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First New US Nuclear Reactor In Two Decades Gets Permission To Begin Fueling (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes: The Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar nuclear power plant began construction in 1973. The plant's first reactor was completed in 1996, and it began operation. Work on the second reactor paused in 1988, and only resumed in 2007. That reactor is now complete — the first newly-operational Generation II reactor since the 1990s. The new reactor has been granted an operational license, and it will soon begin fueling. While the Gen II reactors aren't unsafe, they're much less safe than the Gen III AP1000s. "Compared to a Westinghouse Gen II PWR, the AP1000 contains 50 percent fewer safety-related valves, 35 percent fewer pumps, 80 percent less safety-related piping, 85 percent less control cabling, and 45 percent less seismic building volume. ... If an accident happens, the AP1000 will shut itself down without needing any human intervention (or even electrical power) within the first 72 hours."
This is what the stupid scaremongering of the media, some politicians and many environmentalists ends up causing: instead of building Gen III or even Gen IV plants, we're finishing ancient Gen II plants because that's all that's been approved, decades ago. They are quite literally the cause for nuclear energy's relative safety concerns.
If the government could make its mind up and stop wasting time, the US could rapidly diminish and even eliminate its reliance on fossil fuels without even having to suffer through energy shortages. Allow breeder reactors on top and you'd also eliminate the whole nuclear waste scare while being that much more efficient and cost-effective.
If an accident happens, the AP1000 will shut itself down without needing any human intervention (or even electrical power) within the first 72 hours."
I imagine that means the plant could be completely inactive (decay heat will be down to the point of not requiring active cooling) within three days, but as written it's not reassuring.
And while "Generation II" sounds good, so were Fukushima and Three Mile Island. We should be building Gen 3-4 by now.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
My car has two doors, does that make it less safe then a car with 4 doors?
Prattling off percentages like that doesn't give any indication of the context behind them. '50% less safety valves' for example. What does this mean? Are the 'less valves' perhaps more robust? Does it mean less work in an emergency to shut everything down?
This article makes me think of clients that demand a certain number of lines of code.
Have you ever visited a construction site after construction was stopped for any significant amount of time?
I've been to a couple of commercial construction sites (ie, mostly steel and concrete, versus wood for residential) where construction had stalled for a couple of years after the property value collapse, and crews were literally having to break-up concrete because unfinished exposed rebar ends had rusted and that rust expanded the rebar down into the concrete, causing cracks to begin in that concrete.
That was after only a couple of years. Imagine how bad it would get after close to 30 years. Buildings already have enough problems when they're finished if they don't get regular maintenance over the course of decades, but unfinished buildings that are not environmentally sealed will undoubtedly fare far, far worse.
I know that nuclear reactors are supposed to be structurally overengineered simply due to the nature the forces they contain, but starting out with a handicap due to building structural problems doesn't sound like the greatest plan, and that's before account for all of the other technical changes that have been engineered through the decades. We've already seen problems in younger reactors that were finished approximately on their original timetables, this seems like it's asking for more.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Run for the hills!
It was 80% complete when work halted. That likely means the walls were closed up and a roof was on.
The article goes on for quite a bit about how much less "safety related hardware" newer plant designs have but I highly doubt that that says anything about how safe a reactor is or not. What DOES make a difference is fail safes, regular inspections, backups, emergency response plans, all with a design double checked by someone with a high school level of common sense. What has caused most of the major nuclear disasters? Rank stupidity. Fukushima was caused by the idiotic placement of backup generators and associated control hardware, in a basement and the subsequent failure of plant operators to call for necessary resources. Chernobyl was caused by them futzing with the reactor outside of normal operating procedures and then activating an emergency system that was not designed to handle those modifications. Three Mile Island was caused by a lack of appropriate sensors to recognize a lack of coolant in the reactor caused by a faulty relief valve. Knowing the reactor coolant level/pressure/temperature with certainty, having the ability to shutdown the reaction, and the ability to keep the reactor cool are the only things you need to prevent 99% of nuclear disasters. I'm not saying that designing a nuclear plant is easy, but keeping your backup cooling systems above water, not experimenting with a full sized nuclear reactor & knowing if your coolant is pouring out of a relief valve would seem to be no brainers that shouldn't have been missed.
