the site completely, that will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars, and the article talks about that. Simply shutting it down and maintaining the fuel safely won't cost nearly as much.
Re:Yawn. Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
As will also be the case for most of the short lived isotopes in both the spent fuel and the irradiated parts of the structure.
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough. We do pass these sorts of incidents around in the nuclear industry to prevent recurrance, though I confess I don't recall reading this particular one.
This article's author is behind the times. (Score:2, Informative)
I currently work for a company that is under contract to decommission the Hanford Site KE Reactor by Sept. 31st, 2011. The money DOE is paying us with? The $1B Obama set aside in the ARRA specifically for this problem. If our company is successful/safe in the decommissioning of this first reactor, we will get contracts for a minimum of 9 more.
The author has an agenda.
Besides, it was in the DESIGN PLAN for the rectors to idle for 75 years after they are shut down, this is so the unspent plutonium has a ch
Hold on Folks! There's no Problem! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism is like any other tool.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Capitalism is like any other tool in that in the hands of idiots it can be deadly.
When I read articles like this SlashDot entry - or just look around me at America - I can only conclude that our corporate culture's reliance upon "networking" and "interpersonal skills" (i.e., office politics) to select leaders is flawed in that it yields an overabundance of idiots.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As we found out last year, Capitalism in the hands of very smart people can cause worldwide havoc. So, in summary, Capitalism in the hands of both idiots and very smart people can be deadly. So, why are we using it again?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I son't understand something. (Score:2)
Or do they mean that nuclear plant money is invested in other stocks (which would be irresponsible as hell)?
Why isn't this paid partly up-front, amortize rest (Score:2)
I don't understand why we *allow* Nuclear power operators to get into such a situation? If anyone wants a license to build a new plant (and this should have been instituted decades ago), why don't we estimate the decomissioning costs, demand like 40 percent up-front as part of the investment to even *get started*, and then every year it's in operation, have part of the revenue go to the 'clean-up fund'? That way, if the company goes under after 30 or 40 years, we've *already got the money* (or at least, a s
Money-making machine. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, I have this machine that boils water for free, and makes money.
If I turn it on.
Which I'm not going to do - instead, I'm determined to dismantle it, but it costs too much to do so. ...
Anyone else not see how fucked up the idea of dismantling nuclear plants is?
Can someone explain to me? (Score:2, Interesting)
When coal is such a no-no that our president has said he wants to "necessarily" bankrupt them with red tape and taxes, why would we de-com any nuclear power plants?
I don't have to tell most of the audience here that it's carbon-free (as if that mattered) and that the waste trail has been cleaned up significantly, as well as being just about the cheapest form of electricity we can find.
And there is ****19**** of them shut down now?
Old Nuclear gets supplanted by better designs? (Score:2)
Could it be that some of those older plants are based upon very early designs, which aren't as economically competitive with other sources of energy, and in particular, other nuclear plants? Maybe those plants had design flaws which didn't necessarily make them *dangerous*, but made them unprofitable? I don't know if that's the case, but my *very basic understanding of economics* says that any business which is making money keeps running, and any business which has been shut down was not making money. Or,
Re:Can someone explain to me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a nuclear reactor doesn't last forever. The steel and concrete (and the steel reinforcing structure inside the concrete) absorb a lot of neutrons over the years, and that weakens them. Now, you could replace it all, but that costs as much as (or more than) building a new reactor in a new location and shutting the old one down (especially when you consider the changes in technology over the life of the reactor).
Now, in some cases, it may be possible to build a new reactor on an existing site next to the old one, but that is touchy (lots of heavy construction == lots of shaking of the ground == sometimes cracked walls in nearby structures). That would save on upkeep for the shut-down reactor, as things like the security and technical staff can be shared between facilities.
Even fusion produces neutrons that will limit the life of the reactor (if someone could ever build a net-power-producing one).
From the perspective of a man who glows... (Score:5, Informative)
For those that choose to use the Hanford nuclear reservation as a point of argument against nuclear waste, well, you're half right. Almost all of the unfathomably dangerous substances located there are from nuclear WEAPON production.
