Westinghouse AP1000 Nuclear Reactor Starts Generating Power (world-nuclear-news.org)

Longtime Slashdot reader TopSpin writes: The Sanmen 1 nuclear reactor in Zhejiang, China, has been synchronized to the power grid and is generating power. The reactor has been under construction for nine years and became the first AP1000 in the world to achieve criticality on June 21, 2018. The AP1000 design received final design certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005 and has a net output of 1.117 GWe. Three other AP1000 reactors are under construction in China at the Sanmen and Haiyang sites and two reactors are under construction in the U.S. at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia. On June 29, the Taishan 1 reactor became the first Areva Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR) design to generate power. Four EPR reactors are under construction in Finland, France, and China.

Comments

Re:Big whoop

[PopeRatzo]

I imagine there was a lot less regulatory red tape back in the 1930's than there is today.

Sure dummy. There's more "regulatory red tape"...in China.

"The Sanmen 1 nuclear reactor in Zhejiang, China, has been synchronized to the power grid and is generating power. The reactor has been under construction for nine years and became the first AP1000 in the world to achieve criticality on June 21, 2018. "

Are Anonymous Cowards getting stupider or am I getting smarter? I can't tell any more.

Re:NO NUKES

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, really? You know how flawed just looking at the raw price of something over time is without factoring in inflation and other currency fluctuations is? So that study is showing German price per kilowatt hour (the first part of it). So from 2006 to 2018 it shows that the costs went up ~50%. The Euro lost 10% of its value to the Dollar during that timeframe. Inflation alone over the timeperiod accounts for almost 1/2 of the price difference from 2006 to 2018 in that study. Global market forces can easily account for a large portion of the remainder.
 
I like the fact that they compare the cost of natural gas in the US vs in Europe. The US is the largest producer of natural gas in the world. It isn't even a close first place, it is a blowout. The closes next country is Russia, and they are over 160 BILLION cubic meters less than the US, with the third ranking country being Iran, which produces 580 BILLION cubic meters less than the US. Of course Europe will not see as much of a decrease in cost of natural gas as the US saw during that timeframe. The US production of natural gas increased nearly 50% over that timeframe. Yet, there isn't some monster pipeline between the US and Europe that can distribute natural gas abroad. It has to be compressed and liquefied and shipped via container ship overseas, all of which costs money and has lots of risks, where there are only a couple dozen ports that can handle processing of liquified natural gas in Europe. That is like comparing the price of Ice between Antarctica and Cairo. The real price is in the transportation, and it is cheap to transport within the US as there are major pipelines distributing it.
 
Then the study goes on to look at California, a state that imports over 30% of its energy from other states on long, costly, and inefficient transmission lines, where power loss factors on those transmission lines are directly placed on the consumers in terms of high costs (~1% lost every 100 miles adds up).
 
Does that mean everything the study is wrong, no, but there are so many things wrong with it that people with high school level education could have done a better job in presenting the evidence. As it currently is written, the only conclusion that can be made of it is that some major biases were involved which wanted to fit the data to a pre-determined outcome.

Re:Not Enough!

[AmiMoJo]

China hit peak coal about four years ago and continues to decline.

All new nuclear that wasn't already under construction was put on indefinite hold after the March 2011 disaster in Japan. They are finishing off what they had already started but not beginning anything new. Also, it's not non-carbon electricity. Nuclear plants release around 100g of CO2/kWh, much better than coal but also much worse than wind and solar.

They are investing very heavily in renewable energy and storage. That's clearly the future for China.