And now, with electrolytes!
You are welcome on my lawn.
To be fair, the 42 year delay was so that they could convince the people of Tennessee that electricity wasn't the work of the devil.
You are welcome on my lawn.
To be fair, the 42 year delay was so that they could convince the people of Tennessee that electricity wasn't the work of the devil.
Not the work of the devil, just sold by the devil or rather a superstitious human with multiple personality disorder that likes to blame their conduct on a fictional character in a book. So glad they figured out how to manufacture electrons...
This plant has a very poor safety record.
Because of a flaw in the original construction, the original reactor has to routinely vent tritium into the atmosphere instead of being diverted to the reclaimer and recycled back into the gas loop (a valve box was placed in a foundation area that was eventually covered with concrete. Both valves became stuck around 2005, with no way to access them. Since 2005, approx. 25,000 cublic liters of tritium are vented into the atmosphere on a bi-weekly basis.
Two whistle blowers were issued gag orders by the FBI when they threatened to report the tritium venting to their senator after numerous attempts to address these safety issues with plant management, the NRC, and the governor.
. . . instead of whiny political propaganda?
Yeah, let's see how far you get with that.
The other way around. Simpler is more reliable. Suppose that each year, 1 door of 1,000 fails. Your car has two doors, so the odds you'll have a door failure are 2/1000, or 1/500. My car has four doors, so the odds that one of mine will fail is 4/1,000, or 1/250.
It may be easier to see with more extreme numbers. Your car engine probably didn't fail this year. Dallas Texas has a couple million car engines. It's virtually certain that some failed.
More parts means more chances for failure. Perhaps more importantly, it means more connections and interactions between parts. More interactions means more opportunities for things to go wrong. To expand on that a bit more, more complex systems are also more difficult for engineers to fully understand, so not only are there more opportunities for the same types of failures, there's also a much higher likelihood of a potential failure scenario that wasn't predicted.
All in all, a fork is much more reliable than a computer, because simpler things with fewer parts are more reliable in many ways.
* Obviously -redundant- parts can make things more reliable, but both designs have redundancy built-in.
Here are full details, with appropriate references, about the idea ending the reliance on fossil fuels in the US requires nuclear to be a significant part of the energy mix:
https://docs.google.com/docume...
The summary is that solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal can make an important contribution, providing a significant portion of our energy needs. A very significant portion cannot be solved by those four choices - for reliable, steady power in huge amounts the choices are fossil fuels or nuclear.
It took them 8 years to get the final 20% done?
They should have just started over with a Gen 3 reactor.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I see no reason not to replace older model plants with modern reactors.
I currently live in the respiratory evacuation zone of a nuclear power plant that is literally 1 month younger than I am.
It's been refurbished with parts from 3 mile island.
Officially, they are planning on building 2 more reactors at the site both AP1000.
However, the approval process was halted in 2013.
If I'm going to live near a nuclear power plant, please build a modern reactor so, one day you can retire the original reactor instead of trying to extend it's operational lifespan beyond it's designed life span.
Forward unto dawn!
Hip Hip Hooray!
As I understand it the US has about 18GW of solar PV installed capacity with about a 28% capacity factor - so roughly 5 GW of actual power generation.
These two reactors together will generate about 2.2GW with a 90% factor, or around 2 GW.
One power plant, 40% of the capacity of all PV in the country.
To be fair, the 42 year delay was so that they could convince the people of Tennessee that electricity wasn't the work of the devil.
Are Tennessee people welcome on your lawn, even though you obviously believe they're idiots?
