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.'"

Comments

Finally

[plague3106]

Common sense prevails. Nuclear is the best option we have right now for clean, cheap, reliable energy.

Re:Finally

[MrEricSir]

Or we could just, you know, turn off computers that we're not using.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Or ones of no relevance. I call dibs on yours!

Re:Finally

[bunratty]

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.

Re:Finally

[TerranFury]

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.

Re:Finally

[Ares]

Also, YFA indicates "Data from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and USEC, a uranium enrichment company, indicate that enriching the amount of uranium needed to fuel 1,000-megawatt reactor for a year using the most efficient method can require 5,500 megawatt hours of gas- and coal-fired electricity (a 10-megawatt power plant running for 550 hours).*"

in other words, for the math-challenged grandparent post, the 1,000 MW reactor would have to run at full load for 5.5 hours for every year worth of enriched fuel it consumes. The remaining 8,754.5 hours of the year can be used to do other things. like power homes and businesses.

Re:Finally

[notarockstar1979]

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.

And at a lesser cost in the end, partially because they wouldn't have to mine as much new fuel and partially because they wouldn't have to find places to bury the spent fuel.

Re:Finally

[thule]

No thanks to Greenpeace et al that caused nuclear to be financially and politically less viable than coal. Think of what nuclear costs could be if over the top regulations didn't exist. If we can adopt sane regulations to nuclear reactors we would be much less dependent on coal.

Environmental groups have caused the greatest amount of greenhouse gases than any other group. Okay, okay, I made that stat up.

Vote Chuck DeVore (A pro nuclear power guy running for Senate in California).

Re:Finally

[uvdiv_blog]

Clean, as in: do you know how much greenhouse gases are emitted when getting uranium/plutonium out of the ground and processed to be able to use it in a nuclear reactor?

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.

Re:Finally

[joocemann]

And the cost of energy and materials to produce the solar cells needed to capture said solar energy?

... is covered in usually 7 to 10 years of the average 28 years the cell will reliably produce energy. But what is also covered in that 7 to 10 years is the energy it would require to recycle that cell into a new working cell. Now you know; spread the word.

Please don't post/echo false memes unless you actually want to hear the truth.

Re:Finally

[joocemann]

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.

Re:Finally

[torkus]

Are there GW level reactor designs based on materials available in sufficient quantity?

A 2MW reactor using air cooling or a 800MW design that requires 1000 tons of ... meter-long nano-tubes (etc.) isn't going to help replace that 1GW coal plant any time soon.

The general problem is still thermal sinks. A nuclear plant has a thermal efficiency somewhere around 33% so twice as much energy has to go somewhere other than the power substation. Let's take a moderately small plant with an output of 500MW ... which implies 1GW (thermal) has to be dissipated. Roughly you're looking at something like 12 million cubic meters per hour of airflow...assuming a 250C change in air inlet to output temp.

Not meant to flame...i'm curious how the math makes large scale (non-evaporative) air-cooled thermal plants possible.

Re:Finally

[ender8282]

That article isn't even consistent. Elsewhere It says that the total solar energy reaching earth is 3.8 YJ/year. The earth uses 500 Exa J /year. That means that the entire surface of the earth only produces about 1900x the power we need. If you factor out the oceans as 2/3 the earth's surface you are down to 633x our current power needs. (That doesn't even take into account that the south pole is a pretty lousy place to get solar energy because the sun's rays are never normal to it). Lets also assume that you don't want to kill forests. 30% of the earth's land is covered by forest [www.earth-policy.org/indicators/Forest/2006.htm]. That takes up down to 422x total energy needs. Take out for farmland it there will be less. And the worst part is that forestland and farmland are highly concentrated around places that have good sunlight. You don't see many trees in Antarctica. We probably could get enough energy but it isn't quite as large is you suggest.

Re:Finally

[Xzisted]

Ok. Quick list before I head home from my engineering job.

