Slashdot Mirror
First New US Nuclear Reactor In 20 Years Goes Live (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The Tennessee Valley Authority is celebrating an event 43 years in the making: the completion of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. In 1973, the TVA, one of the nation's largest public power providers, began building two reactors that combined promised to generate enough power to light up 1.3 million homes. The first reactor, delayed by design flaws, eventually went live in 1996. Now, after billions of dollars in budget overruns, the second reactor has finally started sending power to homes and businesses. Standing in front of both reactors Wednesday, TVA President Bill Johnson said Watts Bar 2, the first U.S. reactor to enter commercial operation in 20 years, would offer clean, cheap and reliable energy to residents of several southern states for at least another generation. Before Watts Bar 2, the last time an American reactor had fired up was in 1996. It was Watts Bar 1 -- and according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it cost $6.8 billion, far greater than the original price tag at $370 million. In the 2000s, some American power companies, faced with growing environmental regulations, eyed nuclear power again as a top alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil. A handful of companies, taking advantage of federal loan guarantees from the Bush administration, revived nuclear reactor proposals in a period now known as the so-called "nuclear renaissance." Eventually, nuclear regulators started to green light new reactors, including ones in Georgia and South Carolina. In 2007, the TVA resumed construction on Watts Bar 2, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The TVA originally said it would take five years to complete. The TVA, which today serves seven different southern states, relies on nuclear power to light up approximately 4.5 million homes. Watts Bar 2, the company's seventh operating reactor, reaffirms its commitment to nukes for at least four more decades, Johnson said Wednesday. In the end, TVA required more than five years to build the project. The final cost, far exceeding its initial budget, stood at $4.7 billion.
And what else do you think is coming out of those cooling towers... hint: evaporated water.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Pretty sure that's exactly what it is, perhaps you should look up how the a cooling tower works.
I wonder how many wind and solar plants could be built for a mere 6.8 Billion? And that's without the 10,000 year radioactive waste from a nuke.
Who do you think he was communicating to? People who really needed, just that moment, to process the distinction between steam and condensed water droplets making visible emissions? No. He was making sure that low information twits understood that wasn't smoke or Eeeevil Radioactive Fog.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Rubbish. Steam engines produce steam.
We're talking about a nuclear power plant here so those are nuclears coming out of that tower.
Can I have a hit of whateverthefuck you are on? Read that post 4 times, still have no clue what you are talking about.
It's coal dust and radioactive asbestos isotopes.
(If you can see it, it's not steam)
You're thinking about 'wet steam'. He's talking about normal steam.
He should ask a high schooler to tell him about cooling towers.
Alright, then tell us or find a "high schooler" too, please. Context is important.
Is not design but project management. Plant Vogtle has problems with things like concrete not built to design specs requiring expensive rework and delays. The whole idea with the next gen plants was standardized design an a combined construction operating license, which would keep costs down, IF you built it to the licensed design. Unfortunately that is proving not to be the case. Watts Bar is an old design that was mothballed with plans to restart construction and not a "new" plant.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Uranium "breeder" reactor technology is a throwback to the days of nuclear arms proliferation because if you can continually use the fissile material it generates then it will eventually create weapon's grade Plutonium. What we really need is to invest in the research needed to make a fourth generation reactor that transmutes Thorium a few times before finally making it into a Uranium isotope that is "burned" for power, destroying the fissile material instead of stockpiling it. This makes the possibility of a meltdown physically impossible making it safe enough fully automate without the need for human oversight. If made into small unmanaged units (one buried every X miles) it would be a poor attack target (minimal impact). Basically, you stream in some water, start the reaction and it will churn out electricity and warm water for the century, given a small pile of Thorium.
The idea has been around a long time and in the 80s, congress even refused to fund the research to build a reactor because it couldn't be used to make weapons.
It's past time to start using nuclear physics to cleanly and safely power the globe.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
great news for once. I was getting tired of all this green shit for power crap. this is the real power industry.
As a proud, card-carrying TreeHugger(TM) I am happy to see nuclear power remaining a viable component of our national electrical baseline capacity. Let's be real: when coal (especially) is the main alternative for providing the huge baseload requirements of a solid electrical infrastructure, it's a no-brainer to have nuclear be a portion of the multi-legged stool we need.
Disclaimer: Until recently, I was in the business of building nuclear plants.
