Watts Bar Unit 2 Is The First New US Nuclear Reactor In Decades (washingtonpost.com) 117
tomhath writes from a report via The Washington Post: The Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Watts Bar Unit 2 is the first nuclear reactor to come online since 1996, when the Watts Bar Unit 1 started operations. The new reactor is designed to add 1,150 megawatts of electricity generating capacity to southeastern Tennessee. By summer's end, authorities expect the new reactor at this complex along the Chickamauga Reservoir, a dammed section of the Tennessee River extending northward from Chattanooga, to steadily generate enough electricity to power 650,000 homes. But while nuclear reactors account for the lion's share of the carbon-free electricity generated in the United States, the industry faces this new set of circumstances in a state of near-crisis. A combination of very cheap natural gas and deregulated energy markets in some states has led to a growing number of plant closures in recent years. A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says that renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydroelectric will overtake natural gas as an energy source by 2027.
Great Scott! (Score:5, Funny)
They couldn't squeeze another 60MW out of the design?
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There was one guy who knew hoe to do it, but he was last seen in a picture from a Buddy Holly concert.
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Long time coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Its good to see new reactors come online, but I wish we had the balls to licence new reactor designs that are passively safe.
Re:Long time coming (Score:5, Informative)
There are. Vogtle 3 & 4 are going to use the AP1000 design from Westinghouse which is a Generation III reactor. It stores emergency coolant water in a tank over the reactor so you do not need to use pumps to cool the reactor in an emergency.
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I think that he was referring to the family of Thorium reactors, which the US has no plans to build in the US and is only "partnering" with China's efforts
Having water above the reactor is just an adaptation of an existing design and an attempt to milk more money out of out-dated technology
When was the last time that you bought a 20 year old computer system because they added a nifty new cooler to it?
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You can still buy a toilet with a tank over it too.
We shouldn't be building any of these until we make an effort to max out renewables.
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Not so much
Renewables provide energy in peaks and valleys due to their very nature. The sun shines and the wind blows by their own schedule, not peak user demand.
A baseline power source is needed (at least until some time in the future where super batteries and such fill the gaps) and nuclear fits that bill very well. Coal is just plain filthy and "clean" natural gas generates way too much CO2
Nuclear is on the path towards maxed out renewables and ignoring it just leads to more global warming due to the use
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Nuclear power does not adapt to user demand either. It does not operate at 150% during the day and 50% at night. Nuclear power plants operate at 100% constantly, since it's the only way to prevent them from going bankrupt. This is the reason electricity is cheaper during the night than during the day.
But somehow the economy is going to fail if we install solar power to lower the price during the day, when businesses can use the electricity to produce goods and create jobs?
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Electric vehicles will greatly flatten the power demand curve of the grid.
Teslas only need a software patch to let them charge when the grid tells them to (in exchange for a big electricity discount).
Any new nuclear project starting today will come online some 10 years from now when Li Ion electricity storage will be quite cheap, just distribute Li Ion packs throughout the grid so they can charge at off peak hours and discharge at peak.
Any efforts of say no to nuclear isn't increasing solar/wind adoption, b
Re:Long time coming (Score:4, Insightful)
I think renewables are a great addition to the energy mix, but I just don't see any realistic scenario where we could jump from our current situation straight to renewables. Safe nuclear is an enormous pollution saver even if you count in the whole supply chain. With population growth and electric vehicles behind the corner, there's going to be an enormous growth in energy demand and without either nuclear or fossil fuels, we likely can't meet that demand.
Re:Long time coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Long time coming (Score:1)
God, you're stupid. What the fuck does a toilet tank have to do with this?
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Whoooosh!
gurgle
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Well that sure explains the shape of the emergency cooling lever.
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You can still buy a toilet with a tank over it too.
Don't forget steam ovens. I think that the subtleties of your comment is lost on many.
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There is no Thorium reactor design available off the shelf today.
The closest we are to a Thorium fueled design is Thorium+Plutonium MOX fuel on existing/under construction LWR/BWR reactors. See Thor Energy and LightBridge.
The first molten salt reactors might not use Thorium at all. See Canada's Terrestrial Energy.
Every other MSR design is likely 10+ years away from a demonstration prototype, mostly due to US NRC regulatory insanity.
