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

Posted by BeauHD on from the better-late-than-never dept.

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.

17 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Not Enough! by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 5, Funny

    [...] has a net output of 1.117 GWe.

    Damn. So close. How will I get back to 1984?

    1. Re: Not Enough! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Informative

      No the US free market is choosing wind

      No, the subsidy farming market is choosing wind.

    2. Re:Not Enough! by rally2xs · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Nuclear plants release around 100g of CO2/kWh, much better than coal but also much worse than wind and solar."

      Lessee, that's 1 Kg / 10 KwH, 100 Kg per MwH, and 100,000 Kg / GwH. Where is the rail transport to bring enough carbon to the nuclear reactor to release 100,000 Kg of carbon dioxide for every hour of operation of a 1 Gw nuke? I don't normally see rail transport to nuke plants. They trucking it in, or what? Where is it combined with oxygen, what process within nuclear power generation has that happening?

      Perhaps the calculation is for the workers in uranium mining driving to work each day, as if they wouldn't drive to some other work if they weren't mining uranium. Someone inputting tons and tons of carbon into the uranium enrichment process for use in nuclear fuel? Where is this carbon in the nuclear generation cycle?

    3. Re:Not Enough! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, it's the total emissions including all the mining and fuel transport and storage and air conditioning for the control room etc. etc.

      Don't take my word for it though, ask the IPCC: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess...

      Page 1335. Lifecycle emissions. Depending on who you ask and what measurement you use, Nuclear is at best about the same as Wind, but it depends a lot on where it is and where the fuel comes from and where the waste ends up.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Not Enough! by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I now wonder what is the comparison with mining the raw materials to make all those wind turbine blades and solar panels,

      Wind turbines are made mostly out of metal and fiberglass. Solar panels are made out of decreasing amounts of rare earths, which you can typically get from quite close to the surface. Uranium mining is strip mining massive areas.

      Then there is an army of techs necessary to climb those towers and maintain the equipment in the generator room of those wind turbines,

      Nope. Wind turbines require very little maintenance, especially modern ones whose blades can be fully stalled so that they don't even have to use the brake to slow the turbine. And they are now being inspected by drone, which further cuts the labor. The drones are actually autonomous now, but due to FAA regulations you still have to have a licensed pilot/spotter. A friend of mine runs a drone inspection company.

      Solar is probably less maintenance intensive, but can only generate a limited number of hours per day. Right now we have few ways to store generated power, so that situation isn't ideal either.

      We could have been building cost-effective battery banks ever since the invention of MPPT.

      I have trouble believing that that one method is greatly superior to the others, save that coal is a huge polluter that doesn't have its full costs figured in, because nobody in fact actually cleans up all that pollution.

      A similar objection applies to nuclear; the actual costs are always vastly in excess of the estimated costs, in large part because decommissioning always costs multiples of the estimate. And then there's the fact that there is literally no productive nuclear reactor ever made by man whose waste has been rendered harmless...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Not Enough! by Smidge204 · · Score: 5, Informative

      OK, but we need very little uranium, in comparison to other ways of generating electricity.

      I'd say nuclear power uses quite a lot more Uranium in comparison to other ways of generating electricity, considering those other ways don't use any Uranium at all...

      According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power consumes about 200 tons of Uranium oxide per GWe per year.

      I now wonder what is the comparison with mining the raw materials to make all those wind turbine blades and solar panels, as well as the fossil fuel it takes to ship / truck them all over the place for their installation?

      Probably not nearly as much as the environmental impact of uranium mining and enrichment. Mining uranium is an ongoing process that produces thousands of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste in the form of mine tailings before it even gets to the enrichment plant.

      Solar panels are made primarily from silicon, which is refined from sand and quartz rock. While not all sources of quartz are created equal, it's not exactly hard to come by. Right now there is no method of recycling solar PV panels since there is no economic benefit to figuring out how, and there's not a lot of scrapped PV panels piling up causing a problem: Panels installed decades ago are only recently reaching their natural end of life, and panels produced today have output warranties of 30+ years... so in practical terms they will probably outlive the people who bought them.

      For wind turbines, the blades are typically made of carbon and/or glass fiber composites. (Carbon fiber is potentially renewable though AFAIK current industrial scale production relies on petroleum.) The pillars are steel, and the bases are steel and concrete.

      Then there is an army of techs necessary to climb those towers and maintain the equipment in the generator room of those wind turbines, and those guys burn gasoline to get to those wind machines.

      Unless they use electric vehicles, which would make a lot of sense since they would literally be surrounded by renewable energy sources. And as far as I know, there is no legal limit on how much exposure to a wind turbine nacelle you're allowed in a year.