When I say that over-regulation, discord between the NRC and ASME, NIMBY trolls, and congressional oversight cause cost and lead time issues, I don't mean that energy companies are trying to bypass safety regulations to accelerate building - there are literally too many people who don't know enough about nuclear plants in decision-making positions.
Here's a true story.
WEC is the prime contractor constructing Summer and Vogtle. After farming out subs to various entities, with defined scopes of work, timelines required to design / install / test / etc - the entire gamut of a multi-billion dollar project...work began. In 2012, during one of the ASME conferences, the ASME committee changed the definition of SA316 forged steel. I won't bore you with the details, but the change they implemented into ASME standards changed the dimensions that SA 316 bar stock could be forged into (for fear that too large of a bar would create structural weakness in the center) - whereas the primary use of 316SS within the context of ASME Section 7 is for creating safety valve bonnets - in this case, for the valves in containment. A bonnet is cored out - hollowed out - leaving no internal metal in the 4" center radius ASME flagged.
However, ASME is responsible to no one. Their decision was decried and appealed by the entire nuclear industry, but ASME answers to no one, and the NRC has no input into ASME standards. Since Summer and Vogtle required congressional approval to build, including design approval - ASME changing the definition of 316SS required a design change in the plans for the nuclear plants, which in turn required congressional approval.
1. Tens of millions in material got scrapped.
2. Tens of hundreds of millions in labor hours between prime and sub-suppliers were wasted - design, engineering, procurement, project management...
And this is ONE tiny decision made by ONE body with regulatory oversight amidst dozens of stakeholders making decisions and changing scopes - not least of which are political bodies. I have dozens of stories just like it.
(If you can see it, it's not steam)
Some of it condenses, but much of it does not. It is steam.
If you want to really get pedantic, you never actually see anything other than photons striking your retina.
Aren't you the guy that didn't help pay funeral costs for that magazine writer? No one gives a fuck what you have to say you cheap bastard!
When it melts down "thanks" to hackers from Canada?
Two words: Three Mile Island
It's the souls of extinct snail darters.
Claims of nihilism is admittance of defeat.
In this area we had 5 reactors being built, one day they just called a halt to them. I had a friend who was studying to be a reactor operator who was told to go home, you haven't a job anymore, just one of the thousands told the same thing.
In January 1982, the WPPSS board stopped construction on Plants 4 and 5 when total cost for all the plants was projected to exceed $24 billion. Because these plants generated no power and brought in no money, the system was forced to default on $2.25 billion in bonds. This meant that the member utilities, and ultimately the rate payers, were obligated to pay back the borrowed money. In some small towns where unemployment due to the recession was already high, this amounted to more than $12,000 per customer. http://www.historylink.org/Fil...
At the time the largest default in the U.S.
You're not SEEING anything, there's a chemical-electric reaction from photons hitting certain wavelength dependent sensors in your retina in certain patterns your brain THINKS resembles something, with varying degrees of accuracy.
$4.7B for a nuclear plant. Is it worth it? Will the company get $4.7B worth of use from this asset? If they put it on the market today, what price would they get?
Does this price reflect the cost of building a new nuclear plant today, or is it horribly inflated by the troubled construction history?
The new planed UK Hinkley Point station has (Wikipedia) "estimated construction cost of £18 billion, or £24.5 billion including financing costs." This is two units with combined 3200MW output. Watts Bar II is 1200MW - so the UK is planing on spending more per MW than this plant cost.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Someone check my math.
6.8 B in cost avg over 40 years of operation (which will be extended to 80 but lets just assume 40)
means we have to sell the power at
$.0159/kWhr ? 1.5 cents per kWhr vs the national avg of 12cents (based on 1218 MW output)
granted that just initial cost but that seems really low for such a huge price tag. (or is that just showing ignorance in terms of how much the profit the utility sector actually robs from us)
I'm an atheist. I don't give a shit what happens anywhere in the universe after I die.
Rubbish. Steam factories produce steam. Which may or may not later be fashioned into steam engines.
All of it does. It's water, not steam. :)
You were aiming to correct me but you mist
I understood it just fine.
"Obama incentivized atomic power as part of his energy policy. I used to be a republican 4 decades ago, this could bring the two major parties together and defuse climate change debates. Bonus: defunding big oil"
The idiot there is the guy (not you obviously) that didn't put a date on the end of the specified standard to be used in the designs/legislation/whatever. With respect that's a newbie mistake. Standards change. If you don't refer to the one you actually mean and leave things open to referring to one that has not been written yet it's pretty obvious that things are going to go wrong someday. This fuckup looks like what happens when you get office workers with English Lit. degrees to do an engineers job.