A proper Thorium reactor (MSR+Thorium fuel) isn't being aggressively pursued
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They have been working on a thorium design that exceeds the usual slashdot nuke fanboys dreams of 1950s US thorium tech that they want to see revived.
If nuke fanboys want to be able to write something with meaning instead of just mindless cheering they should look into it. Wikipedia and the Harford web site will help with the big words.
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The peop
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I think this is The Hanford website [energy.gov] I think you are refering to.
This National Geographic article [nationalgeographic.com] may also be interesting. It calculates that a train full of the waste materials would fill a train that would go around the entire equator, and then some. It's a great read if you are interested as even if it is shut down tommorrow our generation is still left with this stuff that was created before many of us were even born.
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Japan can barely get its existing reactors going again, and won't be building new ones. Europe is giving up on nuclear too, either explicitly like Germany or simply because of the insane cost. The new plant in the UK is going to be one of the most expensive objects on earth, even with Chinese investment, and the energy generated is guaranteed a price way over market rates for its lifetime. The identical designs in other EU countries are over budget and late.
Nuclear looks like a technology that's had its day
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So you're saying reactors with 50 year old designs are outdated and expensive? What a shock! But we were talking about modern designs, and those are different.
If you think CO2 is bad, then nuclear is the only scalable option for baseline power. If you don't, this whole discussion is silly, as natural gas is quite cheap.
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The modern designs are even more expensive. The old ones are tried and tested, the new ones involve lots of new tech that might not work and lots of new regulatory issues that need to be looked at. And in the end, much of the cost of running a nuclear plant is the safety stuff unrelated directly to the reactor, so even with new designs it has to be paid.
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the new ones involve lots of new tech
Funny thing about new tech. It's only new when it's first being used. Since we're talking about long term goals, we won't be using expensive new tech, but eventually cheaper tried-and-true tech.
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Long term we won't be using nuclear fission much. Trying to get investment in it for development is really difficult when there are so many less risky and cheaper alternatives right now.
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Long term we won't be using nuclear fission much.
"Renewables" don't work for shit for industrial power. It's natural gas, coal, or nuclear. A lot of heavy industry makes its own power on-site, so maybe you're right about it not being fission.
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Re:Long time coming (Score:4, Informative)
There are. Vogtle 3 & 4 are going to use the AP1000 design from Westinghouse which is a Generation III reactor. It stores emergency coolant water in a tank over the reactor so you do not need to use pumps to cool the reactor in an emergency.
This is a new feature which has only been assesed in simulations for core damage frequency. Additionally the containment dome of an Advanced Passive (AP) has a lower thermal containment ratio (because there is less concrete in the dome) for containing the thermal energy of the reactor than a GenII. The dome in this design also has a new feature where it doubles as a heat exchanger in the event of an emergency.
The measurement for the maturity of these systems is the amount of reactor experience and IIUC much of that is coming from the AP600. The two features under discussion here have not been physically tested in the same way the GenII reactor was by the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. The way they did those tests was to physically pressurize an actual (unfuelled) reactor with compressed air. In those tests they uncovered the Basis Design Issues (BDI) that led to the Fukushima disaster decades later when TEPCO ignored the operational concerns required to mitigate those risks.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just pointing out that it is untested in anything other than simulations and that doing physical tests of the reactor installation leads to valuable operational experience to derive reactor experience. If it works, it will be tested in an emergency situation where you have to consider real risk *and* real impact as opposed to simulations.
The risk is exposing a BDI of the plant that was undiscovered and what is the impact of that issue. We know this happens because even on mature reactor systems BDIs are found and operational proceedures have to be adapted to cope with that. In AP's case you can't design those processes if you haven't done the physical testing.
Lets hope this new reactor has a trouble free and reliable service life.
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It's just taken a long time before any got built.
Even South Africa has more advanced nuclear technology (pebble bed).
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They wanted a reactor 100% identical to the existing one at the same site, with the same controls, systems, everything. So the operations/maintenance people are the same.
So they ended up with a reactor with a mix of old analog systems and new digital (that has been installed in the new and the old reactors).
Meanwhile ... (Score:5, Insightful)
But while nuclear reactors account for the lion's share of the carbon-free electricity generated in the United States, the industry faces this new set of circumstances in a state of near-crisis. A combination of very cheap natural gas and deregulated energy markets in some states has led to a growing number of plant closures in recent years.
