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First New Nuclear Reactor In a Decade On Track
dusty writes "Plans to bring online the first new US nuclear plant since 1995 are on track, on time, and on budget
according to the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA had one major accident with a coal ash spill of late, and one minor one. The agency has plans and workers in place to have Unit 2 at Watts Bar, near Knoxville, online by 2012. Currently over 1,800 workers are doing construction at the plant. Watts Bar #1 is the only new nuclear reactor added to the grid in the last 25 years. From the article: 'TVA estimates the Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor every year will avoid the emission of about 60 million metric tons of greenhouse emissions linked with global warming. ... TVA began construction of Watts Bar in 1973, but work was suspended in 1988 when TVA's growth in power sales declined. After mothballing the unit for 19 years, TVA's board decided in 2007 to finish the reactor because it is projected to provide cheaper, no carbon-emitting power compared with the existing coal plants or purchased power it may help replace.'"
Agreed. Exactly how nuclear reactors operate makes a big difference, though. If we do not use breeder reactors and build lots of new nuclear power plants, our nuclear fuel might last only a few decades and will generate lots of radioactive waste. Breeder reactors would be able to use most of that waste as fuel, allowing the fuel to last hundreds of years with a fraction of the waste generated.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
1. Reactors don't explode.
2. A Chernobyl style accident is impossible with a light water reactor.
3. Even with a Chernobyl style reactor and even if they had the exact same accident the problem would have been manageable if they had a freaking containment building.
4. Reactors all go critical. What you don't want is for them to go super critical.
5. No modern reactor can go super critical the fuel they use isn't enriched enough to go super critical and they all need a moderator like water to work.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think the security threats are exaggerated. Highly radioactive materials are mostly dangerous to whomever possesses them, and even the highest-level reactor fuel or plutonium products cannot be turned into bomb fuel without multi-billion dollar enrichment facilities. The biggest threat is probably low-level radiation leaking into ground water supplies, but if our society reaches the point where people don't care or don't know about that hazard, we probably aren't living long enough for that to be a big concern anyways.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
1) Mostly true. They can have a steam explosion, which is basically the first thing that happened at Chernobyl. That said, they can't result in a nuclear explosion.
2) Exactly. To be specific, the Chernobyl (RBMK-1000) reactor design used a graphite moderator in order to make it more suitable for production of weapons materials. Graphite moderators are bad for a variety of reasons, both in regards to reactor stability, and the fact that it's extremely flammable (which is where most of the atmospheric contamination from Chernobyl came from - burning graphite.) No US civilian power reactor serves such a dual purpose.
3-5) Don't really need to say more
Additonally:
A typical coal plant releases more radioactive material into the air in a day due to traces of uranium in the coal than TMI released in its lifetime
Also, in addition to the fundamental deficiencies of the the RBMK-1000 design, they were running an experiment with the reactor that could only be described as "fucking dangerous". Well not only, "fucking stupid" works too. By the time the incident occurred, the reactor operators had overridden most of the reactor's safety features - the reactor SHOULD have SCRAMed long before the incident occurred but the operators kept it going to run an experiment because they feared retribution from their superiors. (The experiment failed the first time, and rather than continue shutdown they tried to restart the reactor to try again.)
The biggest problem currently is waste. Sadly, there are reactor designs that are both far more efficient in fuel use (hence produce far less waste per kWh) AND also produce far shorter-lived waste (plus can use traditional LWR waste as fuel), but were killed because politicians translated "breeder" into "proliferation risk" even though traditional LWRs were more of a proliferation risk than the IFR was. Also, a past president (Carter?) banned all nuclear fuels reprocessing in the U.S. with an executive order. Back then, reprocessing = PUREX and banning PUREX was understandable (it WAS a major proliferation risk), but now there are many other reprocessing technologies that are not proliferation risks but are still banned under the wording of the executive order.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Humans consume 16 TW on average.
89 PW of solar energy reaches the earth's surface.
That's over 5,000x the power we need.
(source).
I support nuclear too, but GP is no idiot.
Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium.
I do. See for example the IPCC 4th assessment report, working group 3, chapter 4 "Energy Supply". In particular 4.3.2 pp. 269-270 "Nuclear Power", and also the summary graph Figure 4.19 on page 283, which compares the lifecycle CO2 emissions per unit energy of different primary sources.
In short, considering the entire energy cycle, nuclear power has comparable CO2 emissions to wind, hydro, and solar power, and actually appears rather cleaner than the latter two.
This isn't surprising at all, when you consider the extreme energy density of nuclear fission. Annual uranium mining is on the scale of merely tens of thousands of tons / year, contrasted for instance with coal which is billions of tons - a tiny fraction. The scale is ridiculously small, and correspondingly so are the environmental impacts.
This all comes with a non-obvious disclaimer, that these lifecycle CO2 emissions are only valid in the present context, that most electricity and all transportation are still fossil-fuel powered. Nuclear only emits CO2 at all because there is not enough of it yet, and so the steel mills are powered by coal, and the transport trucks by oil. When we transition to clean energy and electric vehicles or clean synfuels, NONE of the clean energy sources will have ANY lifecycle CO2 emissions at all, and the debate will be moot. (Well, there are two exceptions - inputs of concrete, whose manufacture necessarily emits CO2, in the reduction of CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2, and with hydropower (see the same IPCC chapter, 4.3.3.1, p. 273-4), which emits the GHG methane from anaerobic decomposition of plant matter that is flooded when reservoirs are filled.))
Oh one more thing - plutonium isn't extracted from the ground, it is synthetic, created by nuclear transmutation. One neutron capture U-238 + n -> U-239, followed by two spontaneous beta-decays (neutron turns to proton, emits electron and antineutrino), U-239 -> Np-239 -> Pu-239.
How much do you actually know about what you're talking about? I'm not asking you rhetorically (though that would be fun to poke at you with), but actually. Tell me what you know before I pay any credence to your b.s.
I can, however, rapidly destroy your b.s. with the fact that the average solar cell produces enough energy to pay for itself AND recycle itself into another working cell in 7 - 10 years. And the average lifespan being 28 years before requiring recycle. Do the math, if you can. 28-10 = 18 years of relatively free energy.
I'm happy to have informed you. Spread the word instead of the false memes you're trying to echo.