Solar cell (photovoltaic) efficiencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell

Power grid issues with Wind and Solar.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/10grid.html?_r=4&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/business/27grid.html

A host of nonpartisan (I'm independant BTW) issues can be found in the wikipedia articles for Geothermal and Tidal (waveform hydroelectric) power. Ironically enough, they can generate power, but are equally horrible for the environment in other ways. Not to mention they are extremely cost prohibitive in most circumstances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide

Worldwide we are producing about 10GW of power using geothermal today. Overall, thats not alot. And geothermal has many construction and engineering hurdles to overcome that are different with EACH installation which increases costs and can reduce overall output. Technology can solve this problem, yet again, its not there yet. Not reliably anyways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Barrage
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Severn-Barrage-Tidal-Power.htm
Even if they start the Severn Barrage right this second, it would not be fully operational and completed until 2020 at the earliest. The construction costs are nearly $40 billion (24bn. pounds), and the total power output would be around 8.6GW under ideal circumstances. Output is dependant on variable scenarious such as weather (which can also cause damage) and current. Expected average output is about 2GW. Current nuclear technology can generate upwards of 1.4-1.5GW of power per reactor with multiple reactors built at each plant.
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Severn-Barrage-Tidal-Power.htm

So, about that extensive data you have seen. Want to provide some links that have hard numbers and are based in facts or do you want to sit over there and provide no helpful commentary yourself other than to say I'm wrong and you're right?

Re:Finally

[sjs132]

I blew away my mods just to reply to YOU.

WHERE in your calculations do you account for cost of installation?

Where is your cost of batteries for non-sunny days?

Where is your ongoing maintenance costs? (Someone has to climb up and clean the panels occasionally!)

What if you live in a valley?

Solar may be nice in certain areas, but it is not as efficient as you portray it to be. You state 18 years of free energy over a 30 year life span... Where are your facts to back this up? I want to see some REAL figures! Oh, and don't even bother to include government incentives! That's not fair math, that's fuzzy math!

This does not have to be a "No Nukes", solar and wind only argument, but if you are presenting it like that, then bring the facts to the table. ALL energy sources are needed, not one size fits all.

Re:Finally

[MrKaos]

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.

The conclusions reached in that chapter are based on Vattenfall and they build nuclear power plants so it's not surprising the results favor nuclear power. Whilst they are the best run nuclear reactors in the world and an example of what a *baseline* nuclear program should look like, U.S reactors fall dreadfully short.

The work of Vattenfall *and* Storm van Leeuwen and Smith, upon which that chapter cites as references, both use the same method to calculate energy consumption funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy and are used in 80 odd industry sectors. The exceptionally detailed work of Dr Phillip Smith, Nuclear Physicist and Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen (MSc) (Stormsmith.nl), who both work in the nuclear industry and have specialisation on energy system analysis, is mostly ignored in the IPCC report. They have no vested interest in the outcome whilst Vattenfall does.

Their criticisms of Vattenfall include "Process analysis leads to a large underestimation of the total construction energy requirements when labor and supporting activities of the construction are not included".

One thing that is not immediately obvious is that the primary greenhouse gas from the Nuclear industry is not Carbon Dioxide but Chlorinated Fluro-Carbons (CFC114) a greenhouse gas 20,000 times more potent than C02. Whilst it's equivalent effect is slightly over 8 megatons of C02 more potent is the destruction this compound causes to the ozone layer and it's eventual effect on Phytoplankton which creates more breathable oxygen than the Amazon.

If that wasn't serious enough, long term it's not radiation but radioactive isotopes that will eventually make it into the food chain via bioaccumulation. As the hidden cost of carbon is imposed on our generation in the form of a Carbon tax, so we pass on a cost to future generation forced to have to deal with radioactive isotopes and other environmental externalities. Wouldn't it be better to develop a longer term strategy wrt Nuclear power than we currently have that actually addresses the very real problems the industry has?

This isn't surprising at all, when you consider the extreme energy density of nuclear fission.

Which is only relevant if you use the energy density of the enriched isotope and currently PWR use 0.3% of the available energy density. This brings us back to Storm van Leeuwen and Smith whose analysis was to asses the net energy return of the Nuclear industry. For example, for the expected 300TWh's output of a new AP-1000 (low side Vattenfall, high side Storm/Smith) energetic estimates for construction of a nuclear power plant is somewhere between 11TWh and 35TWh, energy cost for demolition around 55TWh to 70TWh, that's around a third before you start. Yet you still have to factor dismantling and clean up of the core alone 5.6TWh's - 16TWh's. They talk in Peta-joules but I've done the conversions to put it in a frame of reference that will be easier to understand.