For the energy needs of the current and future world, our two forseeable tools are nuclear power and hydro-electric. Nobody likes nuclear because of NIMBY syndrome. Nobody likes hydro-electric because it makes entire ecosystems disappear. Yeah, Eastern Washington has one of the largest dams in the nation as well. Coal, natural gas, and oil are only kept alive because economic powers far greater than you or I want to exhaust the supplies before they start splitting atoms.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They let you put your hand in the secondary water in the cooling tower? That's horrendously reckless.
There could have been Legionella in there.
Big Lies (Score:4, Insightful)
"During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market."
Labor costs have risen in the last two years? Really? I thought we were in a recession with nearly 10% unemployment?
Energy costs? Oil is now back down to 2005 levels. Natural gas hasn't been this cheap since 2002.
If those are really their excuses, they should be jumping on the opportunity to decommission NOW, before prices go back up!
And as to them losing money in the stock market - boo hoo. They could have put the funds into inflation protected treasury notes, but they wanted the extra profits to reduce how much they had to pay out. They gambled, they lost, they should have to pay up. If they can't - we have bankruptcy laws just for them (which we should have immediately applied to the banking mess too). Or they could take out a nice fat loan - interest rates are pretty low, I hear.
I'd love to say I can't believe they're getting away with this - but given recent history of forgiving the villains and putting the burden on the taxpayers and individual investors, I just can't muster disbelief any more.
Told You So (Score:3, Insightful)
That's exactly what I said the other day (and got slammed for) in the "first new nuke plant in US" story that was so widely cheered here.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1310417&cid=28775389 [slashdot.org]
We paid once.... we can/will pay again.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor [wikipedia.org]
Of course; one should never let the truth stand in the way of their agenda...
Now this is probably true, but it applies to so many areas, I really can't fault nuclear power for the actions of a few companies.
I'm surprised.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Trains aren't profitable either, but those aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Sometimes the government subsidizes private business for the greater public good (although most of the time they subsidize business due to "campaign contributions").
Re:I'm surprised.... (Score:4, Informative)
Really, the only reason trains aren't really going anywhere is because they are out of the traffic and can be used like buses (subways, light rail, etc) and the fact the infrastructure is already built and doesn't require a ton of work.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In America, yes. How about taking a look at Europe or Japan where the train systems are a major part of many people's commute?
The only reason they're not as successful is because the feddy is too god damned cheap to invest what they should invest in trains.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not profitable up against dirty coal or natural gas.
Pass any carbon dioxide reduction program with teeth and those will no longer be as profitable. Traditional dirty coal is already banned except for grandfathered plants, and clean coal plants are costing as much as a nuclear plant - and that's before you figure in the daily fuel costs or the extra expense of carbon capture.
Natural gas, well, we'll run out of that quickly enough.
Wind and Solar suffer from the problem that they're not demand based and
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear power is a great cash cow once you've paid off the amortized cost of building the plant. The cost of operations and maintenance, including the complete fuel cycle and the regulatory paranoia, is so small that electricity from the US fleet of nuclear plants is now cheaper than electricity from coal on a per-kWh basis. The problem is building the plants: you need to raise billions of dollars for licensing, politicking, and the construction of one of the modern gigawatt behemoths. The financial risk is
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm surprised.... (Score:5, Informative)
btw the statement quoted above is a lie. You are a liar, antirelic. Including the catastrophes in the accounting is precisely what nuclear proponents don't do (didn't you get the memo?) because of the obvious. Luckily for you and them, as it turns out, human life doesn't really have much value if its not yours.
You're a liar, Mr. AC, or just an ignorant retard, because you apparently have no clue how many people die mining coal [typepad.com]. Not so many per year in a country like the U.S. (compared to how many in modern times for nuclear), but still thousands per year in China, which is how things were not that long ago even in the 1st World. Have more people died mining coal than have died as a result of nuclear power, even counting those killed intentionally by atomic bombs? Yes.
But yes, those human lives don't have much value since you had no clue they existed.
If you only count accidents, then the total deaths from nuclear power is less than a single year of coal mining in China, or just a few years of mining in the U.S. in the period when the nuclear disasters occurred. In the year Three Mile Island occured, the second worst accident ever, more people died mining in the U.S. than died from the incident. Yes that includes long-term health effects, which coal mining isn't very good for either if you didn't know.
