NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design

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NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 22, 2011 @01:02PM from the minimal-leakage dept.

hrvatska writes "The NY Times has an article about the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval of the design of Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor for the U.S., clearing the way for two American utilities to continue the construction of projects in South Carolina and Georgia. The last time a nuclear power plant in the U.S. entered service was 1996. The AP1000 was discussed on Slashdot a few years ago."

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Re:but by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 13:12 · Score: 5, Funny

Nuclear power is just as safe as any other electricity.
It's the heat source that is the problem.
Progress by 2.7182 · 2011-12-22 13:14 · Score: 2, Funny

What we've seen since the technological advances after Chernobyl is that nuclear power is 100% safe. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be a Jane Fonda fan. I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years.
1. Re:Progress by CnlPepper · 2011-12-22 13:19 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Ignoring the massive earthquake, tsunami and the ancient reactor design of course...
2. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 13:25 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Is an even older plant than Chernobyl.
3. Re:Progress by 0WaitState · 2011-12-22 13:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  In other words, ignoring things that happen in the real world, and that even a first-world country like Japan can't get around human nature (laziness) and business imperatives to cut corners and defer upgrades.
  Nuclear power would be great, if we didn't have to depend on humans to run it.
  
  --
  
  Remain calm! All is well!
4. Re:Progress by CnlPepper · 2011-12-22 13:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Nuclear power would be great if humans didn't have irrational fear about things there don't bother to understand. If reactor construction had not stopped after the Chernobyl disaster, very few of these old, crappy designs would still be in use. Most of the problems in the modern nuclear industry are related to ancient systems that have had their lives extended due to the lack of replacement plant.
5. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 14:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Funny, when they built those "ancient" systems they promised us those were safe too.
  But then, concentrating material that will remain highly radioactive for longer than any empire in history has stood, and for longer than any region of the world has gone without war, could never be safe when you stop and think about it.
6. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 14:07 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The real problem with nuclear power is something everyone understands -- namely, people's ability for sloth and cheapness. A properly constructed and maintained nuclear reactor can be exceedingly safe. The problem is, those that run said plants will cut corners everywhere -- construction, maintenance, etc. -- and when they do, the consequences can be huge.
7. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 14:26 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  SUPO was an aqueous solution reactor tested at los alomos some time ago, although not for very long. it appeared to be self stabilizing, the closer it got to critical, the more bubbles were formed in the solution, which caused it to move further from critical.
8. Re:Progress by a_hanso · 2011-12-22 14:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  +1. If a building collapses due to an earthquake, it's not a civil engineering disaster, it's a NATURAL DISASTER. But somehow, no matter what hits a nuclear plant (be it an earthquake or an asteroid), its still a nuclear disaster.
9. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 14:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  There exist no reactor in the western world that is capable of having runaway, "amplified" chain reaction. If you have done any research, you would realize that positive void coefficient reactors are even illegal in the US and almost no one builds them. (CANDU is the only one that has a small positive void coefficient mostly due to Pu during course of running the reactor, but that is accounted for).
  The problem is ALL reactors produce enough power that they can cause the reactor to melt.
  Fukushima reactors were OFF. There was NO nuclear reaction. They melted because of something called daughter elements produced in fission. I guess one can say, the meltdown occurred precisely due to the scenario you are talking about
  
  The only "safe" passive ones are the ones used in satellites where no runaway fission is even possible because it is relying on the native radioactivity
  DING DING! That is exactly why Fukushima had a melt down.
  I also question your understanding of AP-1000. The design is clearly passively safe. It requires no moving parts to maintain cooling of the native radioactivity of the daughter elements.
10. Re:Progress by hey! · 2011-12-22 14:51 · Score: 2
  
  While I agree the passive cooling designs are promising, I think some people are counting their proverbial chickens before the designs are hatched. I think nuclear power can be done right, but that starts with getting a few of these promising designs built and thoroughly tested. It's not enough to get to the stage where you don't see a way the design can fail. *All* designs pass through that stage, then experience teaches us what we missed.
  IIRC, it's a stretch to call the Ap1000 emergency cooling system "passive". I'd call it "automated". That's good, of course- possibly good enough - but not as good as a truly passively safe system would be,all else being equal.
  
  --
  Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
11. Re:Progress by sonamchauhan · 2011-12-22 14:53 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2587564&cid=38467290
12. Re:Progress by OrigamiMarie · 2011-12-22 15:00 · Score: 2
  
  I don't bother with seasonal vaccines, I know that hand sanitizer makes my skin dry and thus more susceptible to invasion by microbes, and aerosols bother most people around me. But I'm also mostly a read-only user of Slashdot, so my opinions don't factor in much.
  
