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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.
In all seriousness, 12.7 MW seems rather small for a $6 billion price tag.
12.7 MW sounds a bit low. Even a DeLorean could generate 1.21 GW.
But seriously, my home entertainment center uses more than that. Well, OK, not so seriously. But still, I'm just sayin.
Fool, they're not running Vista on the control system. They're running a pirated copy of the Windows 7 beta. Get it straight.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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.
Since when did iPods become a unit of measurement?
"That kid was hit by a 2-ton truck. That's a lot of iPods!"
It's a 1.2GW plant. The current order is for four reactors, for 8 billion dollars. The price is expected to fall to about 1 billion per reactor. China has a goal of building 100 reactors by 2020. IF the USA built that many, it would cut power plant greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, or the equivalent of nearly a million windmills.
This is my sig.
Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island. That's the only one you have to know, because it's the name that's been repeating in the minds of potential private investors in US nuclear power for over 30 years. Investors don't give a crap about cost savings or net power generation - at least directly, what they want to know first and foremost is what their chances are of making guaranteed bank over the life of the plant are. Investing in coal and oil is a sure-fire 100% money maker. Nuclear might be an even bigger money maker, 99% of the time, but... Three Mile Island, Three Mile Island, Three Mile Island...
Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island. That's the only one you have to know
TMI's operator's insurance company payed out US$40M in lawsuits. Not much, even in 1980 dollars.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I just gave a briefing to one of the engineers at this power plant a few weeks ago. Interesting place! It's sort of out in the middle of nowhere, at least as a far as coastal China goes. It's about an hour and a half from here, and the place would never have been built anywhere in the West. There is a Western psuedo-religion that automatically opposes anything with the word "atoms" in the name...it really retards progress. It's the sort of thing that really stands out in relief after you've been out of America for a while and gotten used to the sanity of daily Chinese life. It's really cool when you have a relationship with the guy who grows your vegetables, AND he's just a regular guy, not some psuedo-religious neogardener.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Nah, the typo is later. The full title should be "Nexr-Gen Nucrear Power Prant".
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I doubt investors viewed a nuclear plant that's completely shut down for the better part of 6 years for cleanup as a sound investment.
You're correct. Nuke plants must be designed like modern chemical plants, which are more complex than nuke plants, handle boatloads of hazardous chemicals and have high availability.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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.
What are you talking about? If the control rods are Li then you get T. But if you want more interesting byproducts you leave the water out and go for a fast neutron spectrum *and* you get more tritium.
Its pretty clear that this is about generating electricity.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
At a cost of $5.85 billion, and assuming a lifetime of 40 years, an interest rate of 6%, this nuclear plant will have an annual mortgage of $389 million. With a nameplate rating of 1100 MW, if it runs 92% of the time, it will produce 8.9 billion kWh per year, so the capital repayments will amount to $0.044/kWh, assuming it doesn't go over budget. Assuming an optimistic cost for fuel around $0.005/kwh, this gives a total cost of $0.049/kWh, neglecting the cost of maintenance, waste disposal, and any risk of contamination or weapons proliferation.
Now let's look at a new wind farm. A 50 MW wind farm would cost around $96 million (at $1923/kW), which yields an annual capital repayment of $7.5 million (assuming a lifetime of 25 years). If the plant runs at a 35% capacity factor, it will produce 153 million kWh per year. So the total cost will be $0.049/kWh.
So, which would you rather spend $0.049/kWh on -- a nuclear plant that might go over budget, might leak radiation at some point during its life, whose waste will need to be carefully controlled and permanently stored somewhere that hasn't yet been identified; or a wind farm whose costs are much more certain and which comes without all those ancillary risks?
Yes, any individual wind farm will not provide a firm supply of power. But if a lot of wind farms are used, and they are combined with solar, geothermal and other renewable resources, they will provide a fairly stable power supply. There is also a lot of potential for reshaping electricity loads to match the supply of power (e.g., recharge electric vehicles when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining). And finally, if you must have a firm supply of power, you can convert a wind farm into a completely firm supply (at 35% of its nameplate rating) by spending about 10% extra and building rarely-used natural gas peaker plants ($634/kW * 35% = $222kW).
