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Next-Gen Nuclear Power Plant Breaks Ground In China
An anonymous reader writes "The construction of first next-generation Westinghouse nuclear power reactor breaks ground in Sanmen, China. The reactor, expected to generate 12.7 Megawatts by 2013, costs 40 billion Yuan (~US$6 billion; that's a lot of iPods.) According to Westinghouse, 'The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.' However, Chinese netizens suspect China is being used as a white rat to test unproven nuclear technologies (comments in Chinese)." Update: 04/20 07:28 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, this plant will generate much more than 12.7 Megawatts -- more like 1100 MWe.
The AP-1000 isn't a new technology reactor. That's the whole point. It's a conventional pressurized-water reactor. It's built mostly from existing Westinghouse components which Westinghouse had type-approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so that multiple identical units could be built without going through a full design review for each one. So far, nobody has ordered one. Until now.
Most US reactors are unique designs, which is a headache. France has 34 reactors of the same design, which has cost and maintenance advantages, although there's been at least one common design flaw found.
Westinghouse is no longer a US company. It's owned by Toshiba.
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.
China is building up powerful clean power-stations, while the US is wasting billions on bullshit projects intended to keep people working, rather than doing something useful.
Why aren't we building these stations so as to be able to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal and whatever else gets burned to produce electricity here? The Chinese bloggers suspect, we aren't sure of the technology and want to test it in China first, but the truth is much less sinister — and much more worrying...
We have simply lost the drive and our ability to take bold steps and initiatives. Would I like a nuclear plant in my backyard? Yes, as a matter of fact, I would certainly prefer it to a coal-burning one (with its radioactive smoke) or to a wind-turbine, which would take up the entire plot to produce enough electricity for a single light-bulb.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How much land does that 50 MW wind farm take up?
More important how much land will those 58 (8.9 billion / 153 million) 50 MW wind farms take up? Not to mention what is the cost of building conventional power plants to supply the power on days when it is not windy. Did you factor that in to your price =)
I'd also venture a guess that maintenance costs on 58 wind farms (+ supplemental power)would actually be more than the one nuclear plant just due to the quantity of them.
I'm all for alternative energy as supplements and for using it where it's practical, but at our current state of technology we can't depend on it yet.
The only one that I can give any level of dependability to is geothermal and obviously you can't build those just anywhere.
The U.S. needs Nuclear power plants, but I fear it's not going to happen until it's too late.
Moderation is not supposed to be used as an indicator of agreement.
The technology may have been different, Chernobyls technology may have been inferior to modern nuclear power, but considering both the Chernobyl accident and three mile island were caused by human error, it doesn't bode well for any kind.
In the case of Three Mile Island, "The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss of coolant accident due to inadequate training and ambiguous control room indicators." (here ) and in the case of Chernobyl, they set up a reactor test which ran overdue and it was left to the undertrained and underskilled night-shift to handle the plant at the time (here)
In both cases, better training and adhering to safety protocols would have saved lives and possibly the reactor. So don't go dismissing Chernobyl as an argument against Nuclear power. It's an argument against cutting corners and the lowest-bidder mentality that still exists today in the building of new nuclear plants.
"How cheap is safe enough?" is something few people want to ask, and even fewer people want to answer.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I work at a pressurized water reactor so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies....
No, seriously, I'm not an expert on the radionuclide table, but that's hardly why one would choose a pressurized water reactor over a boiling water reactor. (Those are the two big established types. The United States has dozens of both varieties in commercial operation.)
One big reason to pick a pressurized water reactor is that you limit your contamination to the primary reactor coolant loop and it's support systems. The steam plant- the electricity generating side- stays completely radiation free.
This makes servicing the steam-electricity side of the plant much cheaper and simpler.
Most electricity generating power plants in the US operate on steam power.
In a pressurized water reactor, there's a separate reactor coolant loop that passes heat through metal tubes, boiling 'feed water' in the steam generator, and the steam spins the turbine that makes electricity. The primary coolant and the feed water/ steam do not come in contact.
In a boiling water reactor, the reactor directly boils the water that spins the turbine. One big advantage of this is cheaper construction.
Both types 'burn' Uranium to generate the heat that boils the water. Pressurized Water Reactors simply have an additional segregated loop of water.
There are probably a number of advantages to either type that other folks could fill you in on. I assure you though, as an operator of an American Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactor, tritium is nothing more than an occasional annoyance.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Wrongo Bub.
TMI was a huge disaster for the nuclear industry, as it revealed that the status quo was totally inadequate.
So many aspects of the design, thought to be first rate, turned out to be totally foobar. The stuck valve, a critical item, turned out to be prone to sticking, as it was based on a valve designed to handle high-fat raw milk, an excellent lubricant.
The control room design was worse than useless, with critical water-level guages hidden off in a corner. A computer system that ran 20 minutes behind real-time. Dozens of blinking and hypnotizing alarms, with no hierarchy of priority.
Total unmitigated disaster.
Investors rightly saw that what had been touted as the best of all possible worlds was actually quite awful.
And it was not a "small controlled release". The original overflows into the auxiliary buildings was uncontrolled and could be measured at 15 times above background level many miles away.
New pebble bed designs using Silicon Carbide "Pebbles" and helium heat transfer offer incredibly more safety than previous designs. These plants are designed to be literally "Run Away" proof, in fact, left fully engaged they will automatically reach top operating temperature then ramp down, never reaching supercritical temperatures or levels on nuclear reaction.
As well, because of the functional design, these reactors can be used as safe breeder reactors, meaning the there will be little nuclear waste to deal with.
I think this is absolutely one of the better energy alternatives we currently have before us.
Apparently, cold fusion seems to be making a solid comeback (in case you didn't see 60 minutes this last Sunday, A number of companies are producing very real products using cold fusion technology, and DARPA has verified the cold fusion technology, and plans on using it for a number of portable high energy power cells.
Seems we are at a very interesting place in our history.