  Vaccines for one-time, airborn illnesses that kill lots of people and where we might erradicate the disease? Yes, everybody should get them.
13. Re:Progress by Jeremi · 2011-12-22 15:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  But somehow, no matter what hits a nuclear plant (be it an earthquake or an asteroid), its still a nuclear disaster.
  There's no "somehow" about it. If radioactivity escapes from the plant and causes health problems (or evacuations to avoid health problems) then it is a nuclear disaster because of the problems caused by the escaped nuclear material.
  If an earthquake damages a nuclear plant but no radioactivity is released, it is not called a nuclear disaster because it isn't one.
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
14. Re:Progress by antifoidulus · 2011-12-22 15:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  If reactor construction had not stopped after the Chernobyl disaster, very few of these old, crappy designs would still be in use
  
  Except for reactor construction did not stop after Chernobyl, a significant amount of reactors were built in Japan, but that didn't stop them from using the much older Fukushima plant.... One of the key issues with nuclear power that very few people seem to address is essentially the concentration of power generation that nuclear entails. For example the Fukushima plants provided almost 10% of the electricity consumed in the entire Tohoku region. Before the earthquake there was significant resistance towards transitioning away from the plant because of potential disruptions to factories, businesses, and homes. This dependence on one facility makes it incredibly difficult to shut down nuclear power plants, even if there may be valid safety concerns.
  
  Now compare this to say coal fired plants. In the USA, there are 1436 plants providing 42% of the power, i.e. each plant provides an average of .03% of the country's total electricity use. On the other hand, there are 65 nuclear power plants providing 19.6% of the total electric power generation, or .287% of total electricity generation per plant, roughly 10x that of coal, and if you look at the regions that have nuclear power, I'm sure the % of total output for the region per plant is much, much higher.
  
  In order for nuclear power to be practical, we have to come up with ways of seamlessly making up for this lost output in case a plant has to undergo an emergency shutdown. In Japan, the transition was not seamless, in Ibaraki prefecture where I live there were rolling blackouts, coupled with severe power rationing measures(it ironically helped that the earthquake put a lot of the factories out of commission for a while, significantly reducing power demand), and a mad dash to get coal and oil into the region ASAP so those plants could increase production. There has to be a better way.
  
  --
  Monstar L
15. Re:Progress by MightyYar · 2011-12-22 15:26 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Then what generated the heat that caused the meltdown?
  Radioactive decay, not fission.
  
  It still has a cooling system with moving parts. Why?
  I am by no means a nuclear expert, but my understanding is that:
  (a) the passive cooling is for when the reactor is shut down but cooling off (think Fukushima), not while operating
  (b) normally you need to move the heat over to the turbines in the most efficient way possible
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
16. Re:Progress by CnlPepper · 2011-12-22 15:28 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'm astonished you compared averages and attempted to use this to backup your argument. Go and have a look at the distribution of power produced by each of those coal plants. You'll see that the majority of the 42% comes from a few large scale coal plants, equivalent in scale to the nuclear installations.
17. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 15:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  But they *have* proven *relatively* safe. It depends on the benchmark you judge "relative" to.
  Fossil fuels kill people all the time. Coal miners, for example. The men on the Deep Water Horizons drilling platform. They sicken and kill people every single day through pollution. And if you believe in the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, it is likely they damage ecosystems on a global scale and (statistically speaking) kill people through extreme weather events.
  The problem is that the killing, sickening and destroying fossil fuels do aren't visibly tied to fossil fuel use. We know these things happen in an intellectual way, but we don't viscerally associate them with flicking on the power switch and burning a little more coal in a plant twenty miles away.
  The problem with nuclear power is that its risks are at the opposite extreme. Nuclear disasters are exceedingly rare, so our assessment of risks is based on assumptions built on very little practical experience with nuclear disasters. We don't really have a good basis for judging the risks of having, say, ten times as many nuclear power plants as we do now. The nuclear economy scenario is full of situations where an error in some assumption has non-linear effects on the probability of outcome. For example if you assume the height of a once-in-a-century tsunami is six meters, but in fact it is twelve, you don't *double* the probability of an accident. You transform what is for practical purposes a statistical impossibility into a near-certain disaster.
  So what's the rational thing to do? I think it is to move away from a fossil fuel economy and *toward* more diverse energy sources in which nuclear power will be a key part. But I wouldn't go on a crash course to try to solve all our problems in a decade by building as many nuclear plants as we can. The almost certain result of that will be ending up with lots of white elephant designs which proved to be more problematic than we'd hoped. A measured increase allows us to gain experience with designs, and to develop approaches to problems like decommissioning, nuclear waste and, for certain designs, nuclear proliferation. It also provides space for other technologies to take larger roles in the energy economy, spreading our risk over many sources and thus limiting our exposure to problems with any one. Getting ten percent of our energy needs from biomass might be very helpful to us as oil becomes more costly; trying to get 20% might have disastrous effects.
18. Re:Progress by a_hanso · 2011-12-22 15:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Agreed. But what we should have taken away from the recent disaster is not how inherently unsafe nuclear power is, but how destructive the double-whammy tsunami was and that nuclear plants built in areas at risk of such disasters should have more fault tolerant designs.
  If a disaster causes a technology to fail, the rational course of action is to make it disaster-tolerant; not to abandon it outright.
19. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 15:48 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'd call it "automated"
  That's the first I've seen anyone characterize gravity as automation.
  Since you appear to believe you have some credibility defining these terms, we should compare your thinking to those that actually do. To a nuclear engineer designing an emergency cooling system passive means no pumps, no power and no control. By that criteria the AP600/1000 designs are passive.
  Everything about this emergency cooling system design relies on the integrity of containment. Containment, in this case, is a large free standing steel shell (as opposed to stressed concrete.) Threats to this vessel include kinetic impingement and corrosion. The former was the cause of a recent AP1000 design modification the NRC insisted on, based on a hypothesized attack involving an airliner. The latter can only be addressed through diligent and costly surveillance of the vessel throughout its lifetime ... just the sort of thing that tends not to survive bean counters.
  The point is that there are plenty of legitimate criticisms that one can make of the design. Kibitzing about your peculiar notion of 'passive' isn't a very good one.
  I think it is worth noting that the AP1000 design would have prevented core damage and radioactive release at Fukushima. The AP1000 design is exactly suited to the 'blackout' conditions that prevailed in Japan.
20. Re:Progress by couchslug · 2011-12-22 15:57 · Score: 2
  