Using a conservative energy expenditure of 1528Kwh per ton of rock (containing Uranium) you have to process 500 tons of rock, that's 763500Kwh's, to produce one kilo of Uranium. Assuming an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assuming you have a high grade ore that's roughly 763Gwh's per ton and you need 160tons for your first core. Even before enri

Less radioactive waste, too

[AJWM]

A nuclear plant also produces less radioactive waste than does a corresponding coal plant. Of course since the latter doesn't fall under the authority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the radioactive substances in coal ash (like thorium) just get dispersed into the environment along with the stuff that stays toxic forever like arsenic and mercury.

Re:Less radioactive waste, too

[QuantumRiff]

I've often wondered what would happen if they changed that.. A recent Newsweek article was talking about how at the very end of the Clinton Administration, they ruled Fly Ash a hazardous waste, but it was via Executive order (just like we complained that bush did the last few weeks of office) and was undone by the next administration. I wonder what would have happened if that designation was passed "properly" and allowed to stand the last 9 years or so.

Re:Less radioactive waste, too

[Waffle Iron]

It's not true. He is misrepresenting the actual (and true) claim, which is that that during normal operations, coal plants release more radioactivity into the environment than a nuclear plant. The nuclear plant creates many orders of magnitude more radioactive waste than a coal plant; however, almost all of it is normally kept contained, whereas the coal waste is released into the air.

Of course, people who have concerns about the radiation involved with nuclear power aren't worried about radiation released during normal operations, so the claim is rather pointless. They're worried about accidents, sabotage, leakage, and WMD proliferation, which are all ways that the containment could fail.

Re:Less radioactive waste, too

[MobyDisk]

The article doesn't really provide enough information to support the conclusion. All

Summary: Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm. The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks.

Right, but that doesn't help because it discounts the quantity of coal, and the fact that it is being burned and released into the atmosphere. It didn't answer at all the amount of radiation released in total, only the density of the radiation. The question is: Does a coal plant release more or less radiation than a nuclear plant with equivalent output?

About Coal Creek Station: In 1993, the Nation consumed more than 2 million tons of coal per day.

And the article you linked to says:

concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm)

But don't know what 2 million tons x 1 part per million means.... soo... Aha!

Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste

The editor clarifies, at the end of the article:

*Editor's Note (posted 12/30/08): In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ashâ"a by-product from burning coal for powerâ"and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plantâ"a by-product from burning coal for electricityâ"carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

Re:Less radioactive waste, too

[lennier]

"As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage."

That's a fairly big qualification, though, isn't it? Raw coal ash vs *shielded* nuclear waste?

I don't think many environmental protestors are claiming that nuclear waste, if shielded, emits radiation. The worries are about whether the shielding actually survives and doesn't break down over years, leach into groundwater, etc.

Re:Just Takes One

[DrMrLordX]

1). Inhabitable? Don't you mean uninhabitable?

2). It doesn't "just take one". We've suffered more than one nuclear reactor failure in this country without experiencing mass-contamination events along the lines of Chernobyl. Three Mile Island wasn't the only one.

Re:Just Takes One

[AJWM]

I hate to feed the troll, but:

one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable. Presumably you meant "uninhabitable", but you'd still be wrong.

In the 1940s-1950s, the US detonated numerous nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada and New Mexico, releasing a hell of a lot more radioactive material than Chernobyl -- and Chernobyl-type disasters cannot happen with US power reactors (totally different reactor design). This hardly rendered even a significant fraction, let alone "a majority" of the US uninhabitable.

Re:Just Takes One

[Anonymous Coward]

A stranger was seated next to a little girl on the airplane when the
stranger turned to her and said, 'Let's talk. I've heard that flights go
quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.'

The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said
to the stranger, 'What would you like to talk about?'
'Oh, I don't know,' said the stranger. 'How about nuclear power?' and he
smiles.
'OK, ' she said. 'That could be an interesting topic.

But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat
the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty,
and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?'
The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks
about it and says, 'Hmmm, I have no idea.'
To which the little girl replies, 'Do you really feel qualified to
discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?

Re:I enjoy nuclear power

[dogmatixpsych]

And of course now that we have such a "green"-friendly president we are now going to build a few new nuclear reactors!

