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900 Ton Containment Vessel Bottom Head Installed At Vogtle 3
Yesterday, Georgia Power announced that they successfully lifted the first part of the Vogtle Unit 3 containment vessel into place. From World Nuclear News: "The component — measuring almost 40 meters wide, 12 meters tall and weighing over 900 tons — was assembled on-site from pre-fabricated steel plates. The cradle for the containment vessel was put in place on the unit's nuclear island in April. The completed bottom head was raised by a heavy lift derrick and placed on the cradle on 1 June, Georgia Power announced."
Georgia Power has a pretty cool gallery of high resolution construction photos (the bottom head is the background on my XBMC machine). Below the fold there is a video of the crane moving the bottom head into place.
No idea.
Am I supposed to know what they are talking about here? Where is this going? Why? What is a bottom head used for? Vogtle Unit 3?? I feel like Lord Helmet in Spaceballs shouting "WHO??" in confusion just before his mask falls.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Yesterday, Georgia Power announced that they successfully lifted the first part of the Vogtle Unit 3 containment vessel into place.
Ah, good. What? This is presumably something to do with nuclear power - as it's come from Nuclear World News - but are they building a reactor or a waste site?
Is this Georgia, the U.S. state? Or Georgia the country, perhaps? Or is it actually somewhere completely unrelated to anywhere called Georgia, but where the company called Georgia Power just happen to be working?
When I was a rugrat, "bottom head" was just something I called my brother when he was being mean.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Laron helped build the Crane that is lifting that 900 Ton vessel, and I just so happen to work for Laron :)
It involves big cranes, heavy things, and nukes. What else do you need?
I assume this is the outer containment vessel? I had been lead to believe that the containment vessel was made from a single piece by articles like this one. In fact this pdf from the UK seems to indicate that Japan Steel Works is in fact a supplier for AP1000.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"Southern Nuclear lists the capacity as 1,215 MW"
Now, all they need is a flux capacitor...
Umm -- where did the "3 years to complete" come from? In the Wikipedia article linked above, it was reported that it would be 3-4 years to get a license, before construction began. That was in 2008, and construction started in 2013. Not bad for getting through the NRC.
----- Why sig when you can sign? PGP key id 7675D05E
About the only place that builds nuclear power plants on time is South Korea. This is probably because of permission issues. It also helps they have a large naval construction industry that can build the required steel pressure vessels. Sometimes the problems are due to licensing issues, and lawsuits stalling construction. Other times there isn't enough financing to build it at the originally planned speed. Then there are the issues with happen when you are building any new kind of reactor with untrained personnel. This is the first AP1000 reactor being built in the US (although there are a couple under construction in China for quite some time now).
Maybe they should be using the 'Agile' nuclear reactor construction methodology.
I've been programming professionally, as methodology fads
have come and gone. Among those I've encountered were the agile family and its precursors.
Much of that experience was in the auto industry, where
practically any software might end up being life-critical. and
some in telecom, where the reliability requirements are
tighter than mil spec.
My software is noted for robustness,
to the point that a colleague once remarked that I was the
only person he'd trust to program an artificial heart for him.
(Said colleague was one of the evangelists for an agile
precursor.)
The very thought of deploying a nuclear reactor designed
using an agile methodology makes me shiver. I expect to
have nightmares about the possibly for a while now.
Please DON'T mention this bright idea to the pointy-haired
bosses.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Make that: "I've been programming professionally
for about half a century, as methodology fads
have come and gone."
And dropping that in an edit should give you an idea
of how horrified I am at the moment.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They want to thoroughly cement their position on the energy market, of course.
Ezekiel 23:20
South Korea has just taken a number of its reactors offline after discovering a lot of parts weren't properly qualified for use in nuclear installations, sold and fitted with dodgy paperwork in regard to QA and such. They're not safety-related parts but under the terms of their operating licences the reactors can't generate power until the parts are swapped out for properly documented replacements.