  And dispersing poisons we can not control at all is preferable?
  All our energy choices including "none" are paid for in dead and maimed.
  We also kill tens of thousands of people each year driving to work. It's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
21. Re:Progress by joeboomer628 · 2011-12-22 16:12 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The real problem with nuclear power is something everyone understands -- namely, people's ability for sloth and cheapness. A properly constructed and maintained nuclear reactor can be exceedingly safe. The problem is, those that run said plants will cut corners everywhere -- construction, maintenance, etc. -- and when they do, the consequences can be huge.
  I totally agree, having spent most of my 25 year US Navy career serving aboard nuclear powered submarines I have no problem living in the same ship as those 60's design reactors. The training and quality assurance programs that were required when I was on active duty insured safe operation.
  
  --
  JoeR
22. Re:Progress by AK+Marc · 2011-12-22 16:27 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Not being an nuclear engineer, the problem may be that I'm using dictionary definitions of words, as opposed to technical terms.
  
  Radioactive decay, not fission.
  The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission. From the three dictionaries I looked up, "decay, not fission" is a contradiction, as the decay in question was necessarily *also* fission.
  
  I am by no means a nuclear expert, but my understanding is that: (a) the passive cooling is for when the reactor is shut down but cooling off (think Fukushima), not while operating
  The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
23. Re:Progress by CnlPepper · 2011-12-22 17:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No-one said passive systems were easy, in fact they are quite difficult to design and required modern computational power to produce. That is the stark difference between the old designs and the new designs such as the AP1000 - computing power. We can now model the nuclear, thermal, chemical and structural processes to a degree that was impossible when the first and second generation nuclear designs were produced. This is one of the reasons we can much more confident in the generation III+ reactors.
24. Re:Progress by MJMullinII · 2011-12-22 17:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.
  That's like asking why the Ford Model-T couldn't do 200mph since a modern Ford Mustang can.
  The answer is because the Fukishima Reactor wasn't designed to be passively cooled, the AP1000 is.
  
  --
  "Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
25. Re:Progress by Amyntas · 2011-12-22 17:22 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  "I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years"
  "Fukushima Daiichi?"
  I wouldn't call that an accident. One must keep in mind that it was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. What else would you expect?
  If it were an error due to an operator or faulty equipment, then that would be a different story.
26. Re:Progress by wierd_w · 2011-12-22 17:48 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  What I always wondered is why "spent" fuel (really an exotic blend of lighter, but still strongly radioactive materials that cannot sustain catalyzed fission) is glass cast, then buried.
  The stuff has a half like of 10 million years? Sounds like a fantastic core for an RTG to me.
  Make the glass cast waste able to be extracted from the RTG enclosure by making it modular, so that the core can be retained while the shell is disposed of/replaced when it wears out. The shell would be radically less raiological, and useful energy could be passively extracted from the spent waste, potentially for centuries.
  But that would make sense. A large battery of rtgs in a warehouse could power a small city for pennies.
  No. Instead we spend billions on fossil fuel instead.
27. Re:Progress by rubycodez · 2011-12-22 18:09 · Score: 2
  
  wrong. there are passive *designs* like that, but this AP1000 needs someone to top off the passive cooling water tank within 72 hours of coolant failure, else the reactor is fucked
28. Re:Progress by rubycodez · 2011-12-22 18:11 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  the passive system of the Ap1000 also depends on someone topping off the water tank within 72 hours of primary coolant failure. if that doesn't happen, guess what happens?
29. Re:Progress by Dan541 · 2011-12-22 18:13 · Score: 2
  
  Nuclear power would be great, if we didn't have to depend on humans to run it.
  Yes, a family of possums would be so much better.
  