[Yes, that was sarcasm]. It is unfortunate that our current president and Congressional leadership are so anti-nuclear. You'd think they all still believe the lies and exaggerations of 1960s and 1970s environmentalists. We need to build many more nuclear plants, recycle spent nuclear fuel, and figure out and build better electric cars. That should help out our economy and environment.

Re:Just Takes One

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Just Takes One

[clarkkent09]

I guess nobody in power to stop these things never takes into account that one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable.

I think the keyword here is could. I can imagine many disasters that could cause enormous damage too, but the question is how likely they are to happen. What is more likely, a meteor strike, or an accident in a nuclear power station of such a magnitude as to render US uninhabitable? I don't know, but lets say they are comparable. If so, we should be willing to spend as much money on protection against meteors as we are on not using nuclear power, including, arguably, the cost of our military operations in the middle east, the increased danger of terrorism (potentially nuclear too) etc. Either way it's a cost/benefit analysis and you have to look at both sides of the equation.

Intense danger

[StreetStealth]

Your car has four wheels and an internal combustion engine, traits shared by the 1907 Holsman Model 3. Have you stopped to consider the intense danger this poses to you?

But wait: The Holsman was built in a time before ABS, crumple zones, air bags, or even seatbelts. One might presume your 2003 Nissan Altima to be a little safer.

Chernobyl was a nuclear plant built with all the safety precautions of early automobiles. Comparing it with modern TVA-built plants is just as valid as the above Slashdot Car Analogy.

Re:Just Takes One

[Avin22]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US have naval submarines that are powered by nuclear reactors. And aren't those subs often docked near populated ports, San Diego for example. Thus, we have already accepted the risk of having nuclear power in populated areas, so it seems odd to be afraid of adding a few civilian nuclear reactors that are not in highly populated areas.

Re:I enjoy nuclear power

[ivan256]

Don't be silly. Our current president is much smarter than that.

He understands that opposing nuclear technology is much more valuable to him politically than using the technology to reduce our carbon emissions in a significant fashion. And maintaining power is more important than the environment.

Re:Just Takes One

[kannibal_klown]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US have naval submarines that are powered by nuclear reactors. And aren't those subs often docked near populated ports, San Diego for example. Thus, we have already accepted the risk of having nuclear power in populated areas, so it seems odd to be afraid of adding a few civilian nuclear reactors that are not in highly populated areas.

Agreed. It's mostly irrational fear.

I could see where one would trust a reactor that was built FOR the military and operated BY highly trained military personnel. Too many civilian projects and products get hit by lowest-bidder disasters.

Re:I enjoy nuclear power

[amliebsch]

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.

Re:on track, on time, and on budget...

[Red Flayer]

1.5 years into a 5-year project, the project is on-time and under-budget?

Quite conceivable, especially since the main contractors (Bechtel, Siemens, Westinghouse) are not operating on cost-plus contracts. But this early into a project, it is a bit premature to assume that it'll continue to be under-budget and on-time. But who knows, maybe it will be. The reputation of the contractors (especially Bechtel, as primary contractor for most of the work) depends on it. This is especially important given that the market for construction of nuclear facilities in the US has the potential to, um, explode over the next decade or two.

Keep in mind that the biggest boondoggle of over-budget and past-due construction (the Big Dig in Boston) was under budget and on time for the first several years of construction.

Re:Just Takes One

[CannonballHead]

I recently read about Chernobyl on wikipedia. That entire episode was apparently ... well, incredibly stupid and mismanaged. It was more of a "Titanic" incident than anything else I can think of in history. (The "nothing will go wrong" mentality that leads to some really, really stupid actions)

Re:I enjoy nuclear power

[QuantumRiff]

Couldn't agree more.. The best way to defend against a "dirty bomb" is to start refining the low level waste for recycling. I wish the terrorists luck assembling dirty bombs made of Plutonium. In reality, a very large portion of our current nuclear fuel comes from "recycled' warheads from Russia. I can't help but smile at the fact that the cold war is powering my AC on a hot day ;).

Re:Just Takes One

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Re:Just Takes One

[Ihmhi]

Science-to-car analogy translation:

All car engines use small explosions to provide power. What you don't want to happen is a really big explosion.

Applications

[TopSpin]

Here is a map of sites for which applications have been submitted to the NRC and are currently undergoing review. None of these will happen until the political will emerges to move the bureaucracy.

