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^You are talking off of assumptions, not experience. You could have checked just a little first, the link below an example of digital products that have been being installed in US nuclear plants for over that last 20 years. These systems don't need to be installed in containment where radiation levels are high, relay based controls are already installed in low rad environments.

http://www.westinghousenuclear...

Here is one on the Oconee Reactor Protection digital system, other plants are in the process of planning protection system digital upgrades;

http://www.power-eng.com/artic...

In addition, many US plants have installed digital control rod drive control systems. Once again, those controls are not located inside containment. You can walk right up to them, as most all controls, while the plant is running full power.

You have to read the GDC to understand why the regulations are in place. They exist for a reason and sometimes you have to go and research things yourself to gain the knowledge. For example, you might download EPA data and query it to find out something about the Nuclear Industries CFC emissions. The data is available, it just isn't packaged and you have to be prepared to do the work yourself.

You do realize that this is basically what asking for a citation means, right? You can't just say 'go find it yourself'. If you write a scientific paper, you'd cite the paper and page you got the information from. You make an assertions, you might be asked to back it up. I'm actually fine with backing my assertions up, at least when I have time.

Still, on emissions - there's a difference between what you wrote, along the lines of 'allowed to release radioactive gasses every two weeks', which implies that they were just opening reactor vents every two weeks, allowing the gasses to go directly to the atmosphere, and what the patent you linked to(thank you, very enlightening), which reveals that while systems vary, they're actually trapping said gasses in non-emergency situations for at least 30 days. Which is very much NOT just releasing to the atmosphere in normal operations, which is what you implied, and why I was getting antsy about sources.

As for providing links better than yahoo news, I do that when I can. Proving a negative is hard.

As for AP-1000 vs EPR, I already did the calculations, which I posted. Basically, the EPR is rated at more accidents per plant year, but only slightly. Because the EPR is a more powerful reactor though, by anticipated energy production it'd actually have slightly fewer accidents. Note the use of 'slight'. The EPR is not significantly safer than the AP1000, and vice versa.

Both are at around 1% as likely to have an accident involving radiation release as the current legacy reactors, which are generally e-5 on accidents, rather than e-7.

Man, too a bit to find

AP1000 vs EPR: Per wiki the AP1000 has a core damage frequency of 5.09e-7 per plant years, EPR is rated at 6.1e-7 per plant year. So by that metric they're both neck and neck (e-7), with the AP1000 having a slight lead over the EPR. The EPR is about 50% more powerful though, so on a per kWh basis it's a touch safer, as you'd need 3 APs to replace 2 EPR. You're still very close though.

As far as asking me to provide citations, let's see:
Reactors not venting: Conceded. However, I'll maintain that under normal operation, said venting doesn't appear to be on a '2 week schedule', and is very much a processed release, where the gasses are contained and absorbed until the radioactivity has time to die down. If you had expressed it in this fashion, I wouldn't have been so confrontational about it. Also, you were the one saying they vent, which is why I placed the onus on you. Proving a positive is also easier than proving a negative.

Planes not being a threat to even AP1000 domes - Analysis of Nuclear Power Plants Shows Aircraft Crash Would Not Breach Structures Housing Reactor Fuel.

Which brings us back to the point I originally made that the AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design for NEW plants.

Dude, the wiki, westinghouse's site, etc... All mention extensive safety systems, including how they've changed some things up to improve safety - things like relying on gravity rather than pumps, because gravit

It's going to be pretty ugly in a couple decades. It would be nice if people could be rational and let us build newer reactors.

Well it is happening, but the focus these days is on more plentiful smaller reactors.

Westinghouse is beginning fueling tests on the SMR Reactors, which are small enough to be delivered on a couple flatbed trucks. They are engineered for 225 MWe .

The Babcock & Wilcox Company is designing their own model as well as NuScale. Most of these are in the 180 MWe range.

It seems that they are well on track for being available in a couple of decades, maybe in as little as 5 years for the Westinghouse models.
Our ugly problem then will be dealing with half a hundred of these things on the outskirts of major cities, and the waste they produce needing to be stored someplace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/

I'm glad their going ahead with this design. Hopefully it's good. I live on the same geographic sub unit. Though I won't benefit from this probably because the energy produced there is never coming this way.

It is not the perfect design perhaps. But its updated compared to the ones people were raving about in the 60's and 70's.

The reactors them selves are chernobyl biscuis (/sarcasm).

http://www.ap1000.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.

Loss of power is a solved problem. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor is a current design that is passively cooled, no external power necessary. I'm not sure about the spent fuel pools, but the reactor itself is entirely passively cooled and there are several of them already in existence.

A "traveling wave reactor" sounds like a neat idea, but the summary makes it sound like nobody's ever thought about a loss of external power event. We have to remember that the Fukushima plants were built in the 70's, they are old designs. Newer designs take that into account. The only point I'm trying to make here is that current generation designs have already taken loss of external power into account.