As a former member of ASTM (I stopped paying the fees about 15 years ago) I'm a bit curious as to why the ASME standard was used instead of ASTM which has the advantage of being more recognized internationally so would vastly increase the pool of potential suppliers.
Steam? Do you burn yourself on misty mornings?
It's really fog and nothing like steam at all. It's all just warm (~40C) droplets of water coming off the condensate that has come out of the condensors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_power_station#Steam_condensing) before going into the cooling towers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower).
The guy is a Lawyer, and it shows.
All furnaces creates clouds in some way.
Your regular steam engine generates regular clouds. Nuclear reactors pump out smoke that will eventually turn into mushroom clouds.
Fact: There are no fossils of clouds from before the industrialization.
No, he's right.
But only in the most nitpicking, anal-retentive, orange-fingered, never-been-out-into-the-sunshine definition of 'right'.
Not in the generally accepted use of the word 'steam' sort of right.
No sig today...
However the steam coming out of the cooling towers should never have been in contact with radioactive material. And: plenty of coal plants have cooling towers, too.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Is all hope to be thusly consolidated?
now it is 489 stinking smoking noxious deadly terraforming piles of metal that will for ever⦠At least the next 5 billion years be like superheated galactic temperature pimples heating up our atmosphere way more than global warming.
Im a Christian and i dont do bad things (to other christians) just because i fear going to hell when i die....
Nuclear power is awesome!
So, this beloved nuclear power is anything BUT cheap.
And "clean" is also relative when you consider the mining, refining, enriching and disposal of the radioactive fuel and waste products...
If you listen closely you can hear mdsolar screaming.
I thought steel was made before windmills? Somebody fact check me on this.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Can you translate if please? Hard to do with the political nonsense interfering with the message.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
In the "beige box is not the hard drive and the LCD screen is not the computer" sense of right.
Haven't you kids heard of fog? If you are not kids - shame on you. The idiot in the article is a Lawyer with a network of old buddies of the family from birth and a $44 million dollar golden parachute but you guys are supposed to get exposed to some sort of STEM if you want to eat.
"after billions of dollars in budget overruns" - How is this cheap? Doesn't even consider the still unsolved problem of long term nuclear waste storage. These billions would have been better spent on battery research so that we have effective means to store the power generated by wind, water, and solar.
Can you please tell me what the atomic number for asbestos is?
I understood it just fine.
Actually, you didn't.
"Obama incentivized atomic power as part of his energy policy. I used to be a republican 4 decades ago, this could bring the two major parties together and defuse climate change debates. Bonus: defunding big oil"
He never claimed to be a Republican 4 decades ago. He said that nuclear power was a Republican dogwhistle 4 decades ago. You can go look up what a dogwhistle is in politics if you're unaware. Oddly, I'm not sure the GGP understood that, either.
Do you have ESP?
We have a reactor who's steam can be seen for many miles being emitted from the cooling towers that caused a lot of concern over the contamination it was spreading from many people, for the first few years.
So much ignorance. smh.
Care to explain how cooling tower emission would be contaminated?
However the steam coming out of the cooling towers should never have been in contact with radioactive material. And: plenty of coal plants have cooling towers, too.
It never was just a lot of people with a misconception.
That steam is from the secondary loop and should never come in contact with the primary water which is contaminated, there are safeguards in place.
Just the sheer amount of deaths per terawatt caused by nuclear power should make people rethink it. Nothing even comes close.
We have a reactor who's steam can be seen for many miles being emitted from the cooling towers that caused a lot of concern over the contamination it was spreading from many people, for the first few years.
So much ignorance. smh.
Care to explain how cooling tower emission would be contaminated?
It would be the primary mixing with the secondary loop which is where the emissions come from, but there are safe guards in place, there is no contamination just worried people.
Frrom the article:
TVA President Bill Johnson said Watts Bar 2, the first U.S. reactor to enter commercial operation in 20 years, would offer clean, cheap and reliable energy to residents of several southern states for at least another generation.
Clean - as long as you don't count the radioactive waste that has to be stored somewhere for the next thousand years.
Stored for the next thousand years, but ideally (if it weren't for NIMBYs) stored in secured and protected underground caverns where the radioactivity is isolated and contained. As opposed to coal, which spreads radioactivity all over the place or fossil fuels which release massive amounts of greenhouse gasses. Isn't it better to make a very small, unused area really dirty compared to making large swathes of used and inhabited lands only kind of dirty? And in those thousand years that we are storing the nuclear waste we may come up with technology that can reuse that waste for some other purpose.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Actually, you only see your brain's decoding/interpretation of those photons.
pedantic++
It's an awful lot of complexity just to make water really hot.