  --
  An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
30. Re:Progress by rubycodez · 2011-12-22 18:15 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  most spent fuel is in storage, pool or cask. It actually *can* sustain fission under the right conditions, and breed more fuel as it does so. That's why we should *not* make long term storage for it, but instead burn "spent fuel" in truly advanced reactors, which will have the benefit of turning it into waste with mere decades rather than millenia of needed isolation time.
31. Re:Progress by Surt · 2011-12-22 18:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  "I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years"
  "Fukushima Daiichi?"
  I wouldn't call that an accident. One must keep in mind that it was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. What else would you expect?
  If it were an error due to an operator or faulty equipment, then that would be a different story.
  If it wasn't an accident, who caused it on purpose?
  
  --
  "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
32. Re:Progress by Omniscient+Lurker · 2011-12-22 18:45 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Nuclear Engineering (student) here.
  >The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission.
  Fission in the context of engineering refers to the use of neutrons to force atoms to split, not to naturally decaying isotopes.
  >The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.
  Because it wasn't designed to use passive cooling. Passive cooling requires your reactor to be designed to facilitate it (all gen 3+ are designed like thisâ"I believe the NRC refuses to certify anything that is nonpassive). Passive cooling refers to not requiring power to run the coolant pumps or anything. The AP1000 is designed to using convection of steam inside the containment building to cool the reactor.
33. Re:Progress by HiddenCamper · 2011-12-22 19:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Nuclear engineer here. Decay is not Fission. Fission is splitting the atom. Decay is the act of a radioactive atom to reduce itself closer to a stable groundstate. Fission is controllable and is directly related to neutron population, and if we stop neutron production with control rods, fission stops. Decay is not controllable, and happens all the time no matter what until the material reaches a stable ground state. All light water plants, except the AP1000, need active cooling. (The GE ESBWR doesnt need active cooling either, but its design isnt approved or even completed yet). After shutdown the core is still boiling about 600 gpm of water at 1000 pounds pressure (in a BWR). this is due to the radioactive WASTE products decaying. The fuel isn't doing anythign after shutdown, but the waste products are trying to become stable again.
34. Re:Progress by msevior · 2011-12-22 19:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission. From the three dictionaries I looked up, "decay, not fission" is a contradiction, as the decay in question was necessarily *also* fission.
  No. The decays in question occur when a neutron within fission product (the nuclei created after the U235) converts into proton together with an electron and a neutrino. Each decay releases around 1 MeV of energy (order of magnitude) as opposed the 200 MeV from the fission process. The processes reduces in intensity in time. Right after a scram the "decay heat" is 7% of the full power of the reactor. After 3 days it reduces to around 0.2% of the original power.
  
  The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.
  It was by no means easy to design an economical reactor with the kind of passive safety cooling provided by the AP1000. I can imagine why you think it was.
35. Re:Progress by siddesu · 2011-12-22 19:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The accident in Fukushima I wasn't caused by the earthquake or the tsunami. It was caused by the inadequate reactor/plant design and by the abysmal handling by TEPCO of the problems that developed as a result of the design inadequacies.
36. Re:Progress by msevior · 2011-12-22 19:48 · Score: 2
  
  The reservoir at the top of the AP1000 is used to provide evaporative cooling to the outer shell of the containment structure.
  After 3 days the decay heat has reduced to around 0.2% of the original power. At this point convective and radiative cooling of the containment vessel is sufficient to dissipate the heat generated from nuclear decays in the fuel. The water within the containment vessel just circulates within the structure and is driven by the heat of the nuclear fuel. It is never vented.
37. Re:Progress by Surt · 2011-12-22 20:14 · Score: 2
  
  Indeed. Number of major nuclear disasters at plants run by humans: 20. Number at plants run by possums: 0.
  
  --
  "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
38. Re:Progress by HiddenCamper · 2011-12-22 20:27 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sattilites use RTGs, not nuclear reactors. And RTG makes use of decay heat and the seebeck effect to generate a voltage difference. Very different from a nuclear reactor. As for nuclear power plants, the chain reaction is not "amplified", it is a chain reaction, nothing more or less. We actually control it using control rods and neutron absorbers. These plants can shutdown in less than 3 seconds, and only once has a plant failed to scram when called upon, and the backup scram system automatically did the job instead.
39. Re:Progress by HiddenCamper · 2011-12-22 20:32 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The problem is the NRC notices this stuff. I'm going to take a guess you've never been questioned by the NRC, but I have (nuclear engineer). They get on top of even the smallest hint of bullshit or mistake in logic or even poor quality packages. They would have already known that you are missing a safety system which they REQUIRED you to have and you LEGALLY COMMITED to have and you would have your project stopped and reviewed again which would caost MUCH MORE than 15% to get the project moving forward again. We are told to never ever challenge our NRC commitments or requirements, because the cost of messing up is a LOT more than what you 'could' gain by cutting something.
40. Re:Progress by flyingfsck · 2011-12-22 20:53 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  "who caused it on purpose?" It was an act of God. That is what Gods do. They make stuff and then they destroy it again, just like a small child playing in the mud.
  