      Solar is probably less maintenance intensive, but can only generate a limited number of hours per day. Right now we have few ways to store generated power, so that situation isn't ideal either.

      The "baseload power" argument has been bunk for almost a decade now. Turns out that utility companies from all over the world, who are responsible for maintaining the stability and reliability of the electrical grids within and between their jurisdictions, are keenly aware that renewable energy is going to continue to grow. They're planning for it. They're doing studies and analysis. Those studies keep showing that "baseload" power like coal and nuclear are just not necessary even without storage.

      https://www.nrdc.org/experts/k...

      Storage is just extra gravy on the side, and since it will take decades to fully transition there's plenty of time to build that, too.
      =Smidge=

  2. Re: NO NUKES by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is, actually. It's a huge problem.

    Space may be cold but that makes no difference because you can't use convection or conduction.

    OTOH if you're actively cooling your reactor then there's something wrong, you're throwing energy away.

    --
    No sig today...
  3. Re:Renewable needs baseline + storage to be effect by John+Da'+Baddest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a big difference between "not adequate" and "useless".

    Eg, "sunshine is useless because you can't get a suntan at night" is effectively what you just said.

  4. Nuclear is too expensive for anyone but government by InterGuru · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Nuclear power with its massive cost overruns is so expensive that no private investors will touch it, only governments will build reactors. (correct me if I am wrong)

  5. Re:Renewable needs baseline + storage to be effect by SJ · · Score: 4, Informative

    Fast Acting.... you mean like a massive battery connected to a wind farm?

    https://www.teslarati.com/tesl...

    https://www.news.com.au/techno...

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

    Have a nice day.

  6. Re: NO NUKES by jimtheowl · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are more precise explanations, but I'll try to put it in layman's terms;

    Space is mostly empty and thus NOT good at transferring heat.

    This is why a vacuum flask works:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Heat can be thought of atoms vibrating with more or less energy depending on how 'hot' things are. If you want to cool something down, a good way to do it is to put these energetic atoms in contact with others 'cool' ones which have less energy. Put ice in hot water and energy levels out.

    In space, there is nothing to transfer to, so you have to irradiate (using radiators)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Getting very cold is not trivial, and can be problematic:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/news...

  7. Re:Renewable needs baseline + storage to be effect by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's one of the reasons why China is pushing hard to be the world leader in battery manufacturing, the other being automotive demand.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Baseload Bullshit by Uberbah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You need to adapt to changing power demands with a variable source.

    Variable like your nuclear power plant going down for planned (or worse, unplanned) maintenance, blowing a megawatt-sized hole in your power grid? Sometimes for years at a time?

    All the FUD aimed at wind and solar can easily be addressed by tech used to back up coal and nuclear power plants - like pumped storage. If a large hydrostatic battery is good enough for nuclear, it's good enough for a wind farm.

  9. Re:NO NUKES by jez9999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    2AU lol, that's still pretty close kiddo. Try Pluto, or deep space.

    --
    == Jez ==
    Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  10. OMG! by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    Run! Run to the hills!

    [fiddles with earpiece] Oh, apparently it's meant to do that. Carry on, folks.

    After the break, woman prevented from boarding with her emotional support crocodile sues airline.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  11. Re:Renewable needs baseline + storage to be effect by stomv · · Score: 5, Informative

    Generation of power always needs to meet demand.

    True! (well, to a first order approximation)

    You need baseline power plus on demand power from a reliable source.

    False! (well, the first half is false) You need enough "on demand power [generation ability]" and/or enough demand response ability to ensure supply meets demand. None of that generation ability need be "baseline," commonly called base load.

    Most "green" power sources increase carbon emissions because they need a fast on natural gas power source to balance out their variable power.

    False! (with no caveats whatsoever; this is just plain wrong and OP has no source to verify it)

    --
    Support a few technologists in Washington.
  12. Re:China to America by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

    The cost of nuclear power was invented by man. The technology itself isn't actually that expensive and the time to build isn't that long either. Most of the nuclear projects spend pathetic little time actually constructing anything.

    My own experience was taking so long to install a safety system at a reactor in Spain that the immediate project following it in a chemical plant in Belgium was to rip out the exact model we just commissioned because it was already nearing end of life.

    The project in the nuclear industry was simple and took many years to complete. Most of the time was spent sending paperwork with the longest signature lists I've ever seen around. The project in belgium comprised of twice the number of systems both about 5 times the size of what went into the nuclear reactor, and was done in 5 months at a small fraction of the cost.

    Same identical hardware. Interestingly in the nuclear industry that hardware came with a mountain of certification which could be measured in 10s of thousands of dollars per page.