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NRC Expects Applications To Operate Reactors Beyond 60 Years
mdsolar writes with news that the aging reactor fleet in the U.S. will likely see units hitting 80 or more years of use before being decommissioned. From the article: "Officials of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear power industry expect the first application to be filed with the agency in 2018 or 2019 for a license renewal to operate a power reactor or reactors beyond 60 years. At a Nuclear Energy Institute forum in Washington Tuesday, neither NRC nor industry officials named specific plants considered likely to apply, and it was not clear from their remarks if any nuclear operator has yet volunteered to be the first to apply."
Also see the staff report on preparing for the first applications. The proposed operating license changes would place no limit on the number of 20 year extensions, so perhaps a few reactors will end up in operation for a full century (if there's anyone left who can remember how to operate them then).
The existing nuclear plants are definitely approaching end of life. New nuclear plants and technologies are pretty damned far away. The NRC definitely needs to shut down some of the older plants. What's more, the NRC definitely needs to start approving new plants and nuclear technologies more quickly. The licensing process is amazingly expensive. We're quickly going to arrive at an energy crisis due to lack of action.
You are allowed to train people how to operate machines even when the machine is old. I'm pretty sure people will still understand buttons and knobs even in a future where everything else is touchscreens and direct neural interfaces or whatever.
I read the internet for the articles.
It is really sad how the US cannot come with a good strong Nuclear Energy Policy and rules and regulations.
Being that voters on both sides a full of complete ignorance that they just make it worse.
The Democrats who support environmentalists (Scientists) and "environmentalists" (Tree Huggers) often get them confused and will be happy to believe that nuclear energy is like a controlled atomic bomb, thus must be decommissioned at all cost.
The Republicans who are in bed with the Oil industry will sometimes tolerate nuclear energy, however do not have the guts to push for it as it will step on the Oil Industry.
So what happens, we get regulations that are overly strict in the wrong areas and have gaping problems in the other.
Is nuclear energy a Clean Safe and Too cheap to meter? No, not by a long shot. However we have a trade off of saving CO2 output (our current big problem) with Storing and keeping safe hazardous waste for a thousands of years (a future problem, which could get better over time). There are a lot of safety protocols in place and newer designs get safer, I doubt we will see a nuclear explosion, however accidents could create nuclear radiation leaked which are toxic, that said coal spews out a lot of toxic stuff already. These safety protocols comes at a cost, so yes you will still need to meter to pay for the upkeep and running. However it is a source of energy that can be produces without killing the budget.
Nuclear along with Wind, Solar, Hydropower should all be added to the American clean energy strategies.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I thought they were already decommissioning the USS Enterprise (CVN65) which was the only ship in The Fleet that had really aging reactors.
The Nimitz class had a newer design of reactor, which they only needed 2 of per ship.
The company I work for is involved in the Nuclear Work Management industry: and companies owning a "fleet" of reactors is common terminology. "Legendary Slashdot commenting"? (after carefully avoiding Google :) )
> You don't talk about a "fleet" of reactors unless you mean a nuclear-powered Navy
Everyone calls it a fleet.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/France/
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Cool-running-reactor-fleets-0801141.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China--Nuclear-Power/
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Japan/
I like that righteous indignation you used while illustrating that you know absolutely zero about the topic you are pontificating on.
Would a gaggle or reactors work better?
How about a murder of reactors?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Looks like they want the closing of a nuclear power plant to happen on the Fukushima model. Run them till they are overwhelmed by circumstance.
This is happen when you go 40 years with no core research in an anti nuclear environment.
if there's anyone left who can remember how to operate them then.
Seven years ago I met a former chief operator for Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant no.2; he had just been let go from the governing body at Stanford responsible for setting curriculum for nuclear plant operators, due to cutbacks in (federal) funding.
We speculated then that the U.S. would someday see the need for building new or updating existing nuclear power plants. So, what was obvious to us then, seems to be the future.
And, yes, finding qualified engineers to run the plants will be very, very difficult.
AFAIK, "fleet" is the usual term for a power company's collection of power generation equipment. It's what it gets called here anyway.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The risk of an overwhelming seismic event striking a power plant is proportional to the length of time it is exposed to the risk. This policy doubles the risk. There should be upgrades in survivability requirements to manage this and keep risk constant. Events with recurrence intervals four times longer than the present design basis should become the new design basis to account for the already suffered exposure.