  --
  Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
41. Re:Progress by thegarbz · 2011-12-22 21:59 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  That is fear mongering if I've ever seen it. Keeping water topped up is amongst the simplest things that can be done in an emergency. Even more so when you have 3 days to plan it.
  I was working at a refinery when they pulled a heat exchanger out and the isolation valve was completely stuffed. Cooling water was pissing out the side and the level in the cooling tower was dropping fast. The first thing the operator did was open up a fire monitor and aim it at the cooling tower to re-fill the basin. That was done within 3 minutes. A call was placed to the local fire brigade as well incase the fire monitor couldn't keep up the flowrate (which in this case it just managed to do).
  That was a 3 minute response time. I wonder what you could come up with in 3 days if you really needed to. The important thing about this is that it's simple and there's no engineering involved.
42. Re:Progress by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 22:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It is easy to criticize the event in the aftermath of three meltdowns and say that the design was flawed and that the response was mismanaged. You might even go as far as to say that the accidents weren't caused by the earthquake and tsunami, but by the failure of humans to properly design and operate the nuclear power plant (which in fact you did).
  There is a point where you can't design for the most improbable events. A meteor landing in the ocean or North Korea bombing the plant aren't items you can design for. You also need to make a cutoff for earthquakes and tsunamis. An earthquake 10 times larger than any earthquake previously recorded in Japan's extensive seismic record might qualify. Add in the fact that seismologists didn't think the nature of the fault lines could even theoretically allow that powerful of an earthquake to occur.
  You would have needed to build a 15m (45 ft) seawall to protect the plant from an event that experts didn't think could theoretically occur. The country that coined the term 'tsunami' didn't forget to design for it. They got hit by an extremely improbable occurrence that may not happen again for another 10,000 years. The probability of this type of massive tsunami destroying nuclear plants has not increased just because it happened recently. Nuclear plants are no less safe now than before the accidents. It is just more apparent that they have their limits, like any piece of technology.
43. Re:Progress by khallow · 2011-12-22 22:52 · Score: 2
  
  In other words, ignoring things that happen in the real world
  And ignoring the subsequent, remarkable disaster recovery. I've noticed something. Nuclear power has to prove itself when things happen in the real world. And it has. Nuclear power critics don't.
44. Re:Progress by khallow · 2011-12-22 22:56 · Score: 2
  
  Too many armchair engineers just don't understand what happened. I wouldn't consider Fukushima a success altogether. It has caused too much inconvenience and costs for that. But given what is produced for the cost, including the occasional meltdown or whatever, it's pretty impressive.
45. Re:Progress by Maury+Markowitz · 2011-12-23 03:33 · Score: 2
  
  SUPO was also filled with highly corrosive fluids which dramatically limited the lifetime of the reactor designs and made their long-term feasibility and safety highly questionable. Newer designs are somewhat better due to the use of nitric acid, but this by no means eliminated the problem. In every other measure, notably in terms of power density and related economic figures-of-merit, solution reactors will never be competitive.
46. Re:Progress by rubycodez · 2011-12-23 03:34 · Score: 2
  
  false, the decay heat curve is fairly flat even before the three days, so cooling MUST go on for WEEKS after shutdown (in this respect same as any gen ii reactor, in fact). this is to be provided by *pumping* water to refill that tank from other external tanks (requires gen power)
  
  You can read about the 0 to 3 days, 3 to 7 days, 7 days and beyond here:
  
  www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/AP1000_Plant_Description.pdf
47. Re:Progress by khallow · 2011-12-23 07:00 · Score: 2
  
  Actually that's the main failure. Even if you discount the billions in development funds that were spent through the weapons side of things (the accounting is easier here in Canada) the actual price of the power it generates is much higher than hydro (and there's lots of that left, contrary to claims otherwise), much higher than coal, somewhat higher than natural case, only slightly cheaper (or slightly more, depending on the accounting) than wind and somewhat cheaper than PV.
  Uh huh. Maybe you ought to back that up with some numbers. And I really like how you can just dismiss rival arguments with the wave of the hand. I sometimes wish I could do that in the real world.
  
  The problem is that the cost of nuclear is unpredictable. It is generally higher now than it was when it was first introduced, which is why all those plants were abandoned in the 70s. Newer designs aim to address this, but their success in doing so remains to be proven. When the US plants come online, if they ever do, then I'll have a metric I'll trust. After all, AECL claims that their two CANDU6's cost $4 a watt in China, but when one looks at the $8.25 bid for Darlington B you'll see they are relying on artificial exchange rates to make that number.
  They'll be built and the uncertainty will become less uncertainty.
  
