First New Nuclear Plant in US in 30 years 838
Hugh Pickens writes "With backing from the White House and congressional leaders, and subsidies like the $500 million in risk insurance from the Department of Energy, the nuclear industry is experiencing a revival in the US. Scientific American reports that this week NRG Energy filed an application for the first new nuclear power plant in the US in thirty years to build two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR) at its South Texas nuclear power plant site doubling the 2700 megawatts presently generated at the facility. The ABWR, based on technology already operating in Japan, works by using the heat generated by the controlled splitting of uranium atoms in fuel rods to directly boil water into steam to drive turbines producing electricity. Improvements over previous designs include removing water circulation pipes that could rupture and accidentally drain water from the reactor, exposing the fuel rods to a potential meltdown, and fewer pumps to move the water through the system. NRG projects it will spend $6 billion constructing the two new reactors and hopes to have the first unit online by 2014."
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe one day we will have thermonuclear power plants, the nuclear reactors will be obsolete, and we will have abundant energy. I dunno. Right now, however, there is a shortage of energy. We rely too much on natural gas and petroleum. The exporters of those feel their power and twist the arms of the importers. The money made from gas and oil are insane and they are the foundation of too many of the world's tyrants and lunatics-in-power. Cut their revenue streams and they will suffocate.
It seems that making abundant electricity can alleviate that problem at least as far as natural gas is concerned, so we can get rid of the natural gas racketeers (mainly Russia). If we go to hydrogen economy we can liberate ourselves from the petroleum racketeers as well. To have hydrogen-based economy we need a lot of energy. People get excited by the progress in fuel cell technology but rarely ask themselves how hydrogen is to be produced in gigantic quantities.
True, there are risks in nuclear energy production that can't just vanish. But, dammit, nuclear energy has no alternative for the moment.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
They must include the expenses for keeping nuclear waste in safety from leaks, terrorism and international crime, the expenses to cure people when depleted uranium is dumped into the environment during wars and so on.
Basically we are betting the safety of the planet on the assumption that future generations will find tech to render radiation harmless AND that this tech won't be used to enslave people (in a polluted world the ones with that tech decide who lives and who doesn't).
I think better try fusion, or even recreate what Nikola Tesla did. At least we know it's already been done once.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:3, Insightful)
If we never did anyting until there was zero risk, we'd still be living in caves.
Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense? (Score:2, Insightful)
But I guess it's asking a little much of a troll, eyh?
Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense? (Score:5, Insightful)
unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's why: (Score:5, Insightful)
America after World War Two was magnanimous; we had freed a billion people, almost completely for free (the Brits had a lend-lease thing going on) then we started pumping in millions for all the cities we'd just blown up: we realize, at the state level, that we need the other nations...but we don't need to conquer the other nations.
America has never said it wants to attack, change the government and own another nation; we don't want more territory- we just want wars there to stop. It's maddening when we take part in a distant war (think Bosnia) where we bombed the Christians and worked for the Muslims, and then come home. But we're not about expansion-for-expansion's sake, many/most of the UN members cannot make such a claim.
The president of Iran for example has spoken many times of using a nuke to wipe Israel off the planet (in direct violation of UN law) so many times, we're pretty sure he means it. So...what do you think he'd do if he had one? And after that job was done, he'd bully the neighbors.
We used the atomics at a very, very early stage; we were in the largest war, ever, working against time with the Germans who were close to getting it first. But notice: in 60 years or so, we've never used it in anger. As a nation whose leaders are accountable to the people, it makes it very hard for a madman to rise to the ranks and do the deed. (And notice Regan didn't; he was trying to scare the Russians, and the best way to do that is to tell the Liberals something scary, since the friend-of-my-enemy is a Liberal. The Kremlin was behind the No Nukes Movement...I know what I'm talking about, here.)
It's just so surreal, though; knowing the good we've done, the 40,000 men who died to clear France for example, the play-by-the-rules military that we have, and there's a world of bloggers trying to convince us *WE* are the enemy. George Soros is definately getting his money's worth. I just hope there are History books that can be written, to store the history of the greatest propoganda posed by man.
Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I can't agree with the sibling post's tone, I can understand his/her frustration that the plutonium toxicity myth [russp.org] continues. I suppose once these things get started they never die, particularly if the alternative is cognitive dissonance.
The standard delusional fantasy is that a pound of Pu 239 can cause 8 billion cancer deaths, plus or minus. Which begs the question, what are we all doing here? What with the hundreds of pounds of plutonium atomized into the atmosphere in the 40's & 50's.
Another thing is, I wonder if you could concentrate the "badness" of CO2 into a small enough volume that would enable you to store it indefinitely instead of releasing it into the biosphere, how nasty would that substance be? Pretty nasty I would think. But if you could, would you? I bet you would. So in fact what the Munch-style disaster fantasists consider to be nuke's Achilles tendon is actually something you would like to do with other technologies, if only you could. Funny, huh?
And finally with regard to the BWR design...once again it's the American approach of using partially enriched uranium. Which goes way back to the original decision to use that fuel strategy because you can make smaller cheaper reactors and what the hey, the U.S. has all those enrichment facilities sitting around that were built for...other things. Too bad it would be impossible to buy Candus because, well a) no enrichment facilities needed, they take natural U (if Iran really just wants to generate power they could do it without all those scary centrifuge thingies) and b) its a clever reactor structure that consists, and I'm not kidding here, of a series of tubes instead of one gigantic bucket, which makes it structurally redundant and intrinsically failsafe (did you know Canada had their own TMI event where the main reactor structure cracked and the big result was, radioactive water on the floor?) and c) you can shove fuel in one side and take it out the other while it's running and you never have down time for refueling.
But that's a pipe dream. What the US will get is unfortunately, glorified aircraft-carrier power plants, because, you know, might as well monetize some military technology that's just sitting around. More profitable that way, don't you know.
reprocessing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:unfortunate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear waste is a lot easier to deal with than fossil fuel waste. Nuclear waste can all be kept in a very very small place, and only affect a very small place. Fossil fuel waste is simply discharged into the atmosphere where it continues to build and affects the whole planet.
Re:Slightly offtopic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not ready for the responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Chernobyl was an insanely dangerous reactor design. Only the Soviets ever designed reactors like this - every other country in the world uses reactor designs several orders of magnitude safer than Chernobyl. Even military ship reactors are orders of magnitude safer. The RBMK design was made with one reason only: to quickly get a reactor going, regardless of safety, to be ahead of the West during the cold war and to be able to crow about technical prowess. The Soviets habitually designed machinery like this. Take a look at the old Soviet era airliners - no thought put into the 'user interface' leading to nasty traps for the pilot to fall into. Things like having to retard the throttles on landing, and then flick a switch and push them FORWARD again for reverse thrust: counter intuitive, but fast and easy to design.
The RBMK reactor as used in Chernobyl and other places had several serious safety flaws - not least, they were a "fail dangerous" design if mistakes were made (which made an accident like Chernobyl inevitable). The design of the control rods coupled with the high positive void coefficiency of the reactor meant that when the operators went to shut the reactor down, it had the opposite effect, causing the reaction to run away. The lack of a cointainment building - another breathtakingly awful Soviet "innovation", meant that when the runaway reactor blew its lid off, it spewed all that radioactivity into the atmosphere.
No one else, absolutely no one else, ever built civil reactors with such a dreadful "fail dangerous" design.
In which case (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply allow the power generators to choose their preferred technologies. The most economically viable solutions will be popular, the unviable ones will fade away. If nuclear is viable it'll get rolled out. if not, it won't.
Re:Boom (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What, no comments? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In which case (Score:3, Insightful)
Call me naive... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's why: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Boom (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be possible to design a completely idiot proof reactor that would automatically disable itself in the event of coolant loss. Dunno why reactors aren't designed like that from the start.
Considering that the majority of all CO2, particulate, soot and trace elements like mercury are spewed into the atmosphere by coal fired plants, I don't understand why the environmentalists aren't clamoring for more nuke plants. I'm guessing that the antiwar/antinuclear weapon factions didn't make the distinction between bombs and power plants.