I used to really love nuclear power. I believed that a safe plant was simply a matter of good design and good regulatory structure.
Then came the safety shutdown of the medical isotope reactor at Chalk River. "Good!" I thought. "The system works just like it should." The pressure started mounting because of the shortage. The safety commissioner refused to reopen the plant, and the pressure got worse. Then the government fired her and ordered the plant open again.
Nuclear plants are great, until the time comes when closing them is just too expensive. Then the government changes from engineering them to be safe to legislating them to be safe. Because nature is bound to follow legislation /s
The NRC's job is safety. That's it. They have people stationed at power plants, and their only job is to ask questions and enforce policies such that the plant operates safely. With that beaten home, let's get to some specifics.
The biggest concern for the current fleet of U.S. reactors (mostly all Generation II designs) in terms of long operation is embrittlement of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) due to radiation damage (mostly neutronic). Embrittlement of the RPV comes into play when severe accident responses (for either Design Basis Accidents (DBAs) or Beyond Design Basis Accidents (BDBAs)) dictate fast, extreme cooling of the RPV that can lead to pressurized thermal shock (PTS) events. The biggest hurdle toward getting approval is proving which-and-every way to a high confidence level that a PTS breach of the RPV will not occur from this embrittlement. If plants cannot do this, the NRC will not issue a license extension because the plant cannot prove its safety. If you care to read more on it, consult 10 CFR 50.61 for details (or the whole thing at the10 CFR 50 Part Index.
Are there other requirements? Yes (see the 10 CFR 50 index above). However, this is the one aspect I wanted to expound upon since turbomachinery has been replaced/upgrade, fuel is refreshed every 18 months or so, and piping is constantly checked. But I wanted to stress the safety issue. The NRC has 100% no qualms about telling a plant "no" if that plant cannot prove it is safe to operate.
But apparently it's thought to be a better idea to destroy the entire stock of precious hydrocarbons that took Nature a hundred million years to lay down in the next century by burning them instead.
A meltdown of reactors.
Isn't this similar to keeping COBOL code bases going as they still work even though the really good developers are dying off? At least with a codebase when things break there isn't an international emergency...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The air traffic control system used at international airports in the United States begs to differ...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's not how pig latin works.
Yes it is.
The message says "Buck Feta.".
Now that would be something to crow about!
Why would you want to reject a cheese? This makes no sense.
"Insurance Companies in the United States have begun notifying customers they will no longer have ANY coverage whatsoever for anything relating to nuclear energy claims. Fallout, radiation sickness, property damage from radiation - all EXCLUDED" http://www.turnerradionetwork.... http://www.dailypaul.com/31155...
But apparently it's thought to be a better idea to destroy the entire stock of precious hydrocarbons that took Nature a hundred million years to lay down in the next century by burning them instead.
Seriously, what's the better use of those hydrocarbons? I get the feeling people are treating it like a bank. But a bank takes savings deposits and loans them to someone else. So that money never just sits around. OTOH, if you don't pull oil out of the ground and do something with it, then you're doing nothing with it. Hydrocarbons sitting in the ground aren't at all precious.
So what are we going to be doing with those hydrocarbons in the future that is so precious?
NRC, I live 40 miles away from a pile of unsecured spent uranium sitting next to Lake Michigan. I and my neighbors are not happy that your agency is allowing this spent fuel to sit there until 2080 next to the Point Beach nuclear reactor. How many accidents is it going to take for us to wake up? Your policies & lack of proper oversight at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New Jersey & the Indian Point plant in New York are deplorable. This nation cannot afford any more nuclear pollution. There is no reason to put our USN personel at risk either. I trust that the USN can do good maintenance but even that causes problems. Someone I know really well was responsible for pulling a reactor head & the technicians made a mistake by not fully draining the CORE WATER. It ended up flooding the damned lot and destroyed crane mats, rig tires, equipment tires, and many tons of aggregate right next to the lake. Not cool & he got a good dose of radiation too. STOP this!
+1 would read comment again.
where are my mod points.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
What is really needed is to replace these first and second gen reactors with smaller ones that can burn up their old fuel. Ideally, the thorium reactors would make good sense.
