11 ms·

First New U.S. Nuclear Reactor in Two Decades to Begin Fueling in Tennessee

129 points by sasvari 11y ago

ck2 11y ago
design from the 60s, built in the 70s and ceased production in the 90s put into operation in late 2010s what could possibly go wrong
- hga 11y ago
  Given how much experience we have with this class of reactors, and the inherent safety of PWRs (e.g. TMI, vs. BWRs like a Fukushima), and that the organization running it has long, continuous experience in running these, not much, I'd expect. They only unique danger comes from it being mothballed for so long, and the possibility that resulted in undetected degradation (anything more that corrosion?).
  - zamalek 11y ago
    Agreed. If PBR is to be taken as the flagship of reactor safety (physics prevents a problem from ever occurring), the safety features in Gen II PWR come pretty damn close. You'd need a long cascade of extremely unlikely events in order for it to dangerously fail, for example, the reactor vessel being bent so that the rods are unable to be affected by gravity. Having first breached the concrete and steel whatever caused the catastrophe would also need to bend uranium.
    - hga 11y ago
      Indeed. TMI was pretty close to a worst case disaster for a PWR with a partial, uncontrolled meltdown, with a lot of corium ending up on the bottom of the vessel where it did exactly what was planned, sat there not particularly bothering anyone except the company which would have really rather continued generating power from the reactor. I'd have to double check, but as I recall if you were standing outside the containment vessel, you'd have received the dosage you'd get from sleeping with two other people (potassium-40) ... which we should clearly outlaw right now due to that grave danger (along with living in the Mile High city of Denver, commercial jetliner travel, and eating bananas).
      - 3JPLW 11y ago
        > a lot of corium ending up on the bottom of the vessel where it did exactly what was planned Yes, that's what happened, but I wouldn't say it was planned. Popular wisdom at the time was that the corium should have melted the whole way through the containment vessel. It was only afterwards that they discovered that the water and corium itself helped keep the steel containment vessel cool enough to prevent melting (albeit just barely).[1] Yes, almost no radiation was released. But we got very lucky. It was close to melting through the containment vessel. "By some estimates, the core was 30 minutes away from melting through the eight-inch-thick steel reactor vessel when cooling water was finally restored."[2] 1. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-01-30/news/mn-17003_1_nuclear-fuel http://articles.latimes.com/1994-01-30/news/mn-17003_1_nucle... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/tmi/stories/cleanup032889.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/tmi/...
        hga 11y ago
        Yes, that's what happened, but I wouldn't say it was planned. Popular wisdom at the time was that the corium should have melted the whole way through the containment vessel. The "popular wisdom" is utter propaganda bullshit; have you ever wondered why the popular at the time and mentioned in [1] "China Syndrome" is for some inexplicable reason is not longer bandied about? The design of the reactor vessel allowed for this and withstood the stress without the bigger concrete containment vessel even coming into play. Note even in [1]: Besides the insulating property of the fuel and the strength of the steel vessel, previous studies had shown the concrete bases on which U.S. reactors are built also would hold up against melting fuel, Beckjord said. That you are confounding the reactor and containment vessels in your posting suggests to me how effective that propaganda has been.
    - rsync 11y ago
      I don't have anything new to say about TMI/PBR/PBM, etc., however this sentence stands out: "You'd need a long cascade of extremely unlikely events in order for it to dangerously fail" Have we learned nothing at all ? Even when given extremely relevant and instructive examples within the last 10 years ? From Fukushima to Lehman Brothers, we continue to be shown that these unlikely events are highly correlated - even if they are extremely unlikely individually. The Tsunami comes with the Earthquake
      - zamalek 11y ago
        > Fukushima With Fukushima they knew what the problems were and chose to make an half-assed attempt at safety - for example: the 2008 Tsunami study was ignored. I guess what could be surmised is that nuclear power is only completely safe in the absence of human nature. Which makes you correct in a round-about way. However, it is unsafe in comparison to what? Nine times out of ten not being able to breath anywhere on the planet, forever, seems like the more dangerous prospect; versus making a specific piece of land uninhabitable for a few thousand years. Nuclear waste is far easier to see, which makes us more aware of it and hence our monkey brains believe it is more dangerous ("smoke just dissolves into the air!"). I can't think of any power solution that doesn't have severe drawbacks; however, nuclear is at the very least not the top contender in that list.
        smileysteve 11y ago
        > However, it is unsafe in comparison to what? Nine times out of ten not being able to breath anywhere on the planet, forever, seems like the more dangerous prospect; The arsenic and other emissions from a coal plant are roughly measurable to a nuclear MELTDOWN every 10 years.
        zamalek 11y ago
        ... and because of the current anti-nuclear sentiment, when South Africa faced a power crisis they decided to build the biggest coal power plant in the southern hemisphere[1]. I honestly can in no small way whatsoever see that as a win for the environment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station Thanks for that factoid.
- melling 11y ago
  There must be more to the story: "And when the newer generation’s passive advanced safety features are taken into consideration, the AP1000 reactors should be about 100 times as safe as existing plants."
  - sgc 11y ago
    Right, but this is not one of those. It is a case of using existing infrastructure because it was already 80% built.
- baldfat 11y ago
  If you look at the environmental cost of coal and oil for electricity the impact seems to be more. Here is a list of Environmentalist for Nuclear Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pro-nuclear_environmentalists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pro-nuclear_environmen... From what I have read into this and taking the data into an untrained eye seems to make sense to use modern nuclear. http://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/types-of-nuclear-reactors/ http://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/types-of-nuclear-reactor...
  - hga 11y ago