If they ever manage to bring out cheap solar panels and an economical storage system I'll be first in line. Freedom from big utilities, no terror threat due to decentralization - no downside!
Re:What, no comments? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What, no comments? (Score:1, Insightful)
It is also interesting that you have such confidence about our exploration abilities in the next 100 years. Most mines never mine deeper that 2 km. This is in a planet that is 6371 km in radius. Just because you can't envision the technology to go deeper or explore deeper than 2 km doesn't mean that it will not happen.
Re:What, no comments? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Outrageous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I should have said, "An alternative to oil that Americans would actually fucking accept."
There's no replacement to the car in American society at this point in time, eco-whatever thoughts aside.
Re:Boom (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Boom (Score:4, Insightful)
I would use all other options before hydroelectric.
Re:What, no comments? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call me naive... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sun != Forever (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about them terrorists? (Score:3, Insightful)
They're well guarded, seeing as they're the obvious target to go for. If you've got a bit of sense you'll go for the powerlines. Miles and miles of unguarded powerlines which it is close to completely impossible to guard against any kind of sabotage, yet takes rather a bit of work to fix again.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
So for example diposing of Caorso power plant and its remaining waste oughta be already paid for in the cost of nuclear electricity. Only a local problem? we'll see.
About terrorism, I'm not imagining anything: the media talk of dirty nuclear bombs are, so ask them.
Re:What, no comments? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pff. All we need is relliable power for another 50 years or so until we can figure out fusion.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What, no comments? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've gotta crawl before you can walk, but politicians keep on stopping researchers/designers from crawling.
Re:Location, Location, Location (Score:3, Insightful)
Forget core meltdown - if the sea rises 5 metres, we're all f*cked.
Re:What, no comments? (Score:1, Insightful)
Greenpeace? (Score:3, Insightful)
What the real pity is, is that these people were the ones who made it so incredibly difficult (litigation and monetarily) to build a new power plant. Back when opposing nuclear power was the cool thing to do, they lobbied and pushed for increasingly ludicrous laws and fees to try to stymy the growth of nuclear power. I'm sure they had good intentions, but this is just a classic example of a bunch of people latching on to a flawed idea, and then doing a ton of harm with it. As a result of it, now that they realize how dumb they were, or maybe just ruled by emotion, and call on people to start building power plants again, it's almost impossible to do it based on the litigation they themselves fought for.
In some way (of course they aren't the sole reason), they helped contribute to our complete dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and if you buy into what they say the war is about, they started it themselves.
To be honest, I really do hope that environmentalists start jumping on board here to try to make up for the damage they did. Make no mistake, I'm totally for not littering, and maybe even not building on the land of endangered species, but man, Greeenpeace has done some dumbass shit. By all means, nuclear power should be regulated, and standards enforced, but it really isn't the anti-christ. Seriously!
Re:Here's why: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, the noble Americans ride in to stop the brutal war in Iraq. Oh wait..
While I agree with many of your points, the notion that the US just goes to war because of some altruistic need to stop wars in other places is laughable. There was no war in Afghanistan, there was no war in Iraq. Then the US showed up, and now there is war in both.
Re:It has the word "nuclear" in it, so it is bad.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The movies.
Re:Location, Location, Location (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to post bad science, please get it from a conspiracy site (ie. Hoagland's site [enterprisemission.com]). Bad science without conspiracy theories is just too boring.
Re:I hate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What, no comments? (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it a little bit amusing and a little bit sad whenever people rail about "We only have X amount of resource Y left!". It's idiotic. Natural resources don't work that way, as though it's some sort of canteen that we're drinking out of, that suddenly we'll take the last sip from, and that's it. In the real world, it's almost always "We have X amount of resource Y left recoverable at current prices with current technology." As prices rise or technology improves, what's recoverable increases. Think of it this way: your average granite contains 10-20 ppm uranium, and is the most common mineral in the lithosphere. I'm not sure of the percent; let's say half of the lithosphere is granite (other igneous minerals will also tend to contain similar amounts of uranium). The mass of the lithosphere is 1.365e23kg, so about 70,000,000,000,000,000,000 (70 quintillion) metric tonnes of uranium in the lithosphere.
