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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."
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.
I am. I have a job as an engineer in the military industrial complex. I've also been told to drop what I'm doing because of $BULLSHIT_ADMINISTRATIVE_REASON only to have to pick it up again a year or more later and waste time getting myself and the right people back on track. I've also seen my colleagues do the same, and I've seen all of get screwed by the fact that after $WAITING_PERIOD, the resources we had marshalled the first time around aren't quite so easy to marshal the second time around, especially when you pull the rug out from under people enough times, they don't want to work for/with you the next time when for real, I swear, we have the funding to finish it, promise. If it's true for the 10M programs I've worked on, it's true times a hundred for a billion-dollar power plant.
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.
[sic]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.
The 2005 Energy act prevents entities like that and local governments from interfering with the placement and approval of Nuclear facilities, including Reactors. Compliance for building a nuclear reactor was established by the NRC's predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission so it has very little to do with the groups you mentioned.
They are quite literally the cause for nuclear energy's relative safety concerns.
I'd suggest that it is more the operator of the facilities not complying with the manufacturers recommended operating conditions for the reactors. Windscale, TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents all came about due to problem with the operator's procedures and had very little to do with the groups you mentioned.
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.
The Act mentioned above allows budget for those programs. Breeder reactors *create* more plutonium because they transmute the additional two fuel elements placed in them (palladium and lithium IIRC) into plutonium.
It is not a scare though, it is a valid concern as Fukushima has really shown us that storing the spent fuel at reactor sites is a really bad idea when things go wrong.
Burner reactors are a much better idea and EBR tested the reactor component of an Integral Fast Reactor facility (known as IFR) that actually *burns* plutonium at around 15-20% of the fuel load (compared to the 0.3% of existing BWR/PWR). Such technology answered pro and anti nuclear concerns by addressing issues of (spent) fuel storage (now fuel for this technology), reprocessing and reactors into a single facility. Additionally the reactor could consume depleted uranium.
Personally, I think the solution for the Nuclear industry is to start with some sites around the US capable of containing the waste products and design it so that it can also contain reprocessing *AND* reactor facilities in the belly of a granite mountain. That way you save on the energy inputs required to demolish the IFR reactor safely by disposing of it "in-situ". By my calculations such a reactor facility would have a roughly 1.5Tw hour advantage, per reactor, over a Gen III designs, over the lifetime of the reactor.
Unfortunately Clinton halted development on this revolutionary reactor design and W.Bush funded it's demolition, clearly showing apolitical motivations for preventing anything that could destabilize the oil and coal industries hold on the energy industry. I imagine a technology that answered infrastructure issues by producing electricity (coal) and hydrogen (vehicle fuel) would not be popular with established energy producers.
My reading of the act suggests that oil and coal companies are using approvals for more modern reactors as a way to access taxpayer funded financial incentives as those companies receive substantial funding from tax payers even if they just propose to build a reactor and then don't do it. It's all contained in that act for anyone to read.
There is nothing in the act that I could see that would prevent such infrastructure being planned and developed. Funding exists in the act and is available until 2025. The current 4-8 year political structure precludes any such visions manifesting as few politicians have an appetite for things that exceed their term in office coupled with educating the populous about why certain issues have to be solved.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How is that long term extra cost reduced?
One way to reduce it is to allow the plant to come online years earlier, like it was supposed to, so that it could have been generating power all this time, covering the costs of building it and maintaining it, while also not burning carbon fuels. But because labotomized lefties WANT it to be expensive in order to try to make it unpopular, and of course the people designing the plant aren't cutting any corners, the only way to inflict harm is to throw up foot-dragging roadblocks to make the process more painful, just to annoy people and slow it down. Thanks, lefties, for being so constructive. Guess what: it's online anyway, and all you did was make the people who will be buying the energy it produces pay more in the long run, for no good reason.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.