I think that no new nuclear reactors have been built in the United States, because no one wants a beta gen III+ nuclear reactor. In the West, there were 3 different nuclear reactors, Areva's EPR reactor, Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor, and GE's ESBWR reactor. GE decided to exit the nuclear reactor business. Several AP1000s, and EPRs have been under construction in Europe and China since the late 2000s. The EPR reactor in Finland is considered a screw up, and is getting major design changes. China hasn't been reporting many problems. Maybe China is better at building stuff, they haven't found the problems, or the problems have been kept secret. The UK thinks China is better at building stuff. None of the EPR, or AP1000 reactors has started commercial electricity generation, so the waiting game is a smart one for now.
The people of Memphis and Nashville are welcome. All others pay cash.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If they're so stupid, how'd they figure out the way to get it done before you, again?
Oh, wait, you're an idiot. Nevermind.
"To be fair, the 42 year delay was so that they could convince the people of Tennessee that electricity wasn't the work of the devil."
No, the time was spent vainly trying to convince liberals of that fact.
Hiss...
Near me there was a mansion-like house, left non-weathertight for over a year during building. When I last looked, before it was sealed up, everything was damaged and warped. I have no idea how well it looked done, but I can't believe they got it level enough for someone to buy it. Puddles of water on the unprotected plywood floors, wet framing, no building wrap on. The roof was on, but nothing else to make it weather tight.
Learn to love Alaska
I imagine a decent chunk of that time was spent on inspection and repairs.
The plant security personnel have been under scrutiny in the local paper because several dogs were found shot dead on the perimeter road leading from I-43 to the plant. All the dogs were shot with the same caliber round, .41SW, which is an unusual caliber, but standardized throughout the plant security force. The round is unusual enough that it's not something that's routinely stocked by local gun stores, but was found in the bodies of the many animals littering the route from I-43 to the plant.
I had said "the odds you'll have a door fail". You gave the odds that you'll either have A door fail, or have TWO doors fail. :)
That's actually my favorite question in probability:
You enter two contests. You have a 1/10 chanfe of winning each contest. What is your overall chance of winning?
It sounds so simple, yet it's devilishly difficult to figure out if you don't already know the trick, that you have to instead figure out the overall odds of LOSING both.
Considering how long it takes to get turbine rotors for coal fired units of a smaller size (~ 5 years) a lot of it was probably waiting for parts. There's a bit of a queue for rarely produced items.
"Compared to a Westinghouse Gen II PWR, the AP1000 contains 50 percent fewer safety-related blah, 35 percent fewer blah, 80 percent less safety-related blah, 85 percent less control blah, and 45 percent less seismic blah.
So if I get the math right, it sounds like it's 45% less earthquake resistant, 85% less under control, and ... carry the 1, 130-165% less safe all around. This makes me kind of nervous. But we got the facts -- at least that they're not spinning it to try to make the situation sound better than it is.
That is the dumbest comment that I've seen on Slashdot in a long time. I am at a loss for words. You should be proud of yourself.
I'll bet Czar Bomba had more than 9lbs of fuel (I can't prove it, but the numbers just don't work for me...), but it obviously had nothing near 150 tons of plutonium (and it probably used U238, anyhow -- the plane could have never taken off), which should be enough to demonstrate to thinking, rational people why a nuclear power plant isn't a nuclear "bomb". There are safety issues with bombs and power plants, but they are both vastly different. The bombs are actually safer.
All these posts are completely retarded.
We had one near us too. They tore it down after sitting two years.
What about folks from Bucksnort? Or folks from Lynchburg bearing delicious gifts?
Good thing you thought of this. I'm sure no one involved in building a nuclear power plant has any clue what they are doing.
Wow. Can't tell if serious or joking.
And getting over the emotional and political hurdles of nuclear power of the last couple decades.
Have you ever visited a construction site after construction was stopped for any significant amount of time?
I've been to a couple of commercial construction sites (ie, mostly steel and concrete, versus wood for residential) where construction had stalled for a couple of years after the property value collapse, and crews were literally having to break-up concrete because unfinished exposed rebar ends had rusted and that rust expanded the rebar down into the concrete, causing cracks to begin in that concrete.