Here's a lame-o link:

http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/exploreap1000.html

According to an "insider" friend, this is pretty much a standard design that Westinghouse is working on. More detailed info if you want and can contact me.

Ten years for a nuclear plant to go online seems high.

For example, check out the Westinghouse AP1000, they claim:

"The AP1000 design saves money and time with an accelerated construction time period of approximately 36 months, from the pouring of first concrete to the loading of fuel"

That's not bad. I imagine it would take at least a year or two to get funding and approval, but even then it would only take 5 or at most 6 years for a new plant to start producing power.

Once a company has approval and a line of funding, building more would take less time, you can deploy these side-by-side in a cookie cutter fashion with an accelerated time line.

Do you have a link detailing those Russian reactors changes I can read? Have you considered where that presumption comes from? Automatic fail-safe are one of the design recommendations the nuclear industry made for itself then ignored in the design of the *new* AP-1000. Current reactor facilities have very limited automation, and that's US reactors, forget Russian reactors.

I don't have a link to it, but I do know that an international fund created by donations from private citizens and countries have spent close to 1 billion to help implement safety upgrades by 2000 or so. OF course there is the Wikipedia page but I don't particularly like referencing them. The IAEA has verified the safety upgrades in various press releases over the years. This gets a little complicated to track because the former soviet union states kept their own reactors so all of the information is spread out a little.

I also think you/we might be misunderstanding the AP1000 operational. It didn't ignore the fail safe, it revised how it works and relied a lot on water pressure just to keep the reaction alive. In short, it's a self contained unit during the cool down phase requiring no alternative pumps or power for three days. The fail safe is in the design in which the reactor material is dropped into a containment vessel to be extinguished as it uses stream and condensation to protect the core during this time.

Of course I may be understanding that wrong. The information from the site is a little vague and general but the passive failure mode has been around for a while in the genII stations and considered safe.

There is a 'diesel generator building' in a picture here

The brochure web page for the AP1000 also says much the same thing, 1154MWe.

It also states that this is a Pressurized Water Reactor, so it's probably more about generating by-products (esp. tritium) than it is about generating energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor will be constructed in a few places in China. It's a significant improvement over previous generations in terms of passive (fail-safe) safety systems and taking up much less space. It is based on the AP600 reactor, which received final design certification in 1999.

From a paper that I wrote for my nuclear engineering course two years ago on the topic (original source) -

The AP1000 is unique in that it utilizes many passive safety features, such as gravity, natural circulation, and compressed gas instead of fans, pumps, diesels, chillers, or anything else that has the potential to break down over time. Passive safety measures provide automatic response to accidents and also limit the need for control systems, which, in addition to eliminating many possible sources for human error, cuts down on construction and implementation time for such control systems.

Compared to a standard PWR safety system, the passive safety sub-systems of the AP1000 are much simpler. As there are fewer powered parts, the need for AC power, air conditioning and ventilation, cooling water systems, and seismic buildings is much smaller than traditional plants.

Passive safety injection, passive residual heat removal and passive containment cooling are among the passive safety systems implemented in the AP1000's design.

As far as 'moving a bolt location' and bumping up the generation number, I'll grant you that this isn't a complete redesign of the basic concepts of the plant (I wish there was a commercial IFR), but things like this are significantly improving upon what we already know and do. Besides, as far as marketing goes, it's much easier to take an already functional idea and make it better.

-KovaaK - Posting anonymously as I moderated in this thread.

The only thing actually made by "Westinghouse" is nuclear reactors. The brand name is licensed out by CBS to Westinghouse Digital Electronics LLC, which is a front for Chi Mei Optoelectronics, a subsidiary of Chi Mei Corporation (Taiwan).

Chi Mei is probably the world's leading supplier of large LCD panels.

I guess you were.

Not that they were ever really unsafe, statistically speaking. It's just that they are much more safe now.

Review is misleading and contains wrong info - and hence all comments are incorrect. The company being acquired is Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear power/energy company.

Other references/jokes/et al are confusing it with Westinghouse, a brand owned by CBS/Viacom.

As far as the next generation of "traditional" fission reactors, I guess I've been more impressed with GE's ESBWR , than Westinghouse's APxxx ...
IANANE (I am not a Nuclear Engineer), but BWRs seem to have fewer problems (no steam gnerators to leak/plug up, no vessle head degradation) and are theroetically more efficent (single cycle)...
I wonder if anyone is going to make a bid for GENE (General Electric Nuclear Energy)...
I also wonder why we dont hear more about CANDU reactors . They use natural uranium instead of enriched uranium, which could provide more peaceful energy in unstable areas of the worls

AP-1000
http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/

Westinghouse has had a prefab plant design for a little over a decade. If you want a plant in North America, Westinghouse has a design ready to go.