It's not the greatest comparison ever, since ultimately what matters is modern safety standards in the country in question (the U.S. in this case). It is a true comparison though. And you'd still be very hard-pressed and hard-tarded to suggest that nuclear power is more dangerous than coal power today.
Re:I'm surprised.... (Score:5, Informative)
I dont normally replied to anon but you make my point for me.
"human life doesnt really have much value if its not yours." The war cry of the communist/socialist/environmentalist elitist. Rail against everything. Decry every solution as "inhumane", all the while proposing fantasy ideas that have no merit or foundation in reason. I add in the catastrophes to make a "clear" point. I grew up in the coal mining regions of the USA. Care to take a shot at the statistics on "Black Lung" alone?
Between 1987 and 1996, 14,489 people died from "Black Lung". Care to guess how many people, world wide who died from Nuclear power during that same time period? Since 1990, more than 20,000 people have died from black lung. http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/blacklung/index.html [courier-journal.com]
Counting bodies isn't as abstract as counting parts per million of carbon in the air, or closely guarded computer models predicting weather patterns... Its fairly simple.
Even the most wacky, statistics skewing websites in existence cannot logically link nuclear power ALONE to being a dangerous source of energy. (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0131-03.htm . PS: A great article if you need a laugh, it links "power production" and "nuclear weapons production" into the same category, "nuclear energy and weapons programs up to 1989 will account for 65 million deaths". I'm sure 64 million of those are due to coal and gas energy sources.
Anyway. Anonymous snipes backed by "emotion" of wanting to "save the people" is all you can expect from the left. When confronted with logic or even a touch of rational debate, lefties put on their super hero masks and start talking about "the value of life".
Another group of people wanted to do whats best for the people too. They made gulags and had great leaps forward for the progress of man kind!
Re:I'm surprised.... (Score:5, Informative)
Stop railing against liberals.
I'm a "liberal" in a lot of ways -- I am for a small military, public healthcare, strong public education, equal rights for homosexuals, addressing global warming, etc.
I also support nuclear power.
I support all of these things not because I am "ruled by my emotions", but because there are legitimate economic and scientific arguments for them. Not everyone on the left is a kneejerk type.
Another one stuck in the 1970s (Score:2)
I suggest instead looking at the Gen IV reactors - it will take a lot of work instead of just sitting back and being smug but we'll end up with something that actually does the job we want it to do.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't suppose you'd want to provide some citations for that nonsen ... err .. "claim" ... would you? Because there are plenty of nations still working on different breeder designs, and almost every past shutdown of a breeder reactor seems to have been motivated mainly (if not entirely) by politics.
Re: (Score:2)
I am sick to death of nuclear proponents throwing breeder reactors around like they are the Second Coming or something. At s
Re: (Score:2)
I was ok with ignoring the irrational hysteria in the rest of your rant, but I cant let this blatant lie pass unchallenged. Please provide your sources for this claim, or retract it.
Re:Weird (Score:4, Informative)
Normally I would not be so blunt but quite frankly you started this one:
a)It is clear you don't understand how the energy produced in a nuclear reactor correlates to the quantity of fission products produced.
b)It is clear you have no idea about what properties breeder reactor waste have and how it compares to regular nuclear waste.
c)It is clear you don't understand how breeder reactors work or what impact the destruction of the transuranics would have on repository capacity and requirements.
For your ( and other's ) information this is how it works:
Nuclear reactors produce energy by splitting nuclei. If they split relatively safe Uranium or the much more toxic and dangerous alpha emitters ( such as neptunium and plutonium ) does not really matter in energy terms since the energy produced in each fission is about the same. As it happens the elements that make nuclear waste storage problematic are all very heavy transuranics that are alpha emitters since these decay with a halflife of a few thousand years. The problem is that even thousands of years from now they produce enough heat to potentially melt the fuel rods if you don't allow sufficient separation between them. It is this heat that limits how much radioactive waste you can store in a given space.
