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!

[HornWumpus]

To make plutonium for weapons you have to run the reactor is a completely uneconomic way (balls out for a very short time). Otherwise you just get a mix of plutonium isotopes and you are back to running ultracenterfuges to get your weapons grade.

So aside from being completely wrong, you have a point.

Re:Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[CajunArson]

Wrong. The light-water reactors used in the U.S. are not particularly useful at making weapons grade plutonium. If they were so wonderful at churning out nukes, then places like Hanford Washington would never have existed.

You seem to be confusing the safe light-water commercial reactors used in the U.S. with the RBMK reactors that were used in the Soviet Union. They really were designed for dual-use operation and are inherently less safe than U.S. commercial reactors.

Re:Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[tnk1]

It's all about NIMBY. People who don't have nukes in their backyard will fight to keep them away because they fear what they don't understand. They also have more to lose. For people who already live near nuke plants, if their property values were going to go down because of the plant, it has already happened.

The plants that are already there have been safe for decades and people are used to them. It's also very difficult for anti-nukes to call for a plant with a safe record to shutdown because they get less traction suggesting that a plant that has been safe for decades is somehow a looming menace.

Of course, when a Chernobyl or Fukushima happens, then the fear level can be ramped up enough to deny extensions for even safely operating plants with a good record.

 

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!

[Junta]

The logic being that the deaths are *caused* by resistance to constructing newer, so power plants have had to do their best to extend the serviceable life of less safe reactors. It'd be one thing if the result were *shutting down* the reactors and not building new ones, but here we have the worst of both worlds, no newer reactors with safer designs, but still running older ones that are actually the problem. Newer designs engineer to address some of the most dangerous aspects.

Now I'm not sure I buy into the logic. A nuclear power plant being constructed, refit, or even being decommissioned is a huge expense. I suspect if the power companies really wanted the ability to spend their money building new reactors, they would have been able to. It seems likely the 'anti-nuke' sentiment is a convenient excuse for not spending money. For evidence, they have not been forced to shut down their current reactors, which would have happened if anti-nuke sentiment were really that potent.

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!

[MerlynEmrys67]

Yes it is that bad. Imagine having to replace 40% of your electric load generation for Virginia. This is done with 2 nuke plants, probably 5-10 coal plants, or covering the state in solar panels and going dark at night. Now I can't build a new plant - no permitting has been allowed out of the NRC since 3 mile island happened in the late 70s, you can't shut them down or the state goes dark (heck that is probably close to 1/2% of the power generated in the whole country). You have a small group of people that have made building new/retrofiting old reactors a non starter so we are left with 50 year old reactors powering our country for the foreseeable future. The smart thing to do would be to build modern reactors to decommission old reactors, leading to safer electricity and fewer pollutants in our environment.

Re:Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[HornWumpus]

So your theory is they didn't know what they were doing and overbuilt?

If you were half as smart as you think you are, you would stop embarrassing yourself.

Re:Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[AmiMoJo]

This has nothing to do with anti-nuclear campaigning, and everything to do with getting maximum return from the investment in the plant. Why spend billions building s new plant when you can keep the old one running for a fraction of that?

Until a new plant will cost less / make more money, they will of course try to keep the old one going.

Re: Thanks anti-nuke extremists!

[Orne]

As someone who works in the wholesale power industry, the problem is more complex.

We are in a unique period of overcapacity, as new technologies are displacing the old. Nuclear capital costs of new construction are astronomical, which is why in the deregulated open markets of the USA, new construction is natural gas powered and government backed wind. The wind is being build in areas of the country (Illinois) that were historically heavy industry (pre existing ehv transmission), but with factory load moving overseas, the Midwest has more generation than demand. The energy is being bottled due to lack of transmission investment, which is leading to negative wholesale pricing. That's great for consumers, terrible for base load nuclear. New nuclear is being built at an existing site in a regulated southern state, where the costs can be passed on to consumers in the rate base.

Cheaper to extend

[PineHall]

From a business perspective it is cheaper to ask for an extension than to spend the money to build a new one. It is economics. And all the red tape associated with a new plant and the anti-nuke fear factor makes the decision even easier.

Building new reactors

[Firethorn]

no permitting has been allowed out of the NRC since 3 mile island happened in the late 70s,

Actually it has, it's just that we were just getting around to it - some new reactors are coming online this year. However, they were made at already existing plants, IE adding another reactor to an already existing nuclear power plant, and worse, it's the old design - they finished up a reactor that had construction suspended back in the '80s.

That being said, in order to keep nuclear power plant ages 'reasonable', you're looking at that we should be completing 4-8 reactors/plants a year. 200 reactors for current power needs, 400 to 'green up' our power by eliminating coal. Estimates, which is why I'm only being single digit specific. 200 plants, 4 built a year, gives you an average lifespan of 50 years. Probably means that you'd have a few shut down at 10,20, and 30, such that the maximum age at plants without earlier problems discovered would be around 60 years, in order to compensate for the 'lemon' reactors that have to be shut down early.

Re:Nuclear saves lives

[Firethorn]

Next Big Future also has a good writeup:

Nuclear: 0.04 deaths per TWH
Hydro: 0.10 (Euro standard)
Wind: 0.15
Rooftop solar: 0.44 (mostly people falling off of roofs installing them)
Natural gas: 4
Coal, US: 15 (China is 278)

Needed

[confused one]

They need this. Dominion has a significant number of older (built in late '50's and early '60's) coal fired plants, which are all being shut down over the next couple of years because they cannot be brought up to a high enough standard to meet the new EPA requirements. They are also shutting down an 800 MWe oil fired unit built in the 1970s, because of the new EPA requirements and because it's not very economical to operate any more (it was only being used for peaking and to supply base load if one of the nuclear plants was shut down for service). We already depend on those nuclear plants for base load and we will be leaning on them more in the future

Dominion submitted an application to add a third reactor to the North Anna site in 2007. It's been in review since then. As I understand it, the plan is to put in a third generation ESBWR that will nearly double the North Anna site's output. The reactor design was finally approved late 2014. Hopefully they'll get site approval to start construction soon.