  Moreover, there's a serious fuel issue to consider. Uranium is basically a proxy for oil now. Don't believe me? Look it up. If oil goes up again, so will the price of nuclear. So, do you believe the price of oil will be going up in the future?
  Of course, I don't believe stuff that someone just made up.
  
  In the meantime the price of other sources has plummeted. Gas looks like it will remain flat for at least 50 years. Wind power has dropped from 15 to 6.5 cents/kWh in the last 15 years. It's likely bottoming out now, but that's still around what nuclear costs. PV has dropped from about $1 a kWh to something around 15 cents in the last 5 years, and it is just about 100% certain to hit 10 cents in 2012, if it hasn't already.
  Gas doesn't look like it'll remain flat for 50 years. Don't even waste my time with bullshit like that. Wind power is heavily subsidized. I don't buy that cost per kWh until I see the unsubsidized numbers. PV looks to be going down, but both it and wind aren't base load.
  
  To get base load using wind or solar, you need hydro, natural gas, or some other source that you can start and stop easily. For example, wind, solar, and natural gas could in combination provide the entire power for a society. But that would result in an increase in demand. The two biggest markets, North America and Europe would be able to cover some of the offset with hydro rather than natural gas. But you'd still see a massive increase in the demand for natural gas which would void the claim that the natural gas market will somehow remain "flat" (a thing it hasn't been able to do over the past ten years in the US).
  
  So, you're king for a day. You need to build a power network. You have your choices of many technologies. Do you choose one with a 12 to 15 year lead time that has a history of going up in price and has serious fuel concerns? Or do you bet on one that keeps going down in price and will almost certainly be producing watts cheaper than the other technology before that one even starts construction?
  Natural gas has that problem as well. Major plants have long lead times even when there aren't major regulatory obstacles to overcome.
  
  And that is why the nuclear renaissance is dead.
  Uh huh. We'll see. Nuclear power has considerable advantages that have not been touched here. For example, even counting land made fallow by radioactive fallout from nuclear meltdowns, nuclear power still is more compact in land use than any combination involving wind, solar, and hydro.
  
  Seriously, given
48. Re:Progress by siddesu · 2011-12-23 19:15 · Score: 2
  
  There is a point where you can't design for extra safety, but this is not Fukushima I. It used reactors that were obsolete at the time of construction and that should have been retired after Chernobyl, or at least after the Kobe earthquake in 1995. Only complete retards, blinded by greed and backed by "old boys" in the government regulatory bodies -- that is, the TEPCO management -- would have allowed Fukushima.
  It is not the only serious accident in Japan either, and it isn't the only serious accident where coverup was attempted, and where there is no prosecution of the responsible. Incidentally, this is why Japan will be seeing more of them accidents in the future.
Re:Good, good. by thermopile · 2011-12-22 13:16 · Score: 5, Informative

Very glad to see the US NRC, despite all of its recent antics, was still able to approve a new reactor design.
If you haven't seen, the scale of construction on these projects is mind-bogglingly large. See here for some juicy pictures of the site under construction. It's just astounding.

--
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
Sour grapes by coldfarnorth · 2011-12-22 13:16 · Score: 5, Funny

Now that the rest of the world is rethinking nuclear power, We Americans have changed our tune.
However, I think the US might be on the right track here. Of course, it helps that the risk of tsunamis in the southeastern US is right between that of a zombie outbreak and Ralph Nader winning the presidency.

--
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
1. Re:Sour grapes by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 13:17 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  It's more likely than the Year of The Linux Desktop.
2. Re:Sour grapes by silas_moeckel · 2011-12-22 15:54 · Score: 2
  
  Yes let the rest of the world stop using the only scalable sensible power source. If we can avoid letting the big corps and the nimbly's making it massively expensive we could be positioned to make a resurgence. It will never happen were to short sighted for that.
  
  --
  No sir I dont like it.
3. Re:Sour grapes by Amouth · 2011-12-22 16:26 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  if a hurricane was a threat to a reactor design then it never should have been built.. hurricanes really are not that damaging..
  
  --
  '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
why isn't thorium being developed? by DevotedFollower · 2011-12-22 13:17 · Score: 5, Informative

The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line. From what I understand Thorium (especially LFTRs) are far safer. They are "walk away safe". My suspicion is that it is too late for the US to catch up though. As the article mentions..China already has a bunch these coming online in 2013...while it just got approved in the US. China is also filing more patents...they are progressing much fast than the states at this point. China and thorium: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html The US and their history with thorium and further thorium info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
1. Re:why isn't thorium being developed? by dgatwood · 2011-12-22 13:27 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Or the U.S. could just let them spend the money and take all the risks in terms of designing and testing the new reactors, then steal the designs and build the reactors themselves, forcing the Chinese firms to eat the R&D costs....
  Wait, something about this sounds familiar. I sense a pot and a kettle are involved.
  