Meanwhile, the federal government continues to massively over-regulate nuclear energy and does other brain-dead things. For example, if you operate a coal power plant and do nothing other than routine maintenance, then you are grandfathered to whatever environmental standards were in effect when it went into operation. On the other hand, if you decide to make "major" improvements, the entire operation must now come into compliance with current regulations. Naturally, operators are lining up to upgrade and increase the cost/regulatory burden of their operations. Not!
Thankfully, natural gas is relatively clean, but it won't last forever. Our broken policies have resulted in nobody wanting to touch the best energy source in modern history (nuclear) and while the government and environmentalists continue tripping over themselves to throw wads of cash at companies in the "renewable" space, those old coal power plants continue to emit more radioactive contaminants then even the oldest nuclear power plants because we actually make it more expensive for the operators to fix it than to just leave it as is. To top it off, rather then devoting serious effort into spent nuclear fuel reprocessing (like into a form usable in modern reactor designs), we keep loading it in leaky drums and burying it in the ground because nobody will build a new reactor because nobody wants to spend 100 years and $100B to get a new reactor going.
Re:Meanwhile ... (Score:4, Informative)
Gotta disagree with you, if Nuclear power was regulated with the same lax attitude as Coal, then we would be facing a lot of issues with radiation.
Just look at Fukushima where a tendency to rely on boards of people for decisions allowed them to ignore engineers who had clearly explained the risks of the low sea walls.
If we let the same ass-hats, that regularly kill their own people by disabling methane detection systems and intentionally undercutting mine supports, self-regulate nukes... then I would have a hard time supporting that power source
The US NRC has proven itself to be demanding of the industry and capable of ensuring that we do not face frequent, or even repeated hazards to public health.
Re: Meanwhile ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think that it's not just Harry Reid. A lot of people in Nevada are opposed to having their state be a nuclear waste dump.
Unfortunately, this highlights another problem with nuclear power which is what to do with the radioactive waste that nobody wants.
re: radioactive waste (Score:3, Interesting)
The ironic thing is, this radioactive "waste" clearly still has lots of potential energy in it, or else it wouldn't be dangerous in the first place.
IMO, what's needed is a process to use this stuff after it's no longer suitable for use in the original reactor.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure there are other reactor designs that would allow building smaller scale power generators that run on this waste material, instead of trying to bury it, shoot it into space, or what-not.
Re: re: radioactive waste (Score:1)
Breeder reactors were outlawed by Democrat President Carter in 1977 because the Uranium refining process also produced Plutonium that might be used in nuclear weapons. Another case where government used public hysteria to direct energy policy, sort of like regulating coal and shale gas to death in favor of politically connected battery solar and wind power, but that's none of my business.
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You don't need a breeder (which are dangerous for far more reasons than proliferation) to clean up nuclear waste, you just need fuel reprocessing. The only time the US tried reprocessing it ended up one of the most contaminated sites in the US. That is why Carter banned reprocessing in any form, its an environmental and OSHA disaster of epic proportions. Hanford and Oak ridge are still contaminated from barely 3 years of minor industrial reprocessing and they've spent billions to try to clean them up. There
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IMO, what's needed is a process to use this stuff after it's no longer suitable for use in the original reactor.
Fuel reprocessing is a filthy and very expensive process. It is much cheaper to just use a "once through" fuel cycle, even if it appears to be inefficient to people that are bad at economics.
I'm pretty sure there are other reactor designs that would allow building smaller scale power generators that run on this waste material
Thorium salt reactors. You can basically use them as garbage disposals, and dump in uranium reactor waste and byproducts, and the ThSR will burn them up. The US and Europe are doing much with thorium salt reactors, but China and India are pursuing them.
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Fuel reprocessing is a filthy and very expensive process. It is much cheaper to just use a "once through" fuel cycle, even if it appears to be inefficient to people that are bad at economics.
Fuel reprocessing is less expensive than refining an entirely new batch of Uranium for use in the reactors. It just costs more because you need to design and build your reactor specifically to be a breeder reactor, as opposed to the simpler, standard design.
