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US Approves Two New Nuclear Reactors
JoeRobe writes "For the first time in 30 years, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. These are the first licenses to be issued since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The pair of facilities will cost $14 billion and produce 2.2 GW of power (able to power ~1 million homes). They will be Westinghouse AP1000 designs, which are the newest reactors approved by the NRC. These models passively cool their fuel rods using condensation and gravity, rather than electricity, preventing the possibility of another Fukushima Daiichi-type meltdown due to loss of power to cooling water pumps." Adds Unknown Lamer: "Expected to begin operation in 2016 or 2017, the pair of new AP1000 reactors will produce around 2GW of power for the southeast. This is the first of the new combined construction and operating licenses ever issued by the NRC; hopefully this bodes well for the many other pending applications."
It's about time we did something to address our growing energy needs.
Now if we can get politicians to quit treating building more oil refining capacity as a political football, we might take another meaningful step toward energy independence.
If we are going to adopt electric cars in a big way, we need this badly.
Glad to hear it.
-Eric
Sorry, but all the disposal problems have not been solved. There is one remaining issue of "environmentalist" obstructionism. I use quotes, because these people are damaging the environment, not protecting it.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
"The NRC thinks the probability of three nuclear reactors having a meltdown within 3 days is ZERO. They chose this to minimize the cost of development of the AP1000 reactor."
That's because the NRC is a sock puppet for the Commercial Nuclear Industry.
https://plus.google.com/107839599438746451936/posts/gEhU26JjGWV
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Cue the environmentalists to come running out of the woodwork, filing every lawsuit they can find, protesting the work site, and in general trying to slow down and interfere with the construction of said nuclear power plant.
The level of public ignorance never ceases to amaze.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is a renaissance of manufacturing going on in the American south. Look at all the foreign auto makers that have built factories there. Wages are affordable for the company, there are no union entanglements like those which have ravaged Detroit, areas where good paying jobs are few and far between receive them - everyone wins.
There is one remaining issue of "environmentalist" obstructionism. I use quotes, because these people are damaging the environment, not protecting it.
This is true. If you oppose nuclear, a coal plant will be built in its place, which is far, far more dirty and dangerous.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
PRISM / IFR designs in general (and Molten salt breeders, in theory) turn that "waste" into enough fuel to supply the earth ... forever, assuming we build pyroprocessing facilities (PUREX generates a lot of waste ... no good).
"In theory". Aye, there's the rub.
We really need more active research in this area instead of relying on experiments conducted in the 1960's.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Like all energy sources nuclear has its share of trade offs. Wind/Solar still don't quite give the same output that Nuclear or Coal can, Hydroelectric can only be used in particular locations and then there are people complaining about the fishes that get shredded. Coal has a lot of pollution.
Nuclear energy when well maintained is a relativity good energy source. Its pollution for good or for bad is highly concentrated meaning the good means it can be captured and moved to a safer location, the bad is if a little bit leaks out it could be very deadly, and difficult to pick up again. However right now our pollution problem is in extra carbon. Nuclear energy can help reduce our carbon dependence, the combined risk of continued use of Coal even when treated well is worse then nuclear energy being properly respected and governed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
whoosh
Is that the sound of the GP's post going over your head? Because he's absolutely right. There are many excellent technical solutions to the question of waste disposal, but all of them are rendered infeasible by political considerations.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
(14G$ / 2.2GW) doesn't sound like a good price point to me, with the price of solar being at $3/watt and falling (assuming "AC Watts" have the same energy as "DC Watts"). Why so pricey?
Personally, I object to burying 95% perfectly good fuel just to dispose of 5% waste. Run that FUEL through an appropriately designed reactor first, then process out the waste and load the rest back in.
Per kilowatt nuclear is the safest when all things are taken into account. The problem with nuclear power is the worst case scenario: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. So that is the balancing effect.
A crude analogy would be comparing cars to airplanes by mile traveled.
By "we learned nothing" do you mean we didn't learn to stop relying on 40 year-old nuclear power plants built using 50-60 year old designs? Because I'm pretty sure building new designs shows that we did, in fact, learn exactly that.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Right and Global Warming is a myth. You just keep praying away the problems.
Burning it may be cleaner than coal - but getting it out of the ground in a safe and clean manner is proving to be far less clear-cut.
I live on top of the Marcellus Shale formation - I'd rather have a nuke plant or two open up a mile from me than to have gas drilling anywhere in this state. The drilling companies have an attitude of "it's safe, we're drilling responsibly, trust us, nothing has ever gone wrong, that spill didn't happen, we don't need to change anything because it's fine the way it is". Compared to the nuclear industry - "Even though we already have the lowest deaths per terawatt-hour count of any form of power generation, we're STILL working to improve our safety designs." - This is the thing that earns the most trust from me, the fact that they are constantly striving to improve safety, instead of constantly denying that there could possibly be any problems and refusing to change anything.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
2/3 of those reactors have ALREADY been implemented in the past. It's the anti-nuclearbombmaterial crowd that has killed those designs.