In addition, we need to replace the coal plants with say 2 small nuke reactors (B&W's mPower would be a good one, perhaps combined with a thorium ), combined with energy storage. One good energy storage would be EOS Energy.
Regardless, the reason why America, in fact the west, is in trouble with our electricity is that we have far too much from single sources. Far better to have a diversified energy matrix. And this idea that it should be all wind and solar has to be the WORST idea going.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, accurate documents seem to be rare. It was very hard to find out if Vermont Yankee had pipes running under it. Entergy told the State no until they started to leak. And, the military nuclear culture seems to be turning to falsified documents such as test cheating so the future work force for nuclear power is becoming more corrupt. Probably those documents will become completely useless in another generation.
The nuclear power plant engineers mentioned in the great-grandparent are operators. Either way, I'm just pointing out there's a steady pool of trained and experienced people who would likely go to college and become full fledged engineer operators if the demand was there. (Many already do.) The OP considerably overestimates the difficulty of finding them.
That's the main problem with the current stratospheric regulatory cost of nuclear power in the USA.
There's way too much copying of ultra expensive US Navy regulations to the civilian side.
There are many aspects the regulation could be done in a much more logical way (aka far less expensive to comply).
The whole concept of light water uranium nuclear reactor (at 150 atmospheres pressure cooker) is a very dumb way to do nuclear. Guess who decided on that design, that's right, the USA Navy.
The reason the US Navy doesn't have lots of nuclear accidents, is they have this rigid hierarchy and insane training program that drills procedures in the heads of those that operate the reactor.
The interesting fact is that nuclear reactors aren't unsafe, the brand new ones are extremely safe, it's just the ginormous cost of making that pressure cooker contained in every conceivable scenario that is extremely expensive.
You might think I'm anti nuclear, but I'm very much pro nuclear, just not a fan of the way nuclear was implemented.
PS: I have no problem with a Gen III light water reactor operating 80 years. My problem with Generation II light water reactors isn't with the possibility of operating them to 80 years. Its having the older designs operating in areas with extremely strong earthquakes/tsunamis/level 5 hurricanes/maximum category tornadoes.
The reason I want better nukes than water cooled ones are:
1 - Far cheaper
2 - Far cheaper
3 - Much safer
4 - Require mining of 1/100th of the total nuclear material versus water cooled ones. Light water nukes use only 0,65% of the original uranium mined, even with reprocessing, they wouldn't ever manage using 10% of the original uranium mined (after dozens of reprocessing cycles), fission products have half lives 30 years or less, the problem with nuclear waste is the plutonium, americium and curium (half lifes around 10000 years) that light water reactor produce and that must be removed from the reactor after the nuclear fuel is "spent", it's not spent, it's the Xenom that formed inside the fuel rod that is threatening the integrity of the rod (swelling, threatening to fracture the rod).
A molten salt reactor requires just one ton of mined thorium to produce one GW of electricity for one year (one GW year).
A light water reactor requires mining 250 tons of uranium, which after enrichment becomes 35 tons of lightly enriched uranium, of which only 1,5 tons actually get fissioned. And for those 1,5 tons of fission products, there is 250 kg of Plutonium (and tens of Kg of Americium + Curium).
Molten salt reactors keep the Plutonium, Americium, Curium inside the reactor until it gets fissioned. The gaseous fission products bubble up and are collected in the top of the reactor, so there's no fuel swelling due to Xenom (Xenom also generates many other problems on reactors that keep the Xenom inside the reactor, it's a huge neutron poison, which forces reactors to have control rods and to be engineered with extra reactivity than otherwise required if the Xenom were continuously removed).
Molten Salt reactors are engineered to be safe from their basic characteristics (laws of physics). Light water reactors are safe due to an insane numbers of extra safety features.
Molten salt reactors, meaning thorium, which cannot, at any purity, sustain a chain reaction and Uranium Hexafloride is a gas and therefore cannot be part of a 'molten salt bath', will not ever work as you hope. They will always be a conventional uranium core surrounded by a thorium salt bath (btw, being a liquid, the highly radioactive mass will always, WITHOUT FAIL, spill out of containment eventually. Give it up, they're dead
Before firing meaningless words, please read about it.
Technically, it's a Uranium 233 fueled reactor (mostly).