So you are just a novice, yet somehow feel compelled to talk like an expert?
That was after only a couple of years. Imagine how bad it would get after close to 30 years. Buildings already have enough problems when they're finished if they don't get regular maintenance over the course of decades, but unfinished buildings that are not environmentally sealed will undoubtedly fare far, far worse.
"Imagine"... yeah, if only there were people who actually knew what they were talking about, instead of your bullshit.
I know that
Let me stop you right there. You clearly know nothing.
Yeah, but it's Tennessee so it won't be any big loss.
Crumbling concrete, vegetation encroachment, animals nesting, water incursion, and it goes on and on. Two windows were vandalized by bullet holes and someone painted a swastika on a rolling door.
OK, you need to stop when you have made your point.
The first sentence was great. Even if not vegetation encroachment and animals nesting might be a big problem once cleaned out.
Broken windows is a bit of a non-issue, easy to spot, easy to fix.
What you really should have skipped is the comment about the swastika. It doesn't impact the power plants function or safety one bit and can safely be left there the entire lifespan of the plant.
It makes your list into a variant of the "Hitler killed six million Jews and one clown" joke. It is completely irrelevant to the point but there will always be people (like me) that gets stuck on it.
To be fair, the 42 year delay was so that they could convince the people of Tennessee that electricity wasn't the work of the devil.
"I've never seen electricity, so I don't pay for it. I write right on the bill, 'I'm sorry, I haven't seen it all month.'" - Steven Wright.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Liberals love electricity, because it is so much cleaner than burning fossil fuels for transportation. I don't know if I'm the kind of person you are referring to, but I'm often accused of being a foaming at the mouth raving environmentalist so I'll guess that maybe I am, and I drive an electric car. I love electricity.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The capital costs of a reactor build are high because it's an expensive piece of construction, not simply because of delays etc. Every other large project including coal-fired and natural-gas generating plants also have to spend money up front preparing plans, covering the likely environmental impacts and dealing with protests.
Nearly all modern-build Gen-IIa and Gen-III reactors like the AP-1400, the EPR, ESBWR etc. are significantly larger than the original Gen-1 and Gen-II designs, each generating well over 1GW of electricity (the EPRs when they are complete will produce 1.6GW). That takes a lot of concrete and steel for containment, bigger turbine-generator sets, a larger reactor vessel etc. Putting that all together takes longer to complete even if everything goes right first time -- the Chinese are turning out their enhanced Gen-II APR-1000s in about 6 years from breaking ground to first grid connection but they've got a tested production line in place for groundworks, components and construction.
The good long-term news is that new-build Gen-IIIs will operate for more than 60 years; the Russians just produced a reactor vessel that they claim will last in service for a century and more. This improves the financial viability of a reactor project even though they cost a chunk of money up front.
That was the regulatory regime beforehand, and it resulted in the most colossal waste of money ever: Shoreham
The combined (construction & operating) license regulatory regime is intended specifically to prevent such wasteful endevours, The design, construction, and operation of the facility is approved largely upfront to ensure the plant can actually be operated when it's built.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
When the shit hits the fan, I want a nuclear reactor to shut down RIGHT NOW, not at a lazy pace of "within 72 hours."
That seems ridiculously unsafe to me. Earthquakes don't take 72 hours to do damage. They take seconds. I don't see why a safety system should wait up to 72 hours to shut down what amounts to a controlled nuclear bomb.
A couple of comments. I worked at Watts Bar for 6 years - from just before they restarted construction until 2013. I now work out at one of the new reactors under construction at VC Summer.