  --
  Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
2. Re:why isn't thorium being developed? by thermopile · 2011-12-22 13:27 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Thorium isn't being developed in the US for 2 reasons:
  1. Current uranium-based reactors are more affordable than thorium reactors.
  2. The path for licensing a thorium-based reactor in the US is exceedingly uncertain.
  While a thorium-based fuel cycle may be a good idea, it's just not going to be done by any commercial enterprise today. The costs and risks are too high. When staring at a $5B initial investment cost, any electrical utility is going to favor the known route ... which, frankly, could just as easily mean building 10 natural-gas fired plants instead of 1 big nuke.
  India, however, is going full-bore on a thorium-based fuel cycle, and has already built a few reactors that are capable of accepting thorium. Copied shamelessly from world-nuclear.org:
  
  India's plans for thorium cycle
  With huge resources of easily-accessible thorium and relatively little uranium, India has made utilization of thorium for large-scale energy production a major goal in its nuclear power programme, utilising a three-stage concept:
  Pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) fuelled by natural uranium, plus light water reactors, producing plutonium.
  Fast breeder reactors (FBRs) using plutonium-based fuel to breed U-233 from thorium. The blanket around the core will have uranium as well as thorium, so that further plutonium (particularly Pu-239) is produced as well as the U-233. Advanced heavy water reactors (AHWRs) burn the U-233 and this plutonium with thorium, getting about 75% of their power from the thorium. The used fuel will then be reprocessed to recover fissile materials for recycling.
  This Indian programme has moved from aiming to be sustained simply with thorium to one 'driven' with the addition of further fissile plutonium from the FBR fleet, to give greater efficiency. In 2009, despite the relaxation of trade restrictions on uranium, India reaffirmed its intention to proceed with developing the thorium cycle.
  A 500 MWe prototype FBR under construction in Kalpakkam is designed to produce plutonium to enable AHWRs to breed U-233 from thorium. India is focusing and prioritizing the construction and commissioning of its sodium-cooled fast reactor fleet in which it will breed the required plutonium. This will take another 15 â" 20 years and so it will still be some time before India is using thorium energy to a significant extent.
  
  --
  "Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
3. Re:why isn't thorium being developed? by MrMista_B · 2011-12-22 15:05 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, that sounds exactly like what the US did in the 1800's with their massive pirating of the European industrial revolution, stealing the designs, flaunting their massive patent and copyright violations, outright theft of designs and ideas, and massive intellectual dishonesty.
Only 1.154GW? by viperidaenz · 2011-12-22 13:20 · Score: 5, Funny

Still 56MW short of doing anything useful...
Safety Scissors by Narcocide · 2011-12-22 13:28 · Score: 2

You made this statement sarcastically, right? Or are you going to split hairs and call this some other type of accident other than nuclear... public relations perhaps?
Don't get me wrong, I think nuclear power *can be* and *usually is* used safely but 100% might be a bit overstated. We have a ways to go yet to call it anywhere close to 100% safe. Nothing is 100% safe, not even safety scissors, and a nuclear reactor is hardly as easy to operate safely as say, for example, safety scissors.
1. Re:Safety Scissors by uncqual · 2011-12-22 16:12 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if safety scissors, on the average, kill and injure more people in the US than nuclear power plants do per year. Obviously if you include, for example, uranium mining accidents in the "nuclear count", you have to include some iron ore mining accidents in the "scissors count" as well.
  
  --
  Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety? by Trepidity · 2011-12-22 13:40 · Score: 5, Informative

Sort of. Unlike Fukushima-style reactors, it doesn't require an external power source (like the DC generators that failed there) to cool the core following a shutdown, but it's not a purely passive system. Wikipedia's summary is decent.

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10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Re:Could someone elaborate by dbIII · 2011-12-22 13:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

It is not a new design, it's just the newest of the old designs (1980s via Toshiba in Japan) that haven't had a single reactor commissioned yet. The first AP1000 is due to start running in the next year or two. Things move slowly in civilian nuclear power so it's just about the first design to take the lessons from Chenobyl into consideration.
We wouldn't even have this level of civilian nuclear technology if it hadn't been bought off the Japanese. For some reason the US Nuclear Lobby mostly descended to the level of mere rent seekers in the 1980s so the only hope for advancement there is small startups based on military technology or input from overseas.
That ship sailed long ago by dbIII · 2011-12-22 13:55 · Score: 5, Informative

