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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."
We have tons of waste from the traditional uranium plants to use up, might as well start building some reactors that produce almost no leftovers.
There's no such thing as nuclear waste. There's just stuff you haven't configured your *other* fast breeder reactor to burn, yet.
The idea being the the South makes money from them by taking on the risk (perceived or otherwise) of running them in their backyard. Either in increased employment (so local growth) or increased tax revenue for the county, or cheaper electricity for the locals.
Just like France makes good money selling electricity to the UK and Germany (as those two countries have somewhat of a nuclear-phobia, that seems to be increasing). The electricity prices in France are 10% of what I pay in the UK, and I'm on a cheap UK tariff provided by a French electricity company! I'm sure the money goes somewhere...
Yes much better to keep drilling in the gulf - that's never been a problem...
From Minneapolis I sneer at you and say, I wouldn't trade my down comforter and mild summers for all the mosquitos in Mississippi. :)
What we learned from Fukushima is that this is EXACTLY what we need to do - we need to start building modernized reactors that roll in decades of safety research and engineering into their design, as opposed to repeatedly service-life-extending old clunkers with ancient safety designs.
And if we don't go with nuclear - what's our other option? Gas, the industry which has contaminated more groundwater in the past five years with drilling activities than almost the entire history of civilian nuclear power?
The nuclear industry has an excellent track record - it took decades before the first incident of a civilian reactor letting out any measurable contamination, and that incident was triggered by a natural disaster that killed over 25,000 people instantly, hitting a reactor that was so old that it was originally scheduled for permanent shutdown prior to the earthquake.
(I don't consider Chernobyl to be a civilian reactor - even if the Soviets tried to claim it was "civilian", the only reason one builds graphite-moderated water-cooled reactors is to have the option of using it as a cheap source of weapons plutonium.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Those issues were brought up in 2009. It was stated in this article (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_738220.html) that they can't get licensed until the safety issues are addressed. And now they're licensed. So a little more transparency would be nice, but according to the letter of the law, they've complied with the USNRC's concerns.
Mark Anthony Collins
You should probably learn about all the things Carter tried to do.