There's got to be a better. Maybe this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The problem with small reactors is the LUDDITES in congress. They pass laws meant to make Terawatt generators safe, and keep them from being built. They make those same laws apply to small reactors. Ex: You have to have evacuation plans for all towns within X miles of the reactor. In New England a small town, on the edge of that range, refused to make a plan. That stopped the reactor from being built. The builders could have provided a slush fund to that town, then they might have approved it. Paying off all the locals and making plans for rare events, and the plans have to be approved by people who graduated from school 50 years ago.
I would hope that designs created in this Century would be safer. Build some reactors based on designs for Submarines and Aircraft Carriers. They could cover a small town. Build a 1000 of those and watch the price of oil go down. Watch the price of oil go down and see the problems coming out of the middle east evaporate.
More Nukes - Less Kooks.
Too much regulation that could be STREAMLINED.
That's helpful, but you've failed to include fixed operations and maintenance (O&M), fuel, variable O&M, and, most important perhaps for nuclear, ongoing capital expenditures (capex) necessary to keep the thing running. We're seeing nuclear units retiring in America right now because the $30/MWh they make on the energy market isn't enough to cover their per-unit-energy ongoing costs. When you include the ongoing costs to keep them running, it's far less obvious that new nuclear power plants will be money makers. Even less obvious is that they will make more money than a combined cycle gas plant, a wind farm, or a solar farm.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
(If you can see it, it's not steam)
So what's coming out of my tea kettle when it begins whistling?
"dogwhistle" is a word used by assholes to avoid talking issues
Just the sheer amount of deaths per terawatt caused by nuclear power should make people rethink it. Nothing even comes close.
You mean that whopping number of ZERO?
You're right. Pretty much everything out there has a higher death count than nuclear, even when taken individually. So you're right. Nothing even comes close.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
When you make enough Lithium to have CITY SIZE storage, that is a LOT of Lithium.
Then you go 5-10 years out, you have a LOT of Lithium waste to store.
That stuff is NIMBY.
And gasoline engines produce gasoline. And fire engines produce fire.
sheer amount of deaths per terawatt
Compared to coal mining?
lol. Sure you are. Atheists are people who can do good altruistic things without the promise of a reward from Big Sky Daddy. You on the other hand, would presumably rape and pillage everything in sight if it wasn't for the ramblings of bronze-age goat herders being codified for you with the usual threats and promises.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It's steam, even if it's below the boiling point of water. Saying that you're not seeing steam just because you're seeing the droplets of re-condensed water vapor rather than the gaseous water molecules is awfully pedantic. And you are not seeing "droplets of water coming off the condensate that has come out of the condensors [sic]". The cooling towers are not condensers - they don't condense water, they evaporate a portion of the water to cool the bulk of it - and the condensate from the condensers never comes in direct contact with the cooling tower water. The condensers are heat exchangers that separate the open cooling tower and the closed steam system.
Place on the phase diagram of water where the cooling towers operate.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Stick it in a hole, it'll be fine"
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
We've had the reuse technology since the 1960's. Jimmy Carter banned us from using it during his disastrous presidency. Or we always could put it through CANDU reactors.
At a U.S. average rate of 12 cents/kWh = $120/MWh = $0.12 million/GWh, that's $947 million worth of power generated per year.
The amount of revenue it generates is not the important consideration in determining if a project is economically worthwhile. It has to generate enough PROFIT to repay the investment. If the annual cost of generating your $947M worth of power is $947M then the project will never repay the cost of building the plant. The cost of generation plus the amortized cost of building and maintaining the plant has to be less than the amount of revenue brought in. Presumably the amount charged for a unit of electricity is high enough to pay for the plant during it's lifetime but you cannot just assume that to be true. In the case of a plant that cost $4.7B to build and is expected to last for 40 years you would need to bring in $117.5M in revenue each year in excess of the operating costs just to break even. And that is ignoring inflation, financing costs, etc. So by your example that electricity had better not cost more than $829.5M per year (actually less than that in the real world) or the plant will not break even.
Actually, it would also then require then passing to the cooling loop, then passing through to the cooling pipes to the raw water.