if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line
Almost all of the post 1970s technology in the AP1000 came directly from the nuclear division of Toshiba in Japan after merging with Westinghouse. It's technology bought off Japan instead of China but still looks like what you are worried about.
India is leading with Thorium at the moment and appear to have taken the US advances and added a couple of decades of development. Accelerated Thorium (mixed fuel such as expired weapons material or used uranium fuel rods in addition to thorium) holds paticular promise.
1. Re:That ship sailed long ago by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-22 15:30 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Westinghouse employee here. The AP1000 final design certification was approved in 2006, and the design (including the predecessor AP600) began long before that (mid 90s).
  Toshiba acquired Westinghouse in late 2006. Prior to that, Toshiba had partnered with our domestic rival, General Electric to build plants in Japan. We sell Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs), they sell Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). They're pretty different.
  Even now that they own us, there is very little technical collaboration between our two entities. If there's a technological connection between Westinghouse and Toshiba that predates any of that, I'm certainly not aware of it.
2. Re:That ship sailed long ago by arglebargle_xiv · 2011-12-22 19:36 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Almost all of the post 1970s technology in the AP1000 came directly from the nuclear division of Toshiba in Japan after merging with Westinghouse. It's technology bought off Japan instead of China but still looks like what you are worried about.
  Beat me to the punch. The AP1000 is not a "new" design, it's a slightly warmed-over 1970s design that got NRC approval because it was close enough to the antiques currently in operation that no bureaucrat had to risk his pension by sticking his neck out and approving something that would be a genuine improvement (I'm lumping the Gen IIIs in with the Gen IIs here because they're mostly incremental improvements obtained from experience in running Gen IIs) . When the NRC approves anything Gen IV like a PBR or, heaven forbid, something genuinely modern like a TWR, then it's time to celebrate.
Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety? by AK+Marc · 2011-12-22 14:11 · Score: 2

The total failure there is that 100% of generated power is shipped out, and not available for running local systems, not under normal operation, and not under emergencies. So loss of grid tie and generator failure will result in meltdown 100% of the time, even if the plant is operating normally otherwise.

--
Learn to love Alaska
Re:Could someone elaborate by couchslug · 2011-12-22 14:37 · Score: 2

"For some reason the US Nuclear Lobby mostly descended to the level of mere rent seekers in the 1980s"
There is no incentive to lobby for nuclear power. There are other ways to make money.

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"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety? by a_hanso · 2011-12-22 14:49 · Score: 2

Passive designs for *anything* tends to beat active[ly controlled] designs in fault tolerance. Which is why, even as a software engineer, I'm against putting batteries and chips in every gorram thing that does not need it.
Re:but by MightyYar · 2011-12-22 15:32 · Score: 3, Informative

It only needs to be as safe as automobiles, and it far exceeds that.

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Westinghouse Sucks by offrdbandit · 2011-12-22 15:33 · Score: 2

I hope this works better than the POS Westinghouse TV I bought last year...
Why are we still using PWR?? by MagikSlinger · 2011-12-22 18:19 · Score: 2

There are newer, better designs like pebble bed, or molten-salt reactors which, when it fails, fails by shutting itself down and locking the radioactive materials in the core. I see some people talking about the thorium cycle reactors above too.
PWR can be safe, but frankly, there are far more effecient, potentially more cost effective and definitely safer designs out there. We have to stop using 1960 light-water reactor designs meant for nuclear submarines.

--
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Re:Could someone elaborate by nonsequitor · 2011-12-22 19:27 · Score: 2

I think the Department of Defense would beg to differ. They just designed a new reactor for their latest ship. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/how-does-navy-design-nuclear-supercarrier-future
Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety? by HiddenCamper · 2011-12-22 20:12 · Score: 4, Informative

Nuclear engineer here The plant actually runs on generator power under normal conditions. Nuclear plants have 4 AC power sources. The normal source is taking generator power BEFORE it goes out to the power grid in through the auxiliary transformers and then using internally for 4160 and 6900V power. Because this power hasn't gone to the grid yet, we don't "pay" for it. Additionally, when we are shut down, we can disconnect the generator and backfeed power in through the aux. transformers for power. This is typically an emergency/contingency action or an outage action to allow us to work on the reseve power system. The standby source comes in from a different grid (or a different part of the same grid), and comes in from the reserve auxiliary transformers (sometimes called startup transformers). Because this is bringing power in from the grid, we "pay" for it (we get billed by the grid). The emergency reserve transformer (sometimes called backup transformers) comes from a completey different grid than everything else. They power ONLY safety systems. Normal systems cannot use it. The diesel generators are safety seismic and environmentally designed backup power systems. There is 1 DG for each primary safety division which has a decay heat removal function, and an additional DG for coolant injection. Most plants also have a fourth or fifth DG for DC power chargers only. There is enough fuel on site for a minimum of 1 week for all generators running 2% above maximum theoretical load of all equipment under worst case design conditions. The reality is you can probably get another 2-3 days past that since it assumes that like, air coolers and air heater are both on at the same time in the same area, and once you've stabilized an accident or emergency condition you can put most of the redundant safety systems into standby to conserve fuel.