First off, WBN2 and WBN1 share structures. Actually, all the structures except for the reactor building itself is shared. The units are what is considered an "opposite hand" configuration, which means that essentially a piece of equipment, piping, or valve on the far west side of the plant for U1 would be on the far east side, at the same northing, for U2 with everything matching up in the middle. The units also share many systems, and in order for them to start up U1, they had to have those systems (and many of the U2 pumps, valves and other support equipment) in service. The units also share a control room, spent fuel pool, diesel generators, and more. The only completely independent structure is the reactor building, which was structurally complete when they halted construction. Most everything inside was complete (major equipment set, piped in, etc). Most of what was lacking were control systems, instrumentation, and some valves. Also, all of this equipment was under temperature and humidity controls during the layup period.
One other thing - all of these structures are reinforced concrete. The unique thing about concrete is they get stronger with age unless you have something like saltwater causing problems. They're also *very thick* and *heavily reinforced* concrete - as in, the age isn't a handicap at all.
I hate sigs...
Poe's Law and all, but my gut tells me it was a joke.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
The construction paused in 1988 and resumed in 2007, where did you get the 30 years from? It's 19 years. Also, comparison with houses construction sites may not hold water, standards are pretty different and materials too.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I'm a nuclear engineer that has worked with nuclear utilities for over 30 years. Watts Bar Unit 2 is colocated with Unit 1, which has been operating since 1980. Many of the systems are shared and, of course, those systems have been operated and maintained. TVA always intended to operate Unit 2 when electricity demand increased and spent a great deal of time and money maintaining the non-shared systems. Much of the work performed on Unit 2 since they restarted construction was bringing Unit 2 up to current standards (improving fire protection, Fukushima response, etc.) and inspections.
Regarding Gen II versus Gen III or IV plants, there are 100 operating Gen II nuclear power plants in the US with an average capacity factor (amount time operating versus shutdown) of over 90%. They have 40+ years of experience and provide about 27% of the electricity in this country. The Gen III AP1000 looks good on paper, but we don't yet know how well they work in practice, as none are in operation.
So why don't you people let us generate more of it? And let us build the electric alternative infrastructure, like the high-speed rail being described here, that would cut down on our use of petroleum.
I'm a massive proponent of high speed electric rail. I think it's great, and want more of it built. High speed rail is very environmentally friendly, as it replaces cars and airplanes for many long journeys.
I think you are confusing environmentalists with NIMBYs.
As for generating more energy, it's generally cheaper to save energy, and at the moment the goal should be to replace what we have with cleaner stuff. We don't really need more - in western Europe and parts of the far East demand is falling because everything is getting more efficient. Even with EVs, when you subtract the electricity used to refine and transport liquid fuel and consider that much EV charging will be at off-peak times, demand isn't likely to rise much here. It's the developing world and the US where demand is increasing, and while I want them to have more electricity I think it is in their own interests not to make the same mistakes we did with pollution.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Argument? Still? Are you almost done arguing yet? Coal produces far more radiation than nuclear and far more CO2 than anything. Everybody pretty much agrees coal is the worst choice. So long as we continue arguing about how to stop using coal, we're largely stuck with coal until we decide. We've known this for a few decades, so I'd say it's about time we stop arguing and start doing the things we all know are better. Let me know when you're done with your mental masturbation and ready to get busy.
Crumbling concrete, vegetation encroachment, animals nesting, water incursion, and it goes on and on. Two windows were vandalized by bullet holes and someone painted a swastika on a rolling door.
If only there were a way to fix stuff.
What would it take to used Cesium 137 (my understanding is that it is a byproduct of uranium fission) as fuel in a reactor given it's toxicity?
So what? A coal plant burns *3000 tons* of fuel every day. THAT'S LIKE A MILLION TASR BOMBAS!
Please think of the stray dogs.
Perhaps you didn't note the asterisk in my post. Yes, redundant identical parts often increase overall system reliability (though they create new modes of failure - ie load balancers can have problems).
As I said the reactor designs BOTH incorporate redundancy, so that doesn't account for the difference in parts count. The newer design is truly _simpler_ with fewer interactions that can go wrong.
So why does it take so effing long to approve this? What if the delays are engineered, no pun intended, to make the reactor obsolete before it ever gets brought online?