Who cares about Chernobyl? No one is building new RBMK-1000/1500 reactors these days. Since the USSR is no more, no one is stupid enough to perform a breathtakingly stupid experiment on a hot reactor that wasn't particularly stable by design in the first place.
Anyone who invokes Chernobyl as an argument against modern nuclear power had better have a good grasp of what actually happened at Chernobyl and why it isn't applicable outside of Chernobyl.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Let's look at two numbers here:
8.9 billion kWh per year
and
153 million kWh per year.
And - oh wait, there's just the trivial need to have them...
combined with solar, geothermal and other renewable resources, they will provide a fairly stable power supply
A nuclear power plant needs none of this to provide a *very* stable power supply, and is neatly placed in one spot, with a much smaller overall infrastructure build than a miscellaneous hodge-podge of various power sources scattered wherever the environment is suitable for them. It's also proven to work very well at base load generation.
So, which would you rather spend $0.049/kWh on -- a nuclear plant that might go over budget, might leak radiation at some point during its life, whose waste will need to be carefully controlled and permanently stored somewhere that hasn't yet been identified; or a wind farm whose costs are much more certain and which comes without all those ancillary risks?
I would prefer to spend my 4.9cents per kWh on something that will reliably produce base load power 24/7 thanks. Come back in 20 years when some other sucker^W fearless forward-thinker has lost a pile of cash getting the tech tamed and into the markeplace.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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.
First of all, Chernobyl was largely not caused by human error. It was due to pure bloody mindedness inherent in the USSR and a dangerous reactor design that made even more dangerous by disabling critical safety systems.
Everyone likes to paint TMI as a huge disaster that should be ranked with Chernobyl, yet TMI was no more serious than a small, controlled release of radioactive gas which quickly dispersed into the atmosphere. Which funnily enough is the exact sort of thing that coal plants do all the time yet nobody appears to live in mortal terror of them. TMI is only considered major because the danger was inflated and the government instilled panic by evacuating large numbers of people. Combine that with a little lobbying from coal and oil companies and you get the current disaster that is US policy on nuclear energy.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
You've started with wrong numbers. The 40 billion Yuan cost is not for one reactor; it is for two of the same kind.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/19/content_11217433.htm
So in fact, under your assumptions, the levelized cost of these reactors is 1/2 the cost of wind.
Yet despite all of this, it didn't go "bang" and it hasn't happened before or after. I'm not arguing that accidents can't happen, or that reactor design is perfect and can never go wrong, but what TMI shows is that even when things do go wrong, they can be managed.
On a scale of 1-10 there is still a huge, huge gap between TMI and Chernobyl. The two can't be compared at all.
When the prevailing opinion on a subject matter is contrary to your own, the onus is on you to demonstrate the facts and "win hearts and minds."
Getting e-angry and insulting your detractors isn't going to help change popular perception of nuclear safety in the slightest.
TIn both cases, better training and adhering to safety protocols would have saved lives
Saved lives at Three Miles Island? Who died?
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.
I did some reading on wikipedia about the various nuclear reactors recently. So being a lay-person, there's some existing common wisdom.
The placement of the nuclear reactor to the sea is a safety issue. You NEED guaranteed large cool water in the condenser stage or reactor goes boom. Wiki says thermal heat is regularly used as hot-water heaters - similar to geothermal heating in iceland. Whether anybody actually uses this is anybody's guess.. Obviously you'd need to pipe the hot water to end locations, so existing suburbia obviously isn't anywhere near able to handle this.
As for breeder reactors:
A) All fission reaction is of a breeding nature. The ratio of bred material is what the different processes produce. The bred ratio varies from 0.5 to 1.2. Where 1.01 is the accepted min ratio to be called a breeder reactor (producing more fissile fuel than originally introduced).
B) Any of the high breeder reactors utilize some aspect of fast-fission. Canada, India and Russia (and France?). Fast fission requires the ABSENCE of water, as water (either light or heavy(deutreonic)) captures energetic neutrons. Instead reaction-neutral coolants are used such as sodium, molten lead, etc. The problem here is related to safety. It is harder to produce intrinsic stability into non-water-based fission. Namely, in boiler-based reactors, when a greater ratio of steam is produced, the reaction naturally slows down, thus naturally regulating the system if electronic control mechanisms don't catch and compensate the control rods in time. With non steam based systems, you use complex chemical fission-poisons (in high-pressure based reactors as found in subs) or are fully reliant on control-rod actuators. (possible single point of failure). (note: I could be wrong about liquid metal based systems not having alternate backup mechanisms such as fission-poisons)
C) Chernobyl was a fast-fission reactor. And it's melt-down was related to the inability to shutdown quickly enough.. (specifically pressure-valve failures and insufficient monitoring which would have initiated the shutdown sooner) The environmental DAMAGE, however was due exclusively to the fact that it was a warhead manufacturing site, and the construction apparatus is too large to enclose with a hardened concrete barrier.
