Posted on 12/24/2011 9:58:46 PM PST by Rabin
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission unanimously approved a radical new reactor design on Thursday, clearing away a major obstacle for two utilities to begin construction on projects in South Carolina and Georgia. The decision, a milestone in the much-delayed revival of plant construction sought by the nuclear industry, involves the (new) Westinghouse AP1000, a 1,154-megawatt reactor design… China is in advanced stages of constructing four units of an earlier version of the AP1000. The first unit is scheduled to go online in 2013, about three years before the first one would begin operating in the United States.
Congress has approved $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Westinghouse (SNUPPS) pressurized water reactors came on line on June 4, 1985. The reactor rated at 1.170 GW(e). Fine reactors, no Fed Bucks. Construction has started at Georgia Power's Vogtle & South Carolina Electric & Gas's Summer, station expansion.
Rab can but hope fed funding is frozen out, otherwise these vital new power plants will forever construct & never produce.
Still using fission, and pressure vessels, big disappointment.
Ping me when the engineers get approval for a thorium based plant.
I hear ya. This stuff is just a new dinosaur.
What ever happened to the pebble bed design?
Thorium plants are not cost effective. A year after they are put in service, you have to shut down and rebuild them. When it comes to plumbing, if brine won’t stick to it, it will eat through it.
I recall we once had a thorium plant, but it was dismantled since it did not produce bomb material as a byproduct.
Never heard anything about Brine issues.
I HAVE heard of more than one Thorium design, pebble bed reactors, etc.
This “New” design appears to nothing more than a refinement of the same old tech, nothing truly new or innovative.
The Chinese and probably even the English are on track to have Thorium plants before we do.
RIP American ingenuity leading the way!
I got my hopes up when I read this article...i wanted it to be about thorium too.
Other than successfully aiding in creating nuclear bomb material, I think it was Livermore (National Laboratory) that studied reactor designs early on and couldn’t come up with decent safe reactor design. Typically 30% efficiently with most designs up to 50% efficient in the more exotic designs, all have draws backs when it comes to radioactive waste storage or worse a plant failure leading to radioactive fallout.
The boiling reactor is just about the dumbest design there has ever been with its control rods being inserted from the bottom.
The latest PWR has a claim to frame of being able to shut itself down and run for 3 days without human invention until the water supply (coolant) needs to be replenished. Besides the need for less building materials and whatever else the sales brochure says in it. Still any spent fuel or waste is stored on site.
A thorium plant is cooled with liquid salt, which is very very very corrosive as Livermore found out decades ago.
Of course with the head of GE (All these better idea nuke plants designs past, present or future are GE’s) now on the government payroll (Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama’s Jobs Council) you won’t hear any bad mouthing of the nuclear industry including Japan’s Fuku nightmare. Also, O’bummer’s reelection can now tap into an unlimited source of funding from GE but with the republicans running opposition, he won’t need it.
Then from my point of view, there is the half life of concrete which is around 50 years but what do I know?
Bump for later reading
It's still in an advanced research stage. Disassembly of earlier prototypes after long term usage showed unexpected safety issues with instability/damage to the "pebbles".
Absolutely necessary to "get a handle on"/eliminate before it can "go commercial".
Tell that to the Romans. Their stuff has lasted a bit longer than that.
And our concrete is far better. A French reactor survived a hit from an anti-tank round with no problems.
There is no use arguing with an anti-nuke. They'd rather have us living in caves anyway.
An inherently safe reactor design,pretty cool concept, especially after Fukashima.
“Still using fission, and pressure vessels,…”
I hate to break this to you, but thorium is fission also, just with a different fuel. It’s also one for which we would have to wait another twenty years for commercial development.
“Using Chernobyl has a guide, there will be no clean up of the melted fuel in your lifetimes.”
Unlike Russia, Japan has an economy - a high tech one, with robots.
The latest humongous contraption to cover and begin disassembling the Chernobyl Unit 4 has the US helping foot some of the bill. Cranes and equipment will be remote controlled. In another 50 years they might be able to find all the corium and begin removing it to containers for storage.
Fear of nuclear power is an irrational obsession.
Change your name to bliss.
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