The Chinese are bringing their new-build reactors online approximately to schedule (about 4 to 5 years from first concrete to grid connection) but we don't know what sort of corners they're cutting, if any.
they just put little crumbs of fuel rods in your power bill each month. if you have been saving them unpaid, you can probably shake each envelope out into a cereal bowl, and have a really awesome science project that kills all your competition.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Okay, maybe I'm just paranoid. Alright, no maybe, I am, I'm really good at it and I get paid ("Is adept at risk identification") to be that way.
Seriously though, who thought it was a good idea (Don't get me wrong here those pics are awesome) to post anywhere, hi-res photos of the construction of nuclear reactor? Is the NRC asleep at the console?
As usual, the cheapest and most unsafe design legally allowed will be built. The AP1000 sell sheet brags about the tremendous cost savings incurred by eliminating expensive safety features due to a simpler, better design. GE touted the costs savings of the thinner, less expensive containment vessels in their BWRs (as used at Fukushima) back in the day on the same basis.
Yet, also as usual, it still can't be done profitably without massive taxpayer assistance in the form of loan guarantees, liability limitations in the event of accident, and insurance guarantees, all funded involuntarily by taxpayers who don't want any fission plants anywhere near their homes. Oh, and let's not forget that Bush/Cheney per-kilowatt direct subsidy! I get to pay for something stupid with my taxes, so that Excelon or Enron can then sell it to me! Yay democracy!
However, as you've pointed out this is still much better than all the decaying, minimally maintained fission plants we're running that were designed to wear out at the turn of the century... that the Bush and Obama administrations have been more than willing to relicense. Our strategy with those appears to be "run 'em till they melt down, it won't hurt any rich people!"
We probably could build safe reactors - if our economic system didn't reward cutting costs by cutting corners - but they still wouldn't be profitable without state sponsorship.
Imagine how much alternative energy you could have funded with that but noooo, the US got to build more reactors :P
Huge-structure guy here. Guys like you are the people making sure that the things made by guys like me don't spin out of control and kill people.
We like guys like you.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Unit 3 means it is the third reactor in the power plant.
I managed to guess that but what I really don't understand is why building a nuclear power station is really news worthy. We've had nuclear power for quite a while and, as far as I can tell, this isn't even a new type of reactor just a different design using established technology.
That is some impressive engineering. One of my cousins is a machinist on the AP1000 factory line, it's a great design except that it's not a fast-breeder. Despite Fukushima, nuclear power continues to be one of our best options, if not the best.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
We probably could build safe reactors
Yes, we can build safe reactors, just not water-cooled reactors. Fission reactions are "just getting warmed up" by the time water starts boiling. That is a bad combination. This is why water-cooled reactors have to operate at 100+ atmospheres of pressure. Just taking water out of the equation makes fission several orders of magnitude simpler and safer to use.
That's why we should be working on new designs based on molten salt cooling, such as LFTR. Of course we aren't doing that because too many corporations with deep pockets and long tentacles prevent Congress from funding the research. But not to worry... China has a multi-billion-dollar program underway with a thousand PhD's working on it. So eventually we'll be able to buy the reactors from them.
Still, it would be a shame to have to buy from them, when they're just commercializing technology that we (the USA) invented 50~60 years ago.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I bet you'd have a spectacular burn-down chart though.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not everybody is following the nuclear news and is familiar to "Vogtle" and whatever it is these people are building.
As I read the story, I first wondered if it was talking about the new Tchernobil sarcophagus, then maybe something to cover Fukushima, then understood it was some new reactor somewhere and wondered _why_ it was slashdot worthy news (still don't know).
Or gas cooled. Those work pretty well, too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
One of the big reasons they won't be profitable without state sponsorship is the military applications of enriched Uranium. The US made Energy a whole cabinet level entity chiefly because of nuclear prolifieration issues. Any effort by the far right in the US to "drown government in a bathtub" runs into the problem of how you can have a tiny federal government with a multi-billion dollar Dept. of Energy.
( As a small proof of these statements, the total budget for DOE 2014 is a tad over 26 Billion dollars, and the portion of it that is for dealing with weapons and prolifieration related activities is the largest single section of that total at just over 11 billion.)