Thus if instead of splitting uranium you recycle and split these heavy transuranics you only end up with comparatively short lived fission products. It is true that the fission products initially has a higher radioativity than the transuranics, but the amount of fission products you get is exactly the same as if you ahd been splitting uranium. Thus by splitting the troublesome transuranics rather than uranium you end up with the same amount of fission products ( for a given amount of energy ), but you don't get any transuranics. I'll repeat that to make sure you got it:
Regardless of reactor design the quantity of fission products is the same for a given quantity of energy. The energy produced is directly proportional to the number of fissions that occur (and consequentially the amount of fission products in the waste. However, while regular reactors produce long lived transuranics that need to be safely stored for thousands of years, breeders only produce the fission products ( the same quantity as regular reactors would produce for the same energy ) and thus their waste reaches the same levels of radioactivity as uranium-ore within approximately 300 years.
Your assertion that the waste becomes more dangerous after recycled in a breeder reactor presumably refers to the fact that the radioactivity of the fission products is higher than that of the actinides. However as I mentioned above the quantity of fission products is no greater than it would have been for uranium. Also many of the fission products are so radioactive that they very rapidly decay to stable compounds that are not troublesome. Some of them have half-lives of minutes or even seconds, and after just a short period of storage they are less radioactive than what the actinides would have been. More importantly however is that the overall heat generation decreases rapidly and since you keep recycling the uranium you reduce the waste volume by almost a factor of 100. Because of these reductions in heat generation and volume, storing all the waste a power plant would produce within the 300 years it takes for breeder waste to decay is quite feasible to do on-site. Or in other words:
A breeder reactor produces so small quantities of waste that it would take much longer to fill the plant's storage facilities than it would take for the waste to decay to safe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and producing LESS but MORE DEADLY waste!
To be more precise, the waste would have a shorter half life. What does that mean? More dangerous in the first year, much less dangerous in the 20th, radiation wise.
Something with a half life of 100 years vs one with a halflife of 10.
Radiation Year 1: 1 vs 10, Year 100: .5 vs .01
I am sick to death of nuclear proponents throwing breeder reactors around like they are the Second Coming or something. At some point it'd be nice if someone just said "hey... we're using too much power... we need to find ways to cut back on that" instead of "full speed ahead! Breeder reactors!"
Conservation GOOD. However, look at some of our proposed conservation efforts - plug-in hybrids and electric cars rather than gasoline engines. Heat pumps vs traditional hydrocarbon fired furnaces.
Notice a trend? We can cut ou
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! Your first link makes the "Breeder Reactor" sound just so wonderful.
Unfortunately you omitted to mention that it still produces a waste that is beyond lethal for 25,000 years.
If you care to bring the facts to bear about nuclear energy, mainly what do we now do with the waste as well as the spent facility when all's said and done with ... for the next 25,000 years! The only answer anyone can give, a stupid blank look and shrug, will only indicate complete incompetence and a lack of thinking this one through, so don't bother.
Worse, now the companies that own and operate theses plants are going belly up and walking away from the retired facilities and leaving them for the states, counties and towns to deal with.
Sounds criminal to me. Sure the power was cheep. But the leftovers pose too many new problems that will have to be dealt with for thousands of generations to come. I've never been a fan of nuclear technology. Now my reservations are verified by the incompetence of the corporations, lobbyists, and politicians involved in producing this resulting product.
I remain unconvinced that nuclear technology is worth the trouble, expense, and/or effort.
I have a much better idea, lets invest some effort in harnessing the power of the sun and call it a day.
Instead of this exercise in stupidity.
Re: (Score:2)
I found an interesting document from the IAEA. Now, I'm not a big fan of UN run organizations (most are socialist leaning), but this is report is fairly unbiased and presents good arguments on both sides.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1123_prn.pdf [iaea.org]
This report talks about making nuclear plants profitable compared to other energy sources and gives a bit of analysis surrounding the energy debate. A good read.
Re: (Score:2)
Why decommission and dismantle?
Sell 'em as "undisclosed locations" to Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Paul Wolfowitz and their ilk!
You don't get better by not doing (Score:5, Insightful)
We really are not ready for this kind of power as mankind. Once we find a solution for the radioactive waste we will be. Till that time... there is always the sun..
I once tried to write a python script. Instead of doing what I wanted it crashed my computer. I've decided I'm not ready for the power of programming. Once I'm a good programmer, I might try writing code again.
If we give up nuclear power now we're never going to find a solution. With no nuclear reactors there isn't going to be any incentive. And that doesn't get into the definition of a solution. Yucca mountain and breeder reactors are both solutions, they just weren't acceptable solutions to people such as yourself.