Meh

[bill_kress]

I'm kind of neutral about the whole subject. Neat tech, but trusting corporations is not in my nature.

Also, when compared to wind and solar, Nuclear is the one power source that allow corporations to retain control of power generation.

But balancing that is the fact that it's a pretty continuous source of energy...

What I'd really like to understand (I always ask this and I've never gotten an answer) is why some people are so for it. They aren't going to make money off it, overall it will not save them money (Even those of us who live exclusively off dams don't have THAT much of a money savings)...

I can understand people being really against it. Fear of the unknown, lack of understanding, history (quite a few people have died in the past)

I can also understanding someone being somewhat for it (I'd be tempted to vote for one in my city, although the last one here was a complete cluster-fsck) but where does one get the motivation for the positive passion that this topic so often seems to create?

Re:Meh

[plover]

Because nuclear power is greener than fossil fuels (the emissions are tiny, solid and containable, and it doesn't destroy whole ecosystems like hydroelectric dams), it's more effective/efficient than terrestrial sources (a nuclear plant is very "compact" compared to the land mass of solar array or a giant farm of 1MW windmills ) and we have enough fuel to run them for centuries (as opposed to oil and gas which are rapidly dwindling, and could be used for other purposes such as plastics and lubrication.) Read all of the above posts to understand more of the benefits. They are very exciting.

The drawbacks are all about the waste: how do you store a thing that's dangerous for tens of thousands of years? How do you adequately protect a thing that's desired by terrorists?

As engineers, we see those as solvable problems. But they are never implemented because of the political opposition, not because of any technical reason. And nothing pisses us off faster than pointing out a perfectly valid solution to a problem only to be told we can't do that because some ignorant people are afraid. "No, you can't run a nuclear train through my town, even though the cars have been crash tested at 150 MPH," or "You can't bury that waste thousands of feet below the ancient burial grounds of my already dead great-great-great grandparents, we must honor them properly from within our sacred Casinos."

That's where my passion comes from, and it's probably not an uncommon sentiment here on /.

Re:Meh

[shutdown -p now]

What I'd really like to understand (I always ask this and I've never gotten an answer) is why some people are so for it.

I consider myself a sane and pragmatical environmentalist. That is, I believe that we shouldn't crap all over the place just because it's easy and convenient for us to do so today, disregarding the consequences of those actions tomorrow. Thus, I believe that we should gradually reduce the use of fossil fuels (i.e. as fast as possible, but without collapsing our economy and inducing quality of life decrease).

On the other hand, I still believe that needs of humanity come first, and that nature (and, in general, world around us) is something that we should use towards our goals and preserve for the sake of self-preservation; and not something inherently valuable in and of itself, or a god to worship. Thus, I do not support significant scaling back of our energy use - most of it really isn't excess, but is required to maintain our present living standard. Reducing energy consumption would require scaling it back very significantly, and I do not want to see that happen. We can definitely try to trim consumption down where possible, by using more energy efficient machines and technologies (such as those nifty insulated houses that leak very little heat). But in the end, this is still a drop in the ocean.

The only way I see to reconcile these two viewpoints is to embrace nuclear power (and in perspective, when they get it to work, fusion). It's reasonably clean - yes, there's waste, but that can be fairly easily contained and controlled. It is powerful enough to sustain our energy use, even extrapolating future growth. And it is going to last for very long, long enough to research the next step (be it fusion or something else).

Nothing else cuts it. Not solar, not wind, and not tidal. I fully support their use wherever possible, but they quite obviously aren't enough to cover our needs without scaling them back significantly.

Re:Meh

[plover]

The green reasons don't drive the passion. They're strong arguments, but that's not the answer you were looking for. The passion comes from the denial for purely political reasons. When it's important enough, we can keep stuff out of the wrong hands. We can indeed get rid of it by burying it deep -- hundreds of meters beneath the bottom of the ocean is an almost perfect natural storage repository. We can monitor the hell out of the corporations using it (we already do.) Every problem facing nuclear power has been solved.

Because there are no valid reasons to say "no", being told "no" by intentionally stupid people for invalid reasons ignites a negative emotion -- anger. Anger is just as motivating as the positive passions.