U-233 / U-235 / Pu-239 is fissioned in the core (U-235, Pu-239, Pu-240, Am-241 from LWR SNF is used for startup, due to U-233 scarcity).
Uranium is kept a tetrafluoride in the core and in the blanket.
It's fluorinated to hexa fluoride in the volatility column to move newly produced U-233 from the blanket to the core.
But it's reduced back to UF4 before insertion into the core.
Formation of UF6 in the core is dificult, since fission keeps demanding more and more Fluoride as U is split into two atoms needing at least 4 F atoms.
The blanket contains ThF4 to receive neutrons and make Pa233 (which decays to U233 with 27 day half life).
Anyhow, I'm not a nuclear engineer. Please take a look at www.energyfromthorium.com also youtube search LFTR reactor. You will find at least 6 nuclear engineers (most with their PhDs) with in depth presentations of how this will work, and prior work done (some of it in the 1960s and early 70s).
Not only this is possible, as well as breeding U-233 from Th-232 has been demonstrated, as well as a U-233 fueled fission.
The bottom line is a molten salt thermal reactor is better any solid fuel, water cooled reactor, due to online removal of Xe135, possibility of online reprocessing of other fission products (since the fuel is liquid, it's easy to drain a few dozen Kg of core fluid into a pyro reprocessing facility designed to only remove fission products and return both the core salt and nuclear fuel back into the reactor), preventing neutron poisoning, avoiding the need to have excess reactivity like solid fuel reactors require.
There are variants, like the DMSR (denatured molten salt reactor, that is operated on a mix of Th-232, U-233, U-235, U-238 and Pu/Am/Cu on purpose to make the fuel as difficult to use for nukes as a solid uranium fuel rods).
A Canadian company is promising an operational DMSR (with focus on maximum simplicity) in 8 years time. Look up David LeBlanc (terrestrial energy) on youtube.
If a nuclear reactor expected to operate for 40 years could last 80 years, then it has just become half as expensive to build per GWh of electricity produced over its lifetime.
And they keep saying nuclear is too expensive.
And the same guys saying nuclear is too expensive keep on fueling all anti nuclear intervention to make nuclear even more expensive.
Nuclear is cheaper than coal in countries that are serious about doing nuclear.
China, South Korea and India are doing it at a modest cost due to standardization, and a concerted effort to build lots of reactors.
If only USA, Germany, Italy and a few other delusional countries would accept that.
Natural gas is cheap now, but will it be cheap 10 or 20 years from now ?
Look at long term natural gas charts.
It's a limited resource.
I would rather limit the old 2nd Generation nukes be limited to 60 years. Even better limit to 50 yrs (forcing their replacements to start building now).
The problem isn't a valve here or a pipe there. The problem is those older reactors that are hitting 40 years of operation are extremely old designs that have been patched again and again.
But the people is against building new replacement reactors, so nuclear operators end up with this continual patch it up work.
But the basic reality is the NRC helps keep old reactors operating but make it uneconomical to build new ones.
Take a new Westinghouse AP1000. There are over a dozen in construction.
But if a nuclear operator decides to build another one, it essentially must be re-certified. As if this was the very first AP1000 installation.
There is zero assurance the project will be approved if it complies to a clearly known set of requirements.
So construction can't start until certification is reached (with the NRC charging US$ 300/hr for over 10000 hours of certification "work").
Its insane !
The Price-Anderson Act has never caused the US government to step in and pay for damages.
Before the Price-Anderson Act steps is, there is a large pool of cash sitting there on standby. Billions worth.
The last time that pool was drown upon was three mile island ! 35 years ago.
There is no problem with the Price-Anderson Act. The problem is the anti nuclear people that equate a nuclear power plant to a nuclear bomb explosion.
The problem isn't that natural gas made nuclear uneconomical. The problem is people don't want nukes, that chokes the whole nuclear industry into a self fulfilling prophecy.
If we used the current anti nuclear attitude towards airlines, they would all be shutdown for good. Instead we learn from every accident and make reactors better.
But now we can't install those, because nobody wants nuclear.
Natural gas kills too, it's causing climate change, that is already killing people worldwide with major floods, stronger hurricanes, stronger super typhoons.
Nuclear saves lives. That's a fact. Stop with the non sense.