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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.
They couldn't squeeze another 60MW out of the design?
Its good to see new reactors come online, but I wish we had the balls to licence new reactor designs that are passively safe.
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.
Meanwhile, the federal government continues to massively over-regulate nuclear energy and does other brain-dead things. For example, if you operate a coal power plant and do nothing other than routine maintenance, then you are grandfathered to whatever environmental standards were in effect when it went into operation. On the other hand, if you decide to make "major" improvements, the entire operation must now come into compliance with current regulations. Naturally, operators are lining up to upgrade and increase the cost/regulatory burden of their operations. Not!
Thankfully, natural gas is relatively clean, but it won't last forever. Our broken policies have resulted in nobody wanting to touch the best energy source in modern history (nuclear) and while the government and environmentalists continue tripping over themselves to throw wads of cash at companies in the "renewable" space, those old coal power plants continue to emit more radioactive contaminants then even the oldest nuclear power plants because we actually make it more expensive for the operators to fix it than to just leave it as is. To top it off, rather then devoting serious effort into spent nuclear fuel reprocessing (like into a form usable in modern reactor designs), we keep loading it in leaky drums and burying it in the ground because nobody will build a new reactor because nobody wants to spend 100 years and $100B to get a new reactor going.