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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.
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.
Nuclear actually is very scale-able small and is in fact better small and has more options small a simple google search would reveal that. WHen nuclear first started in this country a businessman bribed congress to only approve one reactor in the USA. That's why there big and the USA can do them VERY efficient small we have them on subs and there very safe as well.
It was WW2 that created the first reactors, this areas claim to fame is we fueled the second A-bomb :|
I thought I operated the largest reactor at 4000Mw, bigger is better for Plutonium production. But it only ranks third, one is twice as large. http://www.power-technology.com/features/feature-largest-nuclear-power-plants-world/ while those may still be operating, we shut down in the late 80's (our moderator was carbon as was Chernobyl's and the deciding factor).
Now TRIGA reactors are not only small but inherently safe, to WOW the visitors the center rod is spring loaded and ejected out of the pile, you see that beautiful blue glow, then the reactor shuts down due to the heat generated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA To certify I had to shutdown and start-up a reactor 10 times ( or watch), we did that on a TRIGA reactor :)
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.
With respect (fuck I have to use that a LOT here these days - check out the UK series "Yes Minister" for an explanation why) since the US nuclear industry has been in close to a state of statis since the late 1970s there will be very little to change. Major players (Westinghouse et al) lobbied hard AGAINST the Clinton era Thorium research and hounded the guy who was running it out of the industry. The nuclear lobby ate it's own children. Far more money has been spent on PR than R&D, a total waste since people do not trust the spin about the older technology and that money could have been spent on developing something worth cheering for instead.
The only reason we have any advances at all is because Westinghouse bought a Japanese company that was doing R&D until they were bought out.
It's so slow moving that pretty well anything designed after the wake-up call of Three Mile Island is going to be good enough today.
From a physics standpoint, this is not true. Larger reactors help you have higher total neutron cross sections, both for elastic scattering / moderation and fission. A "small" nuclear reactor is defined by the IAEA as one that's less than 300MWe, although even reactors as big as 500MWe are sometimes referred to as "small". Per-reactor, not per-plant. Don't get me wrong, you can make reactors at any size - some companies are looking at modules as small as 25MW (per reactor). But it makes your already problematic economics even worse.
That said, I still do have more hope for small reactors than large ones, just simply from the standpoint of getting some degree of mass production and refinement through use. Still, the "nothing may go wrong" situation one faces with nuclear reactors and the "need to start from scratch if some flaw is developed in the basic design that prevents you from 'nothing may go wrong'" still bites.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
The GP is correct. Solar farms are a pretty dense energy source - comparable (when the reservoir is included) to all but the highest head dams, and an order of magnitude or two more than a typical dam. And some designs can get even more dense, such as linear fresnel reflectors (which cover a higher percentage of the ground because of less issues with self-shading as the sun moves). Plus, solar can be paired with wind. Wind is a low energy density source with respect to total acreage, but very high with respect to actual surface area required on the ground.
Beyond this, a few notes. Much solar doesn't have to take up any new land at all, as one notes from rooftop solar (ideally industrual/commercial), parking shelters/covered walkways, etc. And places where solar plants are made are most typically desert areas. And there's a curious reversal in the desert when it comes to life: while shading terrain hinders life in moist areas, it encourages life in desert areas. In the desert, places that provide shade (ironwood trees, saguaro cacti, large rocks, etc) tend to turn into oases of life - not simply by providing relief from the blazing sun, but slowing down the rate of water loss from the soil. Now, this doesn't usually happen with solar plants because at this stage, most are kept cleared. But that does not have to be the case.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
About 3 Ivanpah power stations ($2.2 billion), which produces about 1/10th the amount of power of this new plant. So this new nuclear plant represents about a 3X increase in output-per-dollar spent on construction - and the power costs about 1/10th as much as well, meaning over a 40 year lifespan, the nuclear plant will produce it's power for $78 billion less than Ivanpah.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
1: Actually, politics have almost EVERYTHING to do with it. The entire regulatory environment for nuclear power has been poisoned for most of the last 30-40 years. And the countless lawsuits by the anti-nuke crowd don't do anything to drive costs and timelines down.
The reason why the power industry lobbies for extensions on existing plants is because:
A - Trying to get a truly NEW reactor site developed is like convincing someone to have all their teeth pulled, without painkillers or being knocked out, THROUGH THEIR RECTUM. Getting NRC time simply to look at or discuss plans is prohibitively expensive. AND THAT'S THEIR FUCKING JOB! Getting local, state and federal approval is a tortuously long and painful process, with nuisance lawsuits breeding faster than rabbits.
B - Because of A, most of these power generation companies would have to replace the aging nuclear reactors with things like coal or oil-fired facilities which have their OWN regulatory nightmares.
C - Most can't implement wind farms or solar farms simply because they don't have access to the land assets necessary, and these power assets still cannot be used as base load. Geothermal is out of the picture for most parts of the country as well.
2: This is why you assign accountants to monitor regulators' finances.
Additionally, look at the history of nuclear safety in the US. Total number of people killed by nuclear power generation. ZERO.
3: Yucca Mountain was forced on Nevada by the Feds. On top of that, the flames of NIMBY-ism were fanned by the state officials talking about rolling nuclear waste down the streets of Las Vegas, when anything BUT was going to happen.
While I, personally, don't know if our engineering is up to building a facility capable of holding things safely for 100K+ years, the site is one of the most heavily researched pieces of land on the planet.
And the OP keeps talking about "we", as if there's some sort of unified front for nuclear power. That usually signifies that they're one of the anti-nuke crowd. Meaning THEY don't think humanity should use it, because they don't want to deal with the waste in any meaningful way.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!