You realize most of the electricity used for transportation comes from burning fossil fuels ?
Sadly, that's true at the moment. Even so, it's still better than burning fossil fuels in the vehicles themselves.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
http://www.gizmag.com/audi-cre...
So how do you feel about burning carbon made from electricity and CO2 ?
You say the structure is unsafe, I say you are not qualified to make that assessment based upon a visual "inspection."
My qualifications: forensic structural engineer with thirty plus years of experience.
I would imagine that the homes were primarily constructed of wood. Wood structures that are unprotected are much less durable than concrete structures that are unprotected. There is a huge difference in the life expectancy of different materials.
As the other guy said, you're confusing environmentalists with NIMBYs, but also, you're confusing two groups of environmentalists. The smart environmentalists are pro-nuclear, or at least, anti-coal and anti-fossil-fuel and in favor of nuclear as an alternative to those for the time being until better sources can be made more economical.
Yeah, unfortunately there's a bunch of dumb anti-nuclear people out there who don't want any nuclear power, but don't have any suggestions at all about what to do to make the electricity needed, and strangely seem to have little to say about fossil fuel (esp. coal) power, which has horrible environmental effects. Not all environmentalists are like this.
IMO, we as a nation should be moving to eliminate most if not all fossil fuel electricity generation, and only use nuclear and renewables (solar, wind, etc.). Solar power is getting cheaper all the time, and is highly versatile: you can put panels over parking lots, on commercial rooftops, etc., which is also very close to the point-of-use which greatly reduces transmission losses (unlike nuclear where the plant is generally far from where the power is consumed). However, solar of course doesn't work too well at night so it requires a storage method, such as hydroelectric (pump water uphill during the daytime when you have surplus capacity, run it downhill through the dam at night to generate power). But realistically, we probably can't generate all we need with renewables just yet, so nuclear is a good solution for generating large baseline loads. This will be even more important as we move towards more EVs on the road, which will mostly be recharging at night.
Well given that the plotonium was just a blasting cap for the fusion reaction that provided the majority of its yield, it might be plausible, but completely irrelevant. Tsar bomba was the cleanest bomb ever set off in terms of the percentage of the yield provided by fission.
Actually, no China isn't putting a crapton of resources into LFTR. It's actually putting about a hundred billion bucks into building a lot of PWRs with more to come in the next ten years or so if they continue the way they're going. Chinese researchers are looking at molten-salt reactor technologies but no significant money has been spent, same with fast-spectrum reactors like the Russian BN-series designs which at least exist in the real world. They're not building any molten-salt reactors, they have no plans to build such a reactor, there are no components for such a reactor being ordered or manufactured. There is some theoretical research and computer modelling being carried out, that's all. The only experimental reactor they're actually spending money on building is a pebble-bed design, the HTR-PM.
The Oak Ridge molten-salt reactor never used thorium, ever. It ran with U-233 and later with U-235 but never thorium. I blame the Powerpoint Rangers for conflating the purely theoretical LFTR with the Oak Ridge reactor (which was only one of many possible reactor concepts being tried out back in the 1960s).
I more so took it as security has been obviously lax if someone is able to get in and vandalize. What was screwed with that we cannot see right off the bat?
You are all a bunch of idots.
> fossil carbon emissions would also shrink by 82-86% below their 2000 levels despite the assumed 2.58-fold bigger economy than in 2010.
So even if we assume EVERYTHING can be three times more efficient (good luck) AND we ignore the costs of trying to a accomplish that, STILL 15% of total energy can't come from renewables. And this is assuming renewable technology that doesn't actually exist, so it's really not an option right now, is it? Maybe it'll be available in 2050, but if we don't do anything until 2050 we'll be fucked by then. We need to act now. For that 15% (actually 85%) do you want fossil fuels or clean nuclear? Because those are the two choices. Maybe in 40 years we'll have other choices too.