There are detectors in place that detect even the slightest amount of leakage from primary to secondary. The plant is shut down if that happens, and that rarely occurs due to steam generator PM and inspections.
The only reason anybody is worried is the FUD mongers and ignorance.
Yes, that was exactly how I read his post.
But I suppose Poe's Law is a thing for a reason....
promised to generate enough power to light up 1.3 million homes.
So how many megawatts is that? (And no, given the name of the plant, searching for "watts" doesn't help.)
And are we talking trailer park homes or mansions? Does "light up" include heating/cooling, running the electronics, etc, etc.
Who comes up with these freaking units, anyway?
(Grouchy because /me hasn't finished first cup of coffee yet.)
-- Alastair
1-900-OMG-DUST
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's a difficult deciduous to make. Best to leaf it alone, rather than root around, pining for questions that don't really need to be axed. I suggest you branch out into something else.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Just get SpaceX to ship it to the far side of the moon. What could go wrong?
This has been a problem for decades to which no nation really wants to address. Putting aside even power generation for a second, there are experimental reactors out there that are used to produce certain isotopes for various reasons.
Chalk River is a perfect example in Canada. A number of years ago, due to budget cuts and mismanagement there was a problem a the station causing it to be shut done for an extended period of time. It basically produced isotopes used in medical procedures. However it, even though being built back in the 60's, is one of only 3 in the entire world, which caused an immediate shortage of the availability of said isotopes and rationing had to occur for a period of time until it could be brought back online.
However it was an experimental reactor built by a nation, with really no commercial value so no company is going to do it. With all the issues associated with creating new reactors what nation wants to get into that business either, and how does a politician sell that to its people. The need is still there regardless.
Nuclear power has more than 0 casualties in actual fact during its 60 year history. It's not comparable to coal or oil obviously, but lying is not required.
nothing gets people more riled than the term "dogwhistle"
Yeah, compared to coal mining the difference is staggering.
> or Eeeevil Radioactive Fog.
Did someone say Radioactive Frogs? Get the pitch forks towns folk! We need to prevent these evil radioactive frogs from destroying our civilization with their electrifications!
Nuclear power has more than 0 casualties in actual fact during its 60 year history. It's not comparable to coal or oil obviously, but lying is not required.
Probably true. It is probably lower deaths than solar and wind however once you throw in manufacturing and especially mining and heavy equipment accidents.
Don't worry. China is paving the way.
Since the fuel materials are radioactive in the first place when they are dug out of the ground it is more of a handling, transportation and management issue. Are we better off with radioactive materials left in the ground or dug up, used for power and then put back into the ground or just leaving them in the ground. There is no option for not having radioactive materials... they are already naturally occurring.
And gasoline engines produce gasoline. And fire engines produce fire.
Don't forget electric engines producing electricity !
I thought the nation's mine shafts were supposed to be a refuge FROM radioactivity.
(Hopefully someone will be amused by the cultural reference)
Nuclear power has more than 0 casualties in actual fact during its 60 year history. It's not comparable to coal or oil obviously, but lying is not required.
In the spirit of the first post that pointed out the mist from the cooling tower wasn't "steam", I'd like to point out that nuclear power has never caused a single death because all deaths are caused by lack of oxygen flowing to the brain.
That's... actually a really good answer. Thanks
If it's condensed, it's water.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here's how it work,
So anything you can see has 3 degrees of separation from the reactor
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That makes you the worst. I hope you die soon. Piece of shit.
And what else do you think is coming out of those cooling towers... hint: evaporated water.
If high schoolers start coming out of cooling towers, there is a serious problem involving mutation most likely occurring.
Rephrased: Obama supports nuke power now. 40 years ago republicans rabidly supported it, long before the climate change issue had its current form. NP shouldnt be a wedge issue now and its adoption will make the climate change debate in its current form go away.
Place on the phase diagram of water where the cooling towers operate.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
In the green!!!!!!
Dude, I'm so sorry. I couldn't control my fingers. These things just happen.
There, I have now doubled the number of times "France" appears in the discussion. (It was twice when I posted).
That's normal. You see these giant arguments go on and on about whether it is economically feasible or safe or whatever, and not only do detractors fail to address the nation that's been getting most power from it for 40 years without accidents, contamination, public protests of note, and affordably enough....the weird thing is the promoters hardly mention it, either.
France. Triple.
No.
Look at a phase diagram of water and stop your science teacher from crying.
Cooling towers cool the water that has come out of the condensors - follow the link and you will learn!