D) 70% of Thorium is in India. Thus, even though Thorium is (likely) a less efficient starting process for a breeder reactor, it's a better long-term strategy for India so as to provide energy independence. This isn't true of most countries.
E) Breeder reactors are the basis of nuclear warheads, thus it's an extremely hot-button issue. The US and Russia specifically discontinue their breeder reactors to comply with arms control. Russia now strip-mines their old warhead supply to fuel existing reactors both domestically and abroad. I suspect that China is not indifferent to this topic as well. The french reprocessing plant is actively/heavily monitored by the UN (IAEA).
F) The French rebreeding process is apparently NOT cost effective by any measure. The reason they do it is similar to the Indian Thorium objective - international energy independence.. China is not likely to be short-supplied of uranium mineral deposits - but I'm not aware of their status. I know Canda has massive Uranium supplies.
Currently boiler and pressure based reactors are 'cheap' to build and are cheap to operate (so long as raw Uranium ore is cheap). They both require 'pre-processing' of the ore to increase the concentration of U-235 to a sufficient level. So it's slightly more expensive in the long run as both ore prices will increase over time, and the added cost of pre-processing.
heavy-water and liquid-metal and inert-gas based reactors facilitate 'raw' Uranium, (e.g. U-238 and possibly thorium), and thus make the operating costs MUCH cheaper, but they don't have the longevity of trivial passive boiler-based plants, and thus the high capital costs are for shorter terms - and thus the average cost is higher.
-Michael
Not true. India has constructed thermal breeder reactors that use thorium-uranium fuel and heavy water moderator / coolant.
Nope. You just need to ensure you don't moderate the neutron spectrum. Supercritical water coolant has a high enough heat capacity and low enough neutron absorption cross section to make this feasible. Google for the Fast SCWR if you doubt me.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Chernobyl was a thermal spectrum reactor that was heavily moderated with graphite and cooled by water. Wikipedia has a good article about the causes of the chernobyl disaster. In summary it was caused by a heavily over moderated design ( the opposite of a fast reactor ) in combination with flawed control rod design and the lack of a containment building.
U-233 in thorium fuel has a much better capture to fission ratio than U-235 and Pu-239 which means you don't need a fast reactor to set up a breeding cycle. The waste products are also less long lived since the thorium cycle only produces trace actinides.
Every single plutonium based nuclear weapons program in existence has used low-burnup thermal reactors and not fast reactors. Furthermore most designs of fast reactors are not practical to be run on a frequent refueling cycle, making them substantially less suitable to produce weapons grade plutonium than more traditional methods. The reprocessing methods needed to recover the minor actinides are also unsuitable for separating pure plutonium, making the entire fuel cycle significantly less prone to proliferation than the thermal + PUREX cycle.
Russia has commercial breeder reactors in operation and actively develops fast breeder technology, including their BREST project based on lead coolant and dry reprocessing.
Only if you compare it to coal or traditional nuclear. Compared to wind and other low-co2 energy sources it works out cheaper. In addition the French programs currently aim for research. Commercial reactors would likely use different designs to optimize economics rather than flexibility of the experiments that can be run. In addition they use the PUREX process for recycling the waste as opposed to newer dry-reprocessing methods. Because dry reprocessing uses salt rather than water ( a moderator ) criticality problems are heavily reduced allowing the plant to be smaller and cheaper. Furthermore while liquid sodium reactors are indeed more expensive than pressurized water reactors, it is fully possible to use other coolants such as Lead or Supercritical water. These would with high probability lead to a much cheaper plant ( by 30% or so ) since the lack of a phase change in the coolant allows the plant to be simpler and smaller. In addition the higher temperature increases the efficiency to about 45% as opposed to 33% for more traditional designs.