All of the small renewable energy sources are location-dependent. Some places are sunny, others are windy, and occasionally you will find an old volcanic stump with residual geothermal heat. These sources will certainly help, especially in applications that can tolerate fluctuating power, such as charging EV batteries. But now what if your "smart environmentalists" are right about climate? If we really have to eliminate fossil sources in one generation, only nuclear will make up for the massive baseload we now have in coal and gas. The other sort of environmentalist answers, "All we have to do is get rid of energy-intensive industries and switch our economy over to software consultants and artisanal brewing?"
But the rest of us, and our creditors, would prefer to keep our day jobs.
Try reading slower. If you have to move your lips, that's ok.
Alternatively, graduate 9th grade. Even by today's standards, that should be enough.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
And certainly the plywood is ruined.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yeah, the TVA sure didn't convince them.
Nor did the streetlights, or the Grand Ol Opry, or WSM. Admittedly, they may have been using battery radios in the hills.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If we really have to eliminate fossil sources in one generation, only nuclear will make up for the massive baseload we now have in coal and gas.
Yes, exactly. I think I said this in my post above basically: that renewables + nuclear is a practical and relatively environmentally-friendly way to meet our electricity needs now and into the near future. Over time, we should be able to come up with more efficient and cheaper solar cells so that that can be used more and more, and older nuclear plants can be decommissioned, and maybe they'll finally figure out how to get fusion working.
The other sort of environmentalist answers, "All we have to do is get rid of energy-intensive industries and switch our economy over to software consultants and artisanal brewing?"
These fools can be ignored. They're not a significant part of the electorate. It's the same thing with conflating everyone who's left-of-center in this country with the far-left wackos who yammer about "social justice" constantly and tell people to "check your privilege". Don't confuse a vocal minority with an entire group.
Some places are sunny, others are windy, and occasionally you will find an old volcanic stump with residual geothermal heat.
It's true that windmills are not going to be cost-effective in many places because there's just not enough wind, and obviously geothermal only works in certain spots, but solar actually is useful in more places than people realize. Germany is generating a huge portion of its power solely from solar, and Germany is *not* known for being a warm, sunny place. Look at a map: it's actually quite far north; southern Germany is at the same latitude as North Dakota. If we deployed solar power in the southern US states (from California to Florida) to the extent Germany has, we probably wouldn't need any fossil fuel plants any more except for the pesky nighttime issue.
Interesting that you should mention Germany. I have spent a lot of time there visiting in-laws. Unfortunately the yammerhead form of environmentalists is dominant in German politics over any organism with brain cells, so the country is actually moving its power baseload from nuclear to coal - lignite, the one in-ground resource it has left, with the energy content and carbon profile of damp firewood. This requires digging the world's largest strip mine (Tagebau Garzweiler, soon to be succeeded by an even larger strip mine that will eventually top out at eighty-five square kilometers.
Meanwhile, massive feed-in tariffs (subsidies) have pushed German wind and solar to unprecedented build-out. Transporting power from the windy northern flats of Friesland to southerly markets requires a new transmission line called the Stromautobahn ("Power freeway"), which is being held up by the same Greens who promoted all that wind in the first place. No problem, though; just raise taxes a little more and surreptitiously buy more power from France.
Fuck you.
I-43? Wtf have you been smoking? This is about Watts Bar - a plant in Tennessee, not Wisconsin. The only plant I know of up that way is Point Beach.
I hate sigs...
Lighten up, he was just adding some colour to his description, vandalism implies that there is no one guarding the site, it wouldn't have been as dramatic as saying he saw a "JimBob hearts SueEllen" piece of graffitti.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You say the structure is unsafe, I say you are not qualified to make that assessment based upon a visual "inspection." My qualifications: forensic structural engineer with thirty plus years of experience.
Your qualifications: someone posting anonymously on the internet.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I suppose it's just barely posible that they don't build nuclear power stations out of wood, but I'd want to see proof.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Funny how double standards are sort of the staple of the U.S. lately.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Will we need to do the same for the storage sites.