No - even one more step removed. The water in the cooling loop never goes near the turbines or they corrode quickly.
It's not steam, it's water, not even a lot hotter than a bath at that. The water in the cooling loop never becomes steam - the steam is on the other side of tubes in the condensor.
Nearly there - wikipedia will help with the last bit.
It's no more steam than the fog from your shower and in the cooling towers it's about the same input temperature as a warm shower (not hot shower).
Blowing the roof off the reactor will do it, but short of that not much. There's a heating loop, a turbine loop and then the loop that cools that turbine water - for anything to get through all three the failure would have to be massive.
One more loop. You don't run lake water through your turbines, the turbines would not last very long. You exchange heat between lake water and the loop that runs through the turbines.
What, pray tell, do you think is coming out of those towers? It's 100% pure dihydrogen monoxide in the form of steam in order to turn turbines which then generate electricity. Although I really am curious, what do you actually think is coming out of those towers? Gluten? I honestly want to know how you think a nuclear reactor generates electricity. Where do they get these people? Probably the likes of Harvard Business School, University of Michigan—Ann Arbor, MIT, Texas A&M is also a great school for advanced study in Nuclear Engineering. I really truly want to know what was or wasn't going through your head with such bold and self-assured statement. Also: Some light reading on the subject
But seriously, what is it that you though you understood?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
FFS - just look up the wikipedia article for cooling towers instead of revealing that you are commenting on a topic you have zero clue about.
The water in those things is not very hot, it's typically starting at 40C or so and the stuff that comes out is fog.
As for your nuclear engineering comment - irrelevant - the guy that made the "steam" comment - footballer, historian and lawyer with a career mostly in banks.
He doesn't know any better.
You should.
That's not the only thing coming out of those plants.
I'm sure you're aware of the waste that's sitting in rusting barrels, here in Michigan, just yards from 20% of the worlds fresh water.
You're probably also aware of all the raw materials and their sources that go into building the plant and creating the fuel.
suffering from pronoia
Here's how it work,
So anything you can see has 3 degrees of separation from the reactor
Sigh I guess it came across wrong, I was getting at how worried people are over radiation.
I'm well aware of how it works, I operated a 4000Mw reactor for many years, we didn't use cooling towers, our mission was to produce Plutonium our steam went to dump conditioners (imagine large radiators who's coils carried cold water) when the steam hit those they condensed into water, and back through the cycle to cool down the primary loop.
Just now I was out playing with the dog when I noticed the only clouds in the sky were from those freaking cooling towers. Some ~15 miles away.
No - even one more step removed. The water in the cooling loop never goes near the turbines or they corrode quickly.
It's not steam, it's water, not even a lot hotter than a bath at that. The water in the cooling loop never becomes steam - the steam is on the other side of tubes in the condensor.
I would think just having one loop for the primary and power production would contaminate the entire area.
Steam some of the driest you'll come across is what drives the turbines, after that a method is required to recapture the water to send it back to cool the primary loop.
It's a different age, we didn't use the Columbia river for our secondary system like they did with the older reactors.
The only reason anybody is worried is the FUD mongers and ignorance.
Exactly! Thank you.
It's a tertiary system. Wikipedia will help.
Never happened. People have know to keep their boiler water clean for at least one and a half centuries. On the other side of the condensors it can even be sea water but that boiler water is kept clean.
Nukes have the extra loop that exchanges heat with the boiler water - thus cooling water that goes through the cooling towers is the third loop. If anything from the first loop has made it into the third it's either a string of failures or a huge catastrophic event obvious to anyone within miles.
However the steam coming out of the cooling towers should never have been in contact with radioactive material. And: plenty of coal plants have cooling towers, too.
It never was just a lot of people with a misconception.
That steam is from the secondary loop and should never come in contact with the primary water which is contaminated, there are safeguards in place.
In fact with PWRs like Watts Bar, it is separated by at least one more loop.
Never happened. People have know to keep their boiler water clean for at least one and a half centuries. On the other side of the condensors it can even be sea water but that boiler water is kept clean.
Nukes have the extra loop that exchanges heat with the boiler water - thus cooling water that goes through the cooling towers is the third loop. If anything from the first loop has made it into the third it's either a string of failures or a huge catastrophic event obvious to anyone within miles.
First reactors out here used Columbia river for the primary, then let it sit in big cooling pools before releasing it back to the river, there were two cooling pools.
They have buried it all now, even the reactor I operated. http://www.hanford.gov/page.cf...