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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.
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.
You know, my experience with older technology is you can often teach someone the high-level stuff, but when you get into the really low-level stuff there's invariably a zillion little things which come down to lore and things you've seen before and just know about them but which aren't written down.
I have yet to see any sufficiently old system which is fully documented, actually matches what the documentation says, and doesn't have a bunch of little 'quirks' which prevent the new guy from ever truly understanding it beyond the basics.
Not knowing that you need to jiggle the control rod 3 times and do a quarter turn to the left to operate it is likely the kind of thing which is going to end badly.
Which is precisely why I've known mainframe programmers who retired, started collecting their pension, and then started getting 5x their salary in consulting fees to keep it running for their previous employer. Because, try as they might, you just can't find someone who really grasps the entire system.
I can't tell you how many times in my professional career the answer to "why does this work like this?" has been followed up with "now that's a funny story" followed by a description of some bit of arcane knowledge which nobody else truly understands except the guy telling the story.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Except that nuclear reactors are, by regulation, among the most-documented entities on earth. From functionality to maintenance logs to upgrades, nuclear plants & their owners are extreme documenters--to decrease liability and meet government regulation. You don't hear stories of nuclear reactors in places like the US, Canada, UK, Western Europe, etc., with "documentation problems" or knowledge transfer continuity. (Pay people to stay to do an easy job & they will...) Sure, a part schematic may be on paper as opposed to stored electronically, but they'll have multiple copies onsite, a few copies at the power utility offsite, and at the NRC or other national nuclear regulatory agency--and everyone who should know where those copies are, do know... And that documentation would be designed so that anyone with the requisite engineering knowledge & skills should be able to read it...
Nuclear plants are not run like IT shops--and thank God for that...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
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.
The Chalk River medical isotope issue was different though.
Everyone agrees that the regulator did its job by shutting down the plant for not meeting the once in a million years safety ratio that is the standard. However the plant was not a power plant, it was a research plant producing medical isotopes. So issue wasn't whether the ractor met the standards, it didn't. The issue was the probability of people getting injured or dying from a plant malfunction was significantly less than the probability of people dying from not getting those medical isotopes.
When presented with instructions to provide a temporary exception to the rule until other sources of the isotope could be brought online, the regulator said no. So things escalated until someone (parliament) had the authority to over rule the regulator.
She was fired for not granting the exception, even though she knew what the balance of probabilities were. Basically she was power tripping.
Yes it is.
The message says "Buck Feta.".
Why would you want to reject a cheese? This makes no sense.
Documentation is one thing, having people around who really understand the design principals and most critically what to do in the event of an accident is quite another. The problems they had at Fukushima were made worse by the fact that the people on the ground didn't understand what was happening. Monitoring systems failed and they didn't appreciate the potentials risks and didn't do the necessary checks that might have prevented meltdown.
Nuclear plants are complex. Mistakes have very serious consequences. Documentation alone is insufficient, you need extensive training programs and high wages to retain the skills you invest in, and at the moment that isn't happening.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
But they didn't! The damn plant had another safety shutdown because the reactor vessel was corroded to hell. I happened in 2009 and lasted over a year. Worldwide shortage of medical isotopes because *nobody had prepared for another shutdown.*
And as a point of interest, according to the safety commissioner, the risk was pegged at 1 in 1000. Which is pretty damn far away from the one in a million standard.