The real answer is anger at willfully stupid people. Ordinary, garden-variety stupid people don't bother me, because I know that some people don't have the capacity to learn. It's the ones that deliberately refuse to learn from history or from mountains of evidence that really piss me off.

Lost Time

[CopaceticOpus]

I think it's great to see new nuclear power coming online, but it's too bad this is simply the completion of a project begun in the 1970's. There hasn't been enough work done in the US to advance the design of nuclear power stations in the last few decades. I wonder how much more efficiently these stations could be built and run today if we had been focused on the problem all this time.

Re:Lost Time

[Registered Coward v2]

I think it's great to see new nuclear power coming online, but it's too bad this is simply the completion of a project begun in the 1970's. There hasn't been enough work done in the US to advance the design of nuclear power stations in the last few decades. I wonder how much more efficiently these stations could be built and run today if we had been focused on the problem all this time.

Actually, there's been a lot of work on reactor designs over the last decade o so:

GE has the ABWR and SBWR plants, and ABWRs have been built in Japan,

Westinghouse has the AP-600 (now AP-1000), and

CE had the System 80+

Of these, the SBWR and AP-1000 are probably the most advanced, in the sense of passive safety systems and i teh SBWR's case, natural circulation. Both are attempts to simply construction and operation to reduce costs and increase safety.

The AP-1000 and SBWR will probably be the next generation of US plats, built at existing sites where multiple units were planned but not built; since those sites have already passed NRC site approval.

I heard...

[lymond01]

that they were just waiting on Windows 7.

hit by lowest-bidder disasters

[aztracker1]

And the military isn't?

Home means Nevada, home means the hills...

[Xaedalus]

The hills of Dixie Valley in this case. Fallon, NV was witness to an above-ground nuke in the 1960's at some point. The whole town came out to watch the big boom (more than 25 miles away). Apparently you can still go out there to Dixie Valley and see the blast crater. And yes, I'm a Nevadan. I glow in the dark and sport an absurd immunity to arsenic. When the apocalypse does come around, I and my fellow Nevadans will be duking it out with the giant mutant cockroaches and their cthonic overloads atop the mounds of your corpses. (Texans ain't got shit when it comes to heat, environment, guns per capita, or any claim to be tough in general - we laugh in their general direction)

Re:Just Takes One

[DaleSwanson]

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html I won't say if the specific example is true but:

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.

Re:Just Takes One

[Joce640k]

Ummm .... just how many deaths and how much radioactivity was released by 3MI? Approx: None.

 

The ONLY lesson to be learned from Chernobyl is that a tin roof over a bad rector design isn't a good combination. Modern reactors have both failsafe designs AND better containment, so no, it can't happen here. Reactors like (eg.) the Pebble Bed reactor have no unstable state. Even if some lunatic director goes berserk in the reactor control room he can't cause a meltdown.

Its the waste stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one answers the question: Where are you going to put the waste? You can't recycle or reprocess everything and whats left is mind bogglingly bad.

The reason is, there is no answer for a 250,000 year problem like that. Even if you find a 'solution' to keep it out of the easy to parts of the world we use you still have left future generations a crap load of trouble in addition to what every they will have to deal with.
Thanks mom.

Re:Externality (Waste Disposal)

[IICV]

TBD is better than the answers you get for coal:

• Where does the waste go? (Into the air, including all the little radioactive uranium and thorium particles that live in coal)
• What is the cost of waste disposal? (Absolutely free, because we're just farting it all out into the atmosphere. Not quite as cheap when you factor in the increased incidence of cancer in those who live downwind, though.)
• Have they factored that cost into their calculations? (Nope, and that's why we have the problems we do today.)

First New Nuclear in a Decade?

[Kizeh]

The title is pretty misleading, as it omits "US." One might also look outside of the US borders for some examples of how new nuclear power plants are coming along -- or aren't.

Re:I enjoy nuclear power

[Randle_Revar]

>Environmentalist wackos want us to turn off electricity and live in paper hats,
Did you mean "huts"? Although living in a giant paper hat might be fun, at least until it rained.

Anyway, who are these nuts? Where are they? I have read about them, but I have not seen
any evidence that these creatures still exist in the wild. I am convinced they went extinct
in the 60s or 70s. Certainly I have not found any in the environmentalist communities I
frequent.