Yes, because that's what is holding up nuclear power. After all, the problem with heavy metals and other pollutants used to manufacture "green" energy such as solar cells and wind turbines have already been solved, as well as the problems with mercury, other contaminants, and even radioactive materials that comes from burning coal has also been solved. Oh, and that whole CO2 thing that fossil fuels tend to emit? Also solved.
There ain't no other choice right now that will meet demand and not generate CO2. There is a downside but it's the least bad choice right now. How many wind farms or solar ones can produce that kind of base load? 2.2GW and with reprocessing the fuel should last long enough to get fusion figured out and then antimatter reactors would be the final step.
Everything is tied to energy. With it, anything is possible. Without it even the Stone Age wouldn't have been as goo because at least we had fire.
We can compare the oil spills in the gulf, and not just the BP one, there are others that have been reported to still be spewing out crap. Those are "gifts that keep on giving". There are large swaths of the seabed that are just lifeless now.
Contrast that to the area around the worst nuclear disaster in world history. Years later, it has become a game preserve. Were it not for the rad meters, it has become an ecological paradise where nature has come back.
If Chernobyl is the worst nuclear disaster we ever will have, while undersea drilling is still a nascent technology where a blowout can happen at any time, I'm all for nuclear power with only caveat.
The caveat is that in today's economy, there is no responsibility. Stakeholders have been replaced by shareholders. A reactor head can be made out of pot metal, be installed, and it fails. The company that made it can just shrug, file bankruptcy, the owner of the company take his golden parachute and live in the Bahamas. What would be needed is regulation where if there is malfeasance, there will be people going to prison and fortunes taken away, and not just pawns thrown under the bus to appease the masses, then back to business as usual.
Nail, hit head.
Nuclear power done right brings a lot to the table:
1: It is energy dense, so it doesn't take up valued land. Solar and wind farms are great, but energy losses through wires cause those to become not feasible.
2: A reprocessing, "breeder" reactor can reduce the need for high level waste dumps.
3: Reactor fuel is relatively cheap and abundant. When uranium becomes an issue, there is always thorium (although that is still a research leap ahead.)
4: Safety. The deaths per terawatt figures completely show this.
And it only will get better. The reactors in use today are designs built when disco was in fashion and people wore leisure suits. Modern reactor designs are generations ahead in safety, usability, and economy than the existing reactors that are on life support. Take an implemention of a traveling wave reactor. If done right, there would be zero need to enrich uranium, and the by-products are useful items.
Had we had nuclear power R&D in the 1970s and 1980s, I'd probably say we would be at least 20-50 years ahead in technological growth than we are now. Even the need for petroleum wouldn't be much, as any oil would be used for polymers, rather than burned. Even used plastics can be "boiled" via a thermal depolymerization reaction and reused.
I'm happy to see some sort of energy progress in the US other than gas and oil.
Which is worse, a few tons of dangerous solid that needs to be permanently sequestered decades from now, or untold millions of tons of CO2 and trace metals being released into the atmosphere continuously?
Kind of depressing that none of the postings modded up at this moment reflect an anti-nuclear position. There's something a bit off about that. Here's how i see it on Slashdot with the topic of nuclear energy:
How to be modded up: create a duality of only nuclear and coal options for energy production; belittle the dangers and significance of nuclear disaster; insist that there isn't any issue with waste from nuclear plants and that we will 'use it all up'.
How to be modded down: mention that uranium is a finite source and that we WILL eventually deal with a depletion in the same way we're facing oil; inject that the costs of insuring nuclear plants are outrageous and that no private firms will (leaving it to governments [ie: citizens] to cover in the event of an emergency); highlight that it takes DECADES to get a plant to operating status (how is that going to help now, next year, or in the next 10 years?) Fact is: nuclear is *expensive*. Finally, a sure-fired way to be modded down is to insist that we have technology accessible to us NOW that can reduce emissions and is not nearly as expensive (environmentally or economically) as nuclear will be.
FYI, on my own habits - i rarely mod down a post, unless it's blatantly ignorant of any factual matter, and even then it's rare. As suggested, i try to use my mod points to mod up, not down. Would love to see a bit more of that here for a more balanced display of discussion on this subject...
i hear so many 'claims' about how wind , solar, etc etc are all primed to take off and fix the power problem.
The fact we are still building nuclear reactors that run ( an extraordinarily low ) chance of causing HUGE casualties and making land uninhabitable for LIFETIMES , is unconscionable, if those claims are true.
Does anyone have any hard facts on the cost of electricity coming from solar or wind vs the same from Nuclear? Are the reasons primarily economic , or is their physics problems also preventing the use of other means to generate power?
aka , why are we building these instead of solar and wind farms?
I'm not trolling here, i'd really love some serious answers by someone who knows more about it then me.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Paying twice as much now and the same later sounds better than normal now and 10x later.
You are going to be one of the few not screwed when the dinosaurs start running out. And they'll be closing those dirty plants down the way when coal is more expensive than gold. Isn't this still a good outcome long-term, even if it costs now?
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