As for filthy, you are aware that this actually REDUCES waste, by reusing almost all of the material? In other words, by reusing the radioactive "waste", it is far cleaner than standard reactors.
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You don't have to be but at least average level of general knowledge that you'd get out of reading one Reader's Digest article would kind of help before posting. The Harford web site has a bit about waste and how they make MOX fuel from some of the waste that may get you up to speed instead of pretending that nuclear
Re: radioactive waste (Score:4, Interesting)
The ironic thing is, this radioactive "waste" clearly still has lots of potential energy in it, or else it wouldn't be dangerous in the first place. IMO, what's needed is a process to use this stuff after it's no longer suitable for use in the original reactor.
There was. A burner reactor called IFR. Research on the *operational* prototype was killed by Clinton and it's demolition was funded in the 2005 Energy Act signed into law by W.Bush. From everything I read about it (despite the lack of material technologies required) it was a remarkable success able to consume weapons grade material and DU. My main interest in it was from the perspective of nuclear disarmament and a way to make those materials useful in another way.
I'm pretty sure there are other reactor designs that would allow building smaller scale power generators that run on this waste material
Well in IFR's case it was an Integrated facility that would reprocess, store and burn wastes. The 2005 Energy act also funds research into some of the things IFR could do like produce electriciy and hydrogen for vehicle fuel (which would mean the current fleet of vehicles would still function) but where would that leave the oil and coal industry? You really only have to look to their lobbying efforts of both sides of politics to under why such a technology will never come to market even if it is proven technology.
Oil and Coal interests would prefer any advancement in Nuclear technology remain unavailable and that all the blame be attributable to greenpeace and NIMBYs.
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So are we just ignoring the fact that Greenpeace has been consistently blocking nuclear plants for decades?
No, I don't think you are ignoring it, just not paying attention to what is relevant. It takes a few hours of research and checking the governing laws to see that this greenpeace/NIMBY argument is bogus and the vitrol attached to it is noise that deflects from blaming the real culprits impeding nuclear progress, the oil and coal industry.
We're just going to ignore this inconvenient truth?
Well that dogma is the common myth. I think you will find that the oil and coal lobby have far more influence over US energy policy than greenpeace ever will. As I pointed
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I cannot agree with you
The lawsuits regularly filed by Greenpeace have become a significant part of the cost that must be considered in building a new nuclear plant
This has had a significant impact, along with the many followers of Greenpeace who are coached in the most fundamental misunderstandings of nuclear power by the organization
Widespread ignorance spread by Greenpeace has done more to cause global warming than any other single influence in America today
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I cannot agree with you
You're not arguing with me, you are arguing with the facts.
The lawsuits regularly filed by Greenpeace have become a significant part of the cost that must be considered in building a new nuclear plant
No they are not. All delays to nuclear projects receive government compensation, no matter how they occur. It is ludicrous to even suggest that greenpeace has the billions of dollars of resources the government has to overcome the funding set out in the act.
This has had a significant impact, along with the many followers of Greenpeace who are coached in the most fundamental misunderstandings of nuclear power by the organization
That has very little to do with the way the 2005 Energy act is laid out. What you are saying is that greenpeace has somehow lobbied congress in the drafting of the act to favour oil and coal inte
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The main issue with IFR was the cost. The technology isn't cost competitive with other forms of nuclear power, let alone other clean forms of energy. It's just very hard to justify the investment at a time when most developed countries are trying to transition away from nuclear.
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The main issue with IFR was the cost. The technology isn't cost competitive with other forms of nuclear power, let alone other clean forms of energy.
That's why I said (despite the lack of material technologies required) that make the reactor only viable for 60 years at most. I am not saying it is commercially feasible, just that it exist(ed) because we always hear these "if only" questions.
Financial debt can be written off, but energetic debt cannot and that is the main reason IFR is not feasible with existing materials technology.
It's just very hard to justify the investment at a time when most developed countries are trying to transition away from nuclear.
Indeed. My point is that people blame greenpeace and NIMBYs for the lack of technological development in Nuclear power whe
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There's a valid and useful solution to the problem you state: you burn your waste actinides in a fast breeder. It generates power, vastly depletes the amount of waste you need to dispose of, and the remaining waste is far less hazardous. It's a win-win across the board.
