Slashdot Mirror
Watts Bar Unit 2 Is The First New US Nuclear Reactor In Decades (washingtonpost.com)
tomhath writes from a report via The Washington Post: The Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Watts Bar Unit 2 is the first nuclear reactor to come online since 1996, when the Watts Bar Unit 1 started operations. The new reactor is designed to add 1,150 megawatts of electricity generating capacity to southeastern Tennessee. By summer's end, authorities expect the new reactor at this complex along the Chickamauga Reservoir, a dammed section of the Tennessee River extending northward from Chattanooga, to steadily generate enough electricity to power 650,000 homes. But while nuclear reactors account for the lion's share of the carbon-free electricity generated in the United States, the industry faces this new set of circumstances in a state of near-crisis. A combination of very cheap natural gas and deregulated energy markets in some states has led to a growing number of plant closures in recent years. A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says that renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydroelectric will overtake natural gas as an energy source by 2027.
There are. Vogtle 3 & 4 are going to use the AP1000 design from Westinghouse which is a Generation III reactor. It stores emergency coolant water in a tank over the reactor so you do not need to use pumps to cool the reactor in an emergency.
Gotta disagree with you, if Nuclear power was regulated with the same lax attitude as Coal, then we would be facing a lot of issues with radiation.
Just look at Fukushima where a tendency to rely on boards of people for decisions allowed them to ignore engineers who had clearly explained the risks of the low sea walls.
If we let the same ass-hats, that regularly kill their own people by disabling methane detection systems and intentionally undercutting mine supports, self-regulate nukes... then I would have a hard time supporting that power source
The US NRC has proven itself to be demanding of the industry and capable of ensuring that we do not face frequent, or even repeated hazards to public health.
It is sad that our newest reactor is a 50+ year old PWR design. Stop the insanity and build small breeder reactors.
Decommissioning trust funds in America are in line with historic plant cleanup costs.
The funds are actually fat because the spent fuel is backing up. Funds for Yucca mountain are sitting.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yep
Westinghouse says that the minimum requirement for making the largest AP1000 components is a 15,000 tonne press taking 350 tonne ingots.
The very heavy forging capacity in operation today is in Japan (Japan Steel Works), China (China First Heavy Industries, China Erzhong, SEC), France (Le Creusot), and Russia (OMZ Izhora).
New capacity is being built by JSW and JCFC in Japan, Shanghai Electric Group (SEC) and subsidiaries in China, and in South Korea (Doosan), Czech Rep (Pilsen) and Russia (OMZ Izhora and ZiO-Podolsk).
New capacity is planned in UK (Sheffield Forgemasters) and India (Larsen & Toubro, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bharat Forge Ltd). In China the Harbin Boiler Co. and SEC subsidiary SENPE are increasing capacity.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/heavy-manufacturing-of-power-plants.aspx
There are. Vogtle 3 & 4 are going to use the AP1000 design from Westinghouse which is a Generation III reactor. It stores emergency coolant water in a tank over the reactor so you do not need to use pumps to cool the reactor in an emergency.
This is a new feature which has only been assesed in simulations for core damage frequency. Additionally the containment dome of an Advanced Passive (AP) has a lower thermal containment ratio (because there is less concrete in the dome) for containing the thermal energy of the reactor than a GenII. The dome in this design also has a new feature where it doubles as a heat exchanger in the event of an emergency.
The measurement for the maturity of these systems is the amount of reactor experience and IIUC much of that is coming from the AP600. The two features under discussion here have not been physically tested in the same way the GenII reactor was by the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. The way they did those tests was to physically pressurize an actual (unfuelled) reactor with compressed air. In those tests they uncovered the Basis Design Issues (BDI) that led to the Fukushima disaster decades later when TEPCO ignored the operational concerns required to mitigate those risks.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just pointing out that it is untested in anything other than simulations and that doing physical tests of the reactor installation leads to valuable operational experience to derive reactor experience. If it works, it will be tested in an emergency situation where you have to consider real risk *and* real impact as opposed to simulations.
The risk is exposing a BDI of the plant that was undiscovered and what is the impact of that issue. We know this happens because even on mature reactor systems BDIs are found and operational proceedures have to be adapted to cope with that. In AP's case you can't design those processes if you haven't done the physical testing.
Lets hope this new reactor has a trouble free and reliable service life.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.