Let's us be honest. You say not now but what that means is not ever.
Aside: I'd much rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal fired one. If solar becomes economically viable that'd be great too.
Re:You don't get better by not doing (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that your computer crashing is an acceptable cost of you learning python. I don't think a nuclear power plant "crash" would be worth it.
Just my 2c
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Coal vs Nuclear (Take your pick of these articles)
Coal evil: http://www.restoringeden.org/community/CreationVoice/january2009/coalash [restoringeden.org]
Nuclear evil: http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410 [cejournal.net]
There are issues (primarily with the Radioactive waste) but we still have what amounts to cira 1970/1980 Nuclear technology. pity that.
Re:You don't get better by not doing (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think a nuclear power plant "crash" would be worth it.
Yeah, right on! Pennsylvania is totally uninhabitable 30 years after the Three Mile Island event!
Seriously, they had a Loss of Coolant Accident with a core meltdown at TMI. That's as bad as it gets with western plants.
No one died. No one was hurt. No one was exposed to a harmful level of radiation. It was a billion dollar industrial casualty. The adjacent nuclear unit continues to run with a great safety record.
Three Mile Island exposed deficiencies in training philosophy and human factoring of controls and indications. These lessons have been learned.
It also validated the basic western design philosophy. Multiple fission product barriers, negative temperature coefficient, negative void coefficient.
Re:You don't get better by not doing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You don't get better by not doing (Score:4, Insightful)
Chernobyl had both a positive temperature coefficient and a positive and very high void coefficient. What these numbers mean is that when the reactor gets hot, it gets hotter, and when the coolant gets hot and begins to boil, the reactor gets hotter still. Modern designs are nothing like Chernobyl, they are designed such that the higher the temperature they reach, the less energy output is produced and thus there is no runaway reaction.
Chernobyl was a stupid design, do you think we would have gotten far if we stopped building bridges after the first one that collapsed?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's a flawed premise. Not having commercial Nuclear power doesn't mean that you can't develop nuclear power. Commercial Nuclear power plants aren't testbeds for developing nuclear plant, they're for generating power.
Re:You don't get better by not doing (Score:5, Interesting)
Energy companies won't develop them because of the large financial risk and paranoid regulatory environment and lack of a clear payoff. Governments won't step in because any nuclear reactor is seen as evil by the green fanatics and seen as threatening by the coal companies.
Re:You don't get better by not doing (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the really fun part: the waste, of which it produces very little, becomes exponentially less radioactive over time, becoming safe to handle with bare hands in about 300 years -- not hundreds of thousands of years.
Uhuh... did you miss this part of my post, or did you just choose to ignore it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's irrelevant. The genie is already out of the bottle. Nuclear power is not going away. Even if you ban it in one place, another place will be more than happy to invest in it. Some countries, like France, would be in a lot of trouble if there were a unilateral ban on nuclear power plants and even the U.S., which doesn't have that many plants, would be in dire straits considering nuclear power is an essential part of the grid in several major U.
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
The last few years alone have shown great strides in truly clean energy production (not to be confused with the often mistaken for clean clean-now-hide-the-dirt-til-later energy production, like nuclear).
You mean like solar? No I guess that's more of a hide-the-mercury-chromium-PVC-silicon tetrachloride-waste-post-production-"now-it's-clean"-hide-the-disposal-of-EOL-panels-til-later kind of clean energy. Or are you talking about those practically-useless-residential-wind turbines? OR maybe the hugely-devastating-to-the-aquatic-ecosystem-hydroelectric-plants?
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of new ways to get to this clean energy... smart people keep mixing it up and it really is quite amazing.
Really? Name one form of "clean" energy. The problem is more like stupid people keep believing marketing BS about what "clean" energy is. There was a time when nuclear actually had a similar vibe as solar does now. Then over time the truth came out about the storage life of the waste and the possible dangers. Now it's become the pariah of clean energy. There are some seriously underplayed issues with solar panel production and disposal. If you think there are no issues with the byproducts from the composites that are used for wind-turbines then you are fooling yourself.
