Russia Set To Extend Life of Nuclear Reactors Past Engineered Life Span

Harperdog writes "Yikes! Russia is extending the lifetime of nuclear power reactors beyond their engineered life span of 30 years, including the nation's oldest reactors: first-generation VVERs and RBMKs, the Chernobyl-type reactors. This goes against existing Russian law, because the projects have not undergone environmental assessments. 'Many of the country's experts and non-governmental organizations maintain that this decision is economically unjustifiable and environmentally dangerous — to say nothing of illegal. The Russian nuclear industry, however, argues that lifetime extensions are justified because the original estimate of a 30-year life span was conservative; the plants have been significantly upgraded; and extensions cost significantly less than constructing new reactors.'"

Comments

Re:Big deal...

[v1]

The Russian nuclear industry, however, argues that lifetime extensions are justified because the original estimate of a 30-year life span was conservative; the plants have been significantly upgraded; and extensions cost significantly less than constructing new reactors.'"

1. Conservative estimates are appropriate for things that can melt down. Bigger impacts from "catastrophic failure" justify wider safety margins.
2. The original estimates already factored in maintenance and upgrades over their lifespan. Trying to factor them in again is just plain wrong.
3. Meltdowns are more expensive than construction. See also: Fukushima

Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?

4. Nuclear is a comparatively new technology, and there have been a lot of fundamental changes and advances in reactor design in the last 30 years. A coal plant may change out a turbine for a more energy-efficient model during its term, but you can't just pull a reactor core (along with all its infrastructure) and swap in a totally different design as part of an upgrade. Changes like that generally call for outright replacement anyway.

Re:Big deal...

[rtfa-troll]

Most all power plants are life-extended past their first thirty years. Why should nuclear be different?

There are several things here.

• a) nuclear plants suffer from neutron damage. Almost any material can be degraded by long term neutron bombardment through neutron capture; this means that over the long term parts of nuclear reactors have failure modes that may not be present in any other power plant
• b) nuclear reactor cores are highly radioactive to the level that can even destroy electronic equipment, certainly causes contamination and makes human inspection impossible. This makes it extremely difficult to be sure that equipment degradation has not become serious (compare with aeroplane inspection which uses detailed visual inspection at close range combined with large devices wheeled right up to the plane)
• c) the parts which are likely to fail (those close to the reactor core) are precisely the ones which really matter and can have worse consequences than the typical failures in a conventional power plant
• d) reactor physicists (the same ones that guaranteed us that Fukashima was safe) tell us that the new generations of reactors are much safer than the old ones; hydro power, for example, hasn't really had a massive safety change in the last fifty (or even hundred) years
• e) nuclear reactors are incredibly complex, difficult and precise mechanisms. They have a huge setup and teardown cost which means that the capital investment is huge, even compared to other large power plants. The more often this is done the more likely that it will go wrong.
• f) nuclear reactors leave large amounts of radioactive waste during decommissioning; one part of this is the fuel, but probably more important is all of the other parts which become radioactive during the lifetime of the reactor (remember neutron capture). The fewer plants that are decommissioned the lower the volume of this waste.

Obviously a), b) and c) push in the opposite direction from d), e) and f). What this means is that basically we should have a smaller number of safer nuclear reactors run for longer by people who we can trust to ensure that a) and b) don't become a problem. Unfortunately people who support nuclear power tend to be in denial about the potential risks and so aren't the right people. I guess it's like politicians. Anybody who wants to be a politician should probably be ruled out from the job / anybody who wants to run a reactor should probably be banned from doing so :-)