Too bad then-President Carter killed all research into the technology back in the 1970's, not because it didn't work but because he feared nuclear proliferation. Of course, that's worked wonders to keep nukes out of the hands of the North
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There's a valid and useful solution to the problem you state: you burn your waste actinides in a fast breeder. It generates power, vastly depletes the amount of waste you need to dispose of, and the remaining waste is far less hazardous.
That's not actually true. A Fast Breeder 'breeds' plutonium by transmuting other element. It was designed that way to service a plutonium economy until everyone realized there was nowhere to put the stuff.
Too bad then-President Carter killed all research into the technology back in the 1970's, not because it didn't work but because he feared nuclear proliferation.
First, whats wrong with that? Nuclear proliferation is a bad thing, that's why the NNPT [wikipedia.org] exists. I think the thing you are reffering to were ammendments for reprocessing, which were repealed by President Reagun.
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Carter is the only US President ever to participate personally in the decommissioning of a nuclear reactor.
"Personally" as in "He was inside the thing, in a protective suit, disassembling the innards."
Re: Meanwhile ... (Score:4, Funny)
Now that it's past 1999, though, it's safe to bury it on the moon.
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Now that it's past 1999, though, it's safe to bury it on the moon.
nice sci fi joke.
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A lot of people in Nevada are opposed to having their state be a nuclear waste dump.
Well, it's a little late for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Now that Harry Reid is leaving we might actually be able to bury nuclear fuel in Nevada.
Better still would be a plant to reprocess nuclear fuel in Nevada. The Nevada Test Site, where Yucca is located, would be an ideal location. Yucca Mountain itself would be its buffer storage.
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You do realize nuclear plants are 90% underfunded for shutdown and clean up right?
All that regulation and the real reason they don't decommission nuclear plants is there is no money to shut them down and clean up the mess.
I suggest you stop blaming government and look at the whole story. Nuclear is some of the cleanest power we can produce in bulk, but you have to deal with it very carefullynot just in use. But afterwards too.
Most people don't clean up after themselves properly.
Re:Meanwhile ... (Score:4, Informative)
Decommissioning trust funds in America are in line with historic plant cleanup costs.
The funds are actually fat because the spent fuel is backing up. Funds for Yucca mountain are sitting.
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Nuclear power plants are being shutdown all the time, and those projects are fully funded. You're spouting massive ignorance.
Here's a few more recent ones:
http://insideclimatenews.org/s... [insideclimatenews.org]
That graphic is actually 2.5 years old... Several "at risk" plants have already decided upon shutdown. And more...
http://motherboard.vice.com/re... [vice.com]
"another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of a premature shutdown
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Coal power generation is going away quickly, so it's not part of the comparison.
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Meanwhile, the federal government continues to massively over-regulate nuclear energy
Well, since the federal government also massively r&d and subsidize nuclear energy, and without this continuing massive investment nuclear energy simply could not exist (due to the astronomical costs the government generously pays for without ever receiving any economic return), it only seems fair.
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I would rather have one of these than a hydropower dam close by. Statistically a lot safer.
Great on TVA. Bad on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Good job TVA finally bringing another nuclear reactor online. It's clean, it's safe, and it's advanced.
Shame on slashdot "editor" BeauHD for adding in the unrelated story about renewable energy overtaking natural gas.
DID YOU BOTHER TO READ THE SUBMITTED ARTICLE???
Seriously nice article today about Sourceforge and Slashdot Media all improving must have missed that there are people running the show who can't read.
http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
E
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If there's ever a fatality from a nuclear reactor going boom, it will hopefully be you.
Old design (Score:4, Informative)
It is sad that our newest reactor is a 50+ year old PWR design. Stop the insanity and build small breeder reactors.
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Do you have tens of billions of dollars to invest and are you willing to take on the risk? I don't just mean risk of an accident, I mean the risk that it doesn't work properly out ends up costing too much to be profitable. Every one built so far has had severe problems. Also, you need to get the nuclear regulator on board.
And if you do have that much cash to invest, why not pick a much safer option like renewables and storage? Sodium sulphur batteries are a big deal right now.
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It's already an anachronism; doesn't that count? ;)
"US reactor" What exactly does that mean? (Score:2)
Watts Bar Unit 2 Is The First New US Nuclear Reactor In Decades
Does this statement mean that this reactor has no foreign [manufactured] parts?