Its only a matter of time, and time calculated in decades (not the nuclear standard of calculating time in millennia), before one, or my guess, many new clean energy alternatives become not only viable but very profitable. Nuclear energy is just too expensive (when you add up the cost of the R&D, the educations required, and especially 4000-40000 years of waste storage, and last, not least, the whatif disasters like a chernobyl-scale (not chernobyl-like) disaster).
So you predict that magic pixie dust power generation is only decades away? Cool!
Seriously though, I'm not against solar, nuclear, wind, or even fossil fuel energy production. As far as I can tell, all forms of energy production cause some sort of harmful waste or environmental issue in one way or another. Perhaps geothermal being the one with the least problems, however it's not terribly practical other than in Iceland and a few other areas. I think a better approach is to try to maximize the efficiency and lower the toxic byproducts of what is possible while we work on something better and start to get away from the non-renewables. But that's just what I think.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
"There are no solutions, only trade-offs." - Thomas Sowell
Nothing is perfectly safe; everything involves risk and negative outcomes. There are plenty of negative consequences of using pure solar energy, not the least of which is the impact of manufacturing the tools to harness it.
"It has less change of a meltdown, but if that meltdown occurs, and it will, it's no difference from chernobyle, except this one wil be bigger"
Evidence? Support? Simply saying something is true doesn't make it so.
Re: (Score:2)
"It has less change of a meltdown, but if that meltdown occurs, and it will, it's no difference from chernobyle, except this one wil be bigger"
Evidence? Support? Simply saying something is true doesn't make it so.
I think he is referring to when the Sun explodes a few billion years from now...
Personally, I don't want to wait that long without electricity however
Re:Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
It has less polution, but the polution is still radioactive.
I have shocking news for you: Your granite counter top is radioactive! OH NOES.
It has less change of a meltdown, but if that meltdown occurs, and it will, it's no difference from chernobyle, except this one wil be bigger.
Yeah. Because it's not like the Chernobyl disaster had anything to do with the design of the reactor (ignoring that even with that horrible design it took ridiculous amounts of human stupidity to make it happen since I'm assuming that's what you're assuming will always happen). It's not like you can design a reactor so that it can't meltdown, or can't meltdown in such a way that it explodes and blows its containment. It's not like the next and only other major nuclear accident was far smaller than Chernobyl. And it's not like we learned anything from that with regards to reactor design... For example self-regulating designs where the reactor getting too hot means the reaction will slow down. Nope, that doesn't exist.
No, no matter what, meltdowns are inevitable, and will be bigger than previous ones, because... why, again?
We really are not ready for this kind of power as mankind. Once we find a solution for the radioactive waste we will be.
Solution: Re-use it until it is no longer useful as a radioactive fuel of any kind, meaning it is no longer particularly radioactive and thus not a particular danger. Then stick it in the ground without having to worry about security or stability since it's neither useful nor particularly dangerous. Yes the half-life will be really long, but half-life is inversely proportional to radioactivity which is entirely the point.
So, I guess we're ready! Bring on the nuclear reactors!
Till that time... there is always the sun.
Yeah we're a long way from producing all our energy from the sun (directly anyway). I'm all for more of it, including solar-powered microwave satellites. Oh but wait, surely there's no way to design one such that it doesn't fry people on the ground in a swatch of destruction!
Still a shame someone flagged me as flamebait instead of discussing our different views. Cause flamebait i Was not.
Indeed that was an unfair mod, and they were almost certainly using it as a surrogate for "-1, uninformed paranoia" which doesn't exist for good reason.
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest problem with the reactor at Chernobyl is that the design did not include a concrete vault capable of containing the clouds of debris ejected from the event site. I haven't been keeping up, but last I heard the vault they built after the fact was falling apart and kicking up clouds of radioactive dust.
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest problem with the reactor at Chernobyl is that the design did not include a concrete vault capable of containing the clouds of debris ejected from the event site.
Yeah, exactly. With the simple expedience of a concrete dome, the Chernobyl disaster would have been substantially smaller, like Three Mile Island was, where nobody died in the immediate aftermath. Three Mile Island, which was the worst-case failure scenario -- coolant failure and all control rods locked out of the core. So the core got too hot and melted and fell into the graphite bed beneath, slowing the reaction and ending the threat. Combined with the containment shell, very little contamination was released into the environment. It was a disaster to be sure, but a small one in the grand scheme of industrial accidents. It was a design that took failure into a account and thus minimized the impact. And designs have only gotten better since then.
