Surry Nuclear Reactors To Extend Lifespan To 80 Years (richmond.com)

QuantumPion writes: Dominion Virginia Power today will formally seek a second license extension for its Surry nuclear power plant, becoming the first utility in the U.S. to try to push the operating range for nuclear reactors to 80 years. If successful, the utility's pair of reactors in Surry County would be eligible to operate past 2050. The Surry plant, along with its North Anna sister site in Louisa County, were initially granted 40-year permits and operate today on 20-year renewals. Those two plants provide about 40 percent of Virginia's electricity.

Comments

Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[CajunArson]

Thank you so much anti-nuke extremists. Thanks to your inability to look at the bigger picture, we get to enjoy nuclear reactors using designs from the 1950's well into the 21st century instead of actually using safer, modern designs.

It's like if the safety problems with the Corvair had been used to shutdown all production of newer car models.

Re:Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[tnk1]

Which achieves fossil fuel plants where safety isn't even really a concern to begin with because we're less afraid of lung cancer and radiation from coal than evil radiation from heavily shielded nuclear plants.

We're hyper-aware of nuclear safety, but there are industrial accidents all the time that kill lots of people due to cost cutting and poor management. Something like solar would just shift the danger to fabrication plants which use plenty of toxic chemicals and batteries which are basically made of toxic materials. We accept that because we're being trained to believe that solar power is light and airy and clean and totally safe, but it's only "safe" in the generation. There's nothing clean about what goes into solar plants and what happens when you decommission the apparatus to support it.
 

Re: Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a reactor operator myself. The pools didn't bother me, because I was quite far away from them, with a lot of cement, lead and other heavy stuff, with meters to confirm things were hunky dory. If stuff was going pointy end up, hit the "SCRAM" button (and then go fill out all the forms of why that reactor was shut down.)

Only thing I would recommend is not to swordfight with either fuel or control rods.

Reactors are a long-since-solved problem. It is anti-nuke fear and NIMBY which keeps us from having cool things (thermal depolymerization, desal, etc.)

Re: Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I should have clarified. The pools are fine day to day. The fear is that god forbid they ever go dry. This could actually happen. Major grid down event, EMP attack, natural disaster, small astroid, terrorist attack, massively infectious pandemic, etc.

Though these are considered unlikely, a pool that is not continually filled and cooled will eventually boil off, resulting in the uncovered rods catching fire due to decay heat. This won't take long to happen either if the power to run the pumps goes away.

This would release MANY MANY more times the bad stuff of Chernobyl. That was one partial core and the fire was out out rather quickly. A fuel pool may have many spent cores packed with ugliness that, once ignighted, would burn uncontrollably pouring all that high level waste into the air.

It would generally carry from West to East. A pool fire in the Midwest could literally make entire states on the East cast uninhabitable for generations.

Shit, this ALMOST happened in Fukushima bc thier pool was suspended on the 2nd story.

A pool could actually go dry for several reasons and if it ever did, it would be unimaginably catastrophic.

So yea, those pools scare me. They literally hold the largest concentrations of the very nastiest shit anywhere on the planet, and nobody seems very eager to deal with it.