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/04/f0/FY14_DOE_Budget_Highlights_Final.pdf
(If readers want to cut to the chase, try the table on page 19). Interested people may note that the costs of all kinds of energy generation and of environmental activities are grouped together as one section, but they still come out smaller even lumped together, than the 'blowing things up and stopping other people from doing the same back at us' section does. Scientific research is smaller yet, only about a sixth of the budget. Then there's the question, how much of that environmental clean up and scientific research is actually to support the military parts of DoE activites and maybe ought to show up as another cost of war and proliferation?
Those costs are going to be incurred so long as the US runs a Nuclear Navy, has H-bombs in its arsenal, and wants to stop various 'rogue nations and state sponsored action groups' from getting their hands on the resulting materials. Stop all civilian energy research (of all kinds, not just nuclear) and all civilian nuclear power plants cold, and you still have that 11 billion, plus its share of general administration costs, internal safety inspections, workforce health compliance, and such. The complex legal procedures for civilian nuclear involve taking fees that are supposed to help offset other DoE costs, then giving more back in exchange, more that is paid for by common taxation, so that it is very hard to say just how much of the grants actually go to the civil corporations and how much of them involves using the corps as a pass through to transfer money back to the military side.
No other power generation technology faces this problem. We don't have to worry about the costs of military prolifieration of, say, wind or hydro technologies. But, what will happen if we start having to pay to prevent dirty coal projects in other countries? What if, for example, the US starts taking Kyoto seriously and wants to really cut coal prolifieration? About the only options we would have (short of just stopping all those nations from building enough powerplants of any sorts to keep their people alive), would be to let some of them develop nuclear plants. Those costs would then again be counted as part of our nuclear power costs. In other words, A large part of the cost of reducing other nations dirty coal emissions and greenhouse gasses would show up in the US budget as a nuclear proliferation control cost, even if the US completely stopped building or running all civilian nuclear plants on its own soil. Our economic system isn't just built to reward dangerous cost cutting, it is built to push costs that are only tangentially related to nuclear power into counting as 'Nuclear power' costs. That alone means Nukes will never be economically viable without taxation, but it's an artifact of the way we do the budget.
Who is John Cabal?
Water is a popular cooling medium because its specific heat is higher than just about anything else. If you want to transport a large amount of heat energy from one place to another, heated water is about the best way to do it.
The fact that water vaporizes when overheated or depressurized is a safety mechanism too. When water vaporizes, it absorbs nearly 7x as much energy as it takes to heat water from room temperature to boiling (2260 kJ/kg vs 4.19 kJ/kg*C). Or nearly 2x the energy it takes to heat water from room temperature to the operating temp of a pressurized water reactor. So a leak or depressurization of the water automatically and instantly results in cooling.
The large volumetric change when water vaporizes is also ideal for driving a generator. Volume change = mechanical work, which is easily captured by a turbine. Without a volume change, you're left trying to capture energy via an inefficient and bulky Stirling engine.
So yeah molten salt reactors have a lot going for them. But the use of water for cooling isn't because of some grand conspiracy. Water is just an extremely good medium for cooling and converting thermal energy into mechanical work, and was the obvious choice when reactors were being designed ~50 years ago.
What about combining the two? Molten Salt closer to the reactor/radiation, cycling to heat water, which then drives the turbines?
A great idea as long as you can guarantee the heat exchanger with molten salt on one side and hot water on the other side never let the two mix - because when they do, it asplodes.
we should be working on new designs based on molten salt cooling, such as LFTR [wikipedia.org]. Of course we aren't doing that because too many corporations with deep pockets and long tentacles prevent Congress from funding the research.
Nice conspiracy theory, but it's in an electric utility's self-interest to use safer, more efficient designs. I suppose the coal-mining industry would be opposed to safer, more efficient fission. Are those the "deep-pocketed corporations" you're referring to?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I could see them having a big stir fry. They could get into the Guiness record book as the world's largest wok.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That is how it works. The turbines are always steam driven.