Honestly, people act like they still think nuclear reactors can blow up like atom bombs. "Oh my god, humanity is not ready for this power!" Yeah, nuclear weapons maybe we weren't ready for, I think fission reactors to light up our homes are within our acceptable risk level given every other human endeavor ever.
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
The problems with Chernobyl go way past that. Here are a few:
1. Positive void coefficient of reactivity. Once bubbles started forming in the reactor coolant, it sped up the reaction, causing a positive feedback loop. This is, of course, not the case with light water reactors.
2. The SCRAM rods actually sped up the reaction because of their graphite tips. There's a pretty crazy design defect.
3. It was physically possible for those morons to disable the safety systems.
Compare this with a truly modern design like China's HTR-DB modular pebble bed reactors, and the difference is striking. The HTR-DB has a strong negative temperature coefficient of reactivity, so all the feedback loops are very negative. They can actually shut off the cooling systems and the reactor will simply shut off because it's not able to sustain a reaction without active cooling. Overheating inherently kills the reaction. Nice, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
Every melt down isn't a Chernobyl. Some are just Three Mile Islands. And if you think TMI is an argument against nuclear power's safety, you really need to do more reading and less watching of movies titled, "the china syndrome."
Re:Weird (Score:4, Interesting)
I've worked as an Operator at a US Power Reactor ( North Anna Power Station in Virginia ) a long time ago. It is a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor and it's a completely different design than Chernobyl. The containment dome is of sufficient volume to maintain integrity during a complete meltdown. It's one of the biggest expenses. ( A description of the construction can be found in the license application [nrc.gov] in section 2.4.1 page 2-97 ).
The Unit 1 and Unit 2 Containments are Seismic Class I structures that house the reactor and other Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS) components for the respective unit. Each Containment consists of a reinforced concrete cylinder with a hemispherical dome and a flat, 10-foot-thick reinforced concrete mat foundation. A waterproof membrane is located below the Containment's structural mat and extends up the Containment wall to ground level.
In fact, it's such a large expense that this particular design keeps the interior of the containment dome at about 9 psia to allow for the expansion of Reactor Coolant during a meltdown in a smaller volume. Meaning a smaller containment dome. It also has the advantage that if there are any leaks, it leaks in, not out. If an accident did happen, the containment dome would probably been sealed and filled with concrete.
So why have nuclear plants? Why all the expense?
When I worked at that plant. Dominion Power ( Then Virginia Power ) had 4 reactors and about 17 coal fired plants and I think 2 natural gas plants. Those 4 reactors could at times supply about 40% of the power for the company's power grid covering almost all of Virginia and the northern part of North Carolina. This was usually at night when energy consumption dropped.
The coal plants also didn't operate at 100% all the time. They altered their power output increasing output during peak demand during the day and late evening and decreasing output as demand dropped during late night and early morning.
I hope you have noticed like I have that the standard operating procedure of the coal fired plants closely mirror what you would expect to see from a solar & battery power plant.
Also, I know how much coal ash is produced in a single day from a coal fired plant. I also know, for the nuclear plant I worked at, only one third of the fuel rods were replaced every 18 months. So, given the choice of fields covered in tons of low level waste or only a few tons of concentrated nastiness, I'd opt for the later because it is far easier to maintain stricter and safer control of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck with the insurance policy. As AIG shows, what makes anybody think the insurance company will have the money - or even be around - in 60 years to cover the cost of dismantling a reactor?
The only way you can get nuclear power to pan out financially is if you have the government own and run all the reactors on what amounts to a non-profit basis (as in France, with EDF, which is something like 80% government-owned). You can't even get private insurance for the things (and I wouldn't trust private in
Re:the plant is the lesser problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, since burying the radioactive "waste" is a huge waste; more than 99% of the energy has yet to be extracted from it. (Which is also why it is so dangerous and long lived.) This "waste" can be burned in fast reactors though, and there is enough to supply them for hundreds of years before any further mining is necessary.
All that needs to be done is build the reactors. General Electric even has a design ready for a commercial reactor, called the S-PRISM. This is modeled after the Integral Fast Reactor, a modern design which addresses all of the concerns about nuclear power.