Heck, we afterall rely on the Russians when it comes to space travel now. Just want to know whether all components of this reator are US of A designed and made.
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Yep
Westinghouse says that the minimum requirement for making the largest AP1000 components is a 15,000 tonne press taking 350 tonne ingots.
The very heavy forging capacity in operation today is in Japan (Japan Steel Works), China (China First Heavy Industries, China Erzhong, SEC), France (Le Creusot), and Russia (OMZ Izhora).
New capacity is being built by JSW and JCFC in Japan, Shanghai Electric Group (SEC) and subsidiaries in China, and in South Korea (Doosan), Czech Rep (Pilsen) and Russia (OMZ Izhora and
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Just want to know whether all components of this reator are US of A designed and made.
For everyones sake I hope not!
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It just means it's the first new nuclear plant in the United States in a long time. The NIMBY attitude generally prevents new reactors from being built in the US.
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Only it isn't stopping them. Here are two more from the article and they are very major projects:
Isn't it funny how Carter gets blamed for new new nukes despite stuff actually starting when he was in office b
Typo (Score:2)
Re:"US reactor" What exactly does that mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not NIMBY that stops nukes. It's an electricity price of 14 cents/kwh and that's with the government providing free insurance. Gas can do electricity at less than half that, wind is at 4cents and solar will be cheaper than gas by 2020. Why would you build a power plant that produces power at 2-4 times the price of other sources? Because the only ones that are building these new nukes are the ones that are forcing their rate payers to pick up the cost.
Without a public utilities commission that's willing to bend their rate payers over and fuck them good and dry, a nuke isn't even feasible. And it's astonishing that there are two states willing to let their utility companies fuck their residents six ways to Sunday. If I was a rate payer in Georgia I'd be fucking livid that I'm being committed to paying 2 times the price for power for the remainder of my life unless I move.
Re:"US reactor" What exactly does that mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
If wind is so cheap why do we continue to subsidize it?
Re:"US reactor" What exactly does that mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not NIMBY that stops nukes. It's an electricity price of 14 cents/kwh and that's with the government providing free insurance.
Have you thought about why the government is providing insurance? Nuclear power reactors have a history of getting their license revoked by that same government for seemingly no reason. No insurance company is going to insure that because there are simply too many unknowns, the biggest one is the government itself. No bank will lend money for any construction project unless it is insured, nuclear power plants included. To make sure the government won't pull a license on a whim the other investors require some government monetary stake in the project. This means that everyone involved wants to see the government pay for the project if they pull the license.
Few other industries work this way because few other industries have such long construction times and such a high rate of construction licenses getting pulled in the middle of the project. The high cost of nuclear power is because the government has a history of changing the rules. If the government didn't keep changing the rules then the price would come down. Any project that takes longer than the two year election cycle to complete runs the risk of the rules changing. Part of the reason these nuclear power plants take so long to complete is because the rules keep changing. The longer a project goes on the more expensive it becomes.
The cost, the long completion times, and the need for government insurance is all because the federal government cannot make up its mind on what the rules are for nuclear power. This will continue so long as we have a major political party that is openly hostile to nuclear power.
Then one might feel compelled to ask, why would any political party oppose nuclear power? Perhaps it is because of the high costs and long completion times. In other words, we have politicians that oppose nuclear power solely based on the problems they created for it.
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The placement of Nuclear facilities is governed by a Suitability Criteria that is an act of law. [nrc.gov]
It's ridiculous to think greenpeace, hippys in combi vans, NIMBYS or any one else for that matter has any influence at all as all of their concerns are addressed in Section C.9 [nrc.gov]. The process and economics involved in proposing and building a Nuclear Reactor is complex.
Especially when you consider there has been [nrc.gov] a bunch of GenIII reactors proposed. Only approved reactor types can be sited and the companies w
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I doubt it, that would require building a lot more infrastructure just to avoid buying stuff from places like the Japanese factory that has been building a lot of the stuff worldwide designed for very radioactive environments since the 1970s (name escapes me, but maybe Westinghouse owns it these days after they bought up a lot of Japanese nuclear technology companies). The long timeline for reactor construction used to be due to
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