I was part of the team that went through the punch list to bring Unit 1 at Vogtle on line. I was in almost every room and pipe chase big enough to climb through, went to the bottom of the reactor vessel and looked up the pipes to the 4 coolant pumps prior to fueling, watched the valves on top of the pressurizers get upgraded because they were the ones that failed at 3 Mile Island, supervised the tightening of leaky check valves under the coolant pumps while they were running, amazed that you could get enough heat in the system prior to fueling to turn the main steam turbine with just the coolant pumps, went back into the containment after the first 100 hours of fueled operation, my dosimetry badge is probably still in there. (Health and Safety was not happy with me)
That plant is built well and as safe as thousands of dedicated crafts people and engineers could make it. It will probably run for another 20 years without any major incidents. Should the US build more? No they are too costly (we had tee shirts that said finish the whore in 8.4. Units 1 and 2 cost 8.87 billion) and still too complicated. Fukushima showed when things go really wrong you can lose the use of a lot of your countryside. PWR, BWR (I was lucky to climb around Nine Mile 2 for a month while it was under construction) it doesn’t matter they are beautifully complicated pieces of machinery which can fail in ways you might never think of.
Take part of the money that is being spent on Units 3 and 4, dedicate it to serious conservation measures, grid improvement, some combined cycle gas turbine plants, and feed in tariffs. Give the rest back to rate payers who are the ones footing the bill and getting raked over the coals because someone wants to prove the point nuclear isn’t dead in America.
Then use molten lead like submarines. I'll take flash steam event over a 100ATM pressure vessel detonation any day of the week. Did I mention that molten lead has too high of a boiling point to ever suffer from the supercritical steam problem which caused Three Mile Island and Fukashima to burp Xeon? If you don't boil the coolant, you don't have to worry about the fuel rods oxidizing and your Corium problem disappears. SCRAM the reactor and the latent heat will passively convection cool and safely thermally conduct through the lead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor
I can tell you are old school to the max given your 40 column display you typed that out on. 80 columns is for newbs!
Nah. You're seeing the width of the comment box.
I like to hit a newline and control the spacing of the lines,
rather than have them re-wrap when the window is resized.
(Of course the first serious digital hardware device I designed
and built, single-handed, was a terminal. And it DID have less
than 80 columns. There were limits to how much horizontal
resolution you could push past the filters of a TV set if you
went in with RF, and back in the days of mostly 74xx small-scale
integration, the recirculating shift registers I could find for the
line cache came only in powers of 2 bits, not 80 or 40.)
NOW get off my lawn! B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Change for the better is fine. Change for the worse is bad.
Change for the sake of change is usually the latter.
Some agile methods have their place. So did Smalltalk.
Others have been described, accurately, as "experiential
programming".
I have yet to see any agile methodology I consider has a
place designing and/or constructing a nuclear reactor
for use near a populated area - or even within the Earth's
biosphere.
To be fair:
- I haven't studied them all.
- Some of the components of agile are techniques I have used
myself, before "agile" was coined, with considerable success.
- There are a lot of NON-agile methods that are worse than
even the worst of pre-agile.
I'm willing to be be show that, like best-effort networking with
flakey hardware, it's possible for agile-style methods to be
better at compensating for human error than other
formal methods.
But IMHO all the agile approaches I've seen cut too many
reliability corners for me to trust them on something as
massively life-critical as a reactor design.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Um, given the subject of the article, I'm pretty confident construction has begun, and so I'm going to apply basic logic here and say that 2017/2018 are reactor start-up dates.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
I don't know how bad stirling engines are now (I thought we had some with at least the efficiency of combustion. Or thermal accoustic engines, or myriad other ways of extracting energy. It seems like a matter of: Water + Turbines is an age old and well developed technology that requires very little R&D. The parts are cheap and out of patent. And we know it works and its fairly efficient and has very few unknowns.
But that does not eliminate other methods as being safer or in fact more efficient once developed. I cant argue that they would actually be though.
An LFTR might have other limitations, like it does not put out as much energy per reactor. So if for example your only permitted to build one reactor and it takes ages and complex bureaucracy to build another. Your going to build the one with the absolute best power output you can.
A way to encourage different development of more technologies and more heterogeneous technology would be to allow many smaller reactors that had less safety issues due to size and operational parameters. Though that might not be possible if small fission reactors are not practical due to energy in and energy out.
And your assessment is really good.
Amen dood. You pretty much summed it up.