Of course, almost all of that is not even close to economically recoverable. But it's there. We don't "run out" of minerals; we just run out of things that can be extracted at current prices. But then another issue comes up: as current prices rise, what becomes economically recoverable rises as well. Not just linearly -- generally exponentially. Ideal, cheaply mineable deposits of minerals tend to be rare. Poorer deposits, however, are often an order of magnitude more common. Poorer still, add another order of magnitude, and so on. But it's not only rising prices that make things economical; it's also advancing technology. We continued building oil rigs in the 80s and 90s when gas prices were down -- yet, earlier in the century, the concept of building rigs during a period of low prices would have been laughable. We advanced the technology to the point where it was no longer uneconomical to use. The same thing has been happening with bitumen extraction in the present-day; it gets cheaper and cheaper as the technology improves.
Re:Location, Location, Location (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What, no comments? (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, one of the few types of nuclear reactors I'd go NIMBY on is a sodium breeder. I don't trust them further than I could throw them. Using a primary coolant that explodes in contact with the working fluid of your secondary cooling loop? Using a primary coolant that explodes in contact with your freaking containment structure? Sorry, but no thank you. Especially after MONJU (which demonstrated that a steel cladding isn't enough protection, given that a rather small leak nearly ate through it).
Re:Boom (Score:3, Insightful)
(By the way, I'd take the PWR as well
U.S. bad and good -- both are true (Score:3, Insightful)
The genius of our system is the rule by the people and the ensuing debate about everything. Calling half of that debate "propaganda" is not fair. No one's trying to convince us that "we" are the enemy...the question is: are we doing the best good in the best way we can? It's possible to acknowledge the good we're doing while still asking that question. Constant improvement means constant debate and questioning. The alternative is complacency and stagnation.
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:2, Insightful)
The answer? Yes. Sure as heck it would be a war crime, because the bombs by your definition did not bring the war to a close and did not save more lives than they cost.
Now -- if the Germans dropped the bombs and won, that'd be a lot better than a full-scale invasion of America, wouldn't it?
Have people forgotten how to think for themselves? Do they not remember what the war was like? How the Japanese disregarded every convention of warfare, attacked without warning, or planned to fight to every last man, woman, and child? The lame-brain stuff I hear any more is crazy. Given the thoughts you've expressed, it would have been better to invaded the mainland, lost a million soldiers and marines, god knows how many Japanese, and basically destroyed their culture. As it was, they got out of the war with a LOT more than they would have without the A-bomb.
What an idiot.
Re:Unfucking believeable (Score:2, Insightful)
You're clearly forgetting that the 2,000,000 dead bodies, shown as stacks of pyramids of human skulls and sheds stacked with femurs and such wasn't done by America: it was done by the Democratic Party that *demanded* we leave there, creating a power vacuum, and enabling Pohl POt to ravage hundreds of square miles. You don't remember the last person hanging onto the skids of the helicopters for dear life, I do.
There was a lot wrong with the Vietnam war. But notice: no 51st state. We've given them MONEY since then, it's now a tourist trap. We weren't there to wipe out the people, we were there to secure the peace and keep the flow of natural rubber at market prices.
Dumb ideas like *always* flying to the antiaircraft guns, dropping a bomb and *always* turning away in the same direction, so that many, many fliers would get shot down, that too, was a Democrat's idea: he was micro-managing the war.
And it didn't help that the young and nubile Jane Fonda was over there as part of the propaganda movement, sitting on an antiaircraft gun that the day before was firing at our troops. The left has been anti-American a long time. They still run thousands of newspapers and all three broadcast facilities. It's the biggest mind-control this Earth has ever seen.
Don't think so? How about universal healthcare? Don't you 'hate' the government? Don't you despise the waste and the invasion of privacy now? WHY ON EARTH would anyone think that giving the exact same government full control over our very lives would be a good idea?
[And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...]
Re:What, no comments? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm torn... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or we can go hide in caves.
Because, I'm sorry, but wind and solar are not going to cut it by themselves.
Re:What, no comments? (Score:3, Insightful)
- Some guy in 1957
Re:Here's why: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Geothermal not without risk... (Score:3, Insightful)