    The biggest problem with nuclear power generation is external to the technology, it depends on the legal and regulatory regime, and how good a safety culture the country can develop for it. On the latter factor, Japan has amply demonstrated over 3+ decades they have absolutely no business doing anything in this area (a judgement I reached long before Fukushima). To compare to a vaguely comparable culture, the PRC seems to be doing well, but wonder if that's due to a much greater lack of transparency. While I haven't looked at it closely, France sure seems to be doing well (76% of their electricity production, at good points and with lots of exports), but the usual political suspects propose to fix that. Canada as well?? The US finished going bat-shit crazy on the subject under Carter (perhaps because he was on the cleanup crew of this first generation (1947) reactor after it suffered a meltdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRX, and, yeah, it's another reactor with a positive void coefficient). You're not going to see economic nuclear power in the US for the foreseeable future unless you foresee a counter-revolution that removes power from the NIMBYs and BANANAs.
    - Symmetry 11y ago
      I'm not sure I'd recommend Japan give up nuclear. Their horrible track record just means that their nuclear plants are single order of magnitude safer than their coal plans, rather than the normal 2 or 3.
      - illumen 11y ago
        Coal is terrible, but it's not the only alternative. Nor is coal the cheapest alternative.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Your comment is a fantastic example of why laypeople are not equipped to properly evaluate the risk profile of nuclear power.
  - spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
    And what proportion of the critics are so equipped.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ju-st 11y ago
back of napkin calculation: 1180 MWh; 4.5 billion dollar capex; 2.4ct/kWh opex[1]; 50$/MWh income yearly power production = 1180MWh * 24 * 365 = 10'336'800 MWh yearly revenue = power production * 50$/MWh = 516'840'000 USD yearly costs = power production * 1000 * 0,024$ = 248'083'200 USD capex / (revenue - costs) = 18 years Doesn't look like a very interesting investment choice!? 1: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/economic-aspects/economics...
- hga 11y ago
  Any reactor build during the TMI singularity is going to have an outrageous capex, and a better calculation would be to ignore the sunk costs and look at the figures going forward. You also need to allow for refueling downtime, these aren't constantly refuelable designs like the outlawed in the US old generation CANDU and Soviet RBMK (outlawed due to their positive void coefficients, something the latest CANDU design addresses). From vague memory, assume no more than 90% yearly uptime. ADDED: And you get an upvote if for no other reason than that you're doing the math. I wish a lot more people would do that.
  - jerven 11y ago
    90% is a best of fleet number. But for economic analysis you should really assume a lower number, unless you can guarantee that you are the cheapest producer at all times. As demand during the day can be near double of that in an area during the night, once your type of plant is over 50% of local supply your capacity factor is not a limit but demand side is. 4.5 billion capex is a really good number for nuclear in a competent regulatory environment. Still its double the estimated project cost when started. Funnily enough nuclear and renewables really compete hard because of this. Extra power production is nearly nothing for both compared to opex and capex, so if you can produce you shall until returns hit 0. Both love energy storage for that reason. Nuclear is more dependable i.e. less peakers on because of supply issues. But capex for wind and solar are trending too be lower, as is time to market. Leading to less risks, which affects project planning a lot. CSPs with inbuilt storage tend to go to lower generator capacity factors so that they can take a share of the peak shaving market, due to their relative good dispatch ability (send power to the market when wanted, instead of when you can). Wind and solar projects tend to be online and producing quickly in time measured from first concrete poured to power send to market, certainly relative to nuclear in practice. Projects also tend to be smaller scale and in independent phases. Nuclear is added a GW at a time to the market, solar and wind in smaller 50-100mw projects. i.e. wind&solar are project wise much more agile.
irremediable 11y ago
Exciting, but too little too late? As I understand it, there's a good chance we've already doomed ourselves to the necessity of using geoengineering to fix our climate.
wahsd 11y ago
I'm glad we have solved the nuclear waste problem.
- hga 11y ago
  Yeah, well, when this guy retires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Harry_Reid#Yucca_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Harry_R... we should see some progress there. And/or as the court case WRT to his stopping it proceeds, the utility companies are paying for it without getting any return and are more than a little fed up. See elsewhere for my comments on why it's not hardly the problem it's made out to be.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    Don't expect future Nevada senators to be any different than Harry Reid on the issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#Opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... > A two-thirds majority of Nevadans feel it is unfair for their state to have to store nuclear waste when there are no nuclear power plants in Nevada. Many Nevadans' opposition stemmed from the so-called "Screw Nevada Bill," the 1987 legislation halting study of Hanford and Texas as potential sites for the waste before conclusions could be made. > The governor of Nevada had 90 days to object and did so. However, the United States Congress overrode the objection. If the governor's objection had stood the project would have been abandoned and a new site chosen.
    - hga 11y ago
      I simply expect them to be less powerful.
      - ceejayoz 11y ago
        They'll be pretty powerful. A single senator can secretly prevent a motion from reaching the floor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold
jobu 11y ago
The last line of the article surprises me: However, we're hoping that by the time Gen IV reactors are ready for construction (sometime in the 2030s), fusion power will have completely taken over electric power generation. Based on the current trends, it seems like renewable energy will be set to take over energy production before fusion power.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  I doubt renewables can compete with a fusion reactor for high load power uses. So, I can see fusion being used in part with water desalination plants or anything to do with heavy industry.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I doubt renewables can compete with a fusion reactor for high load power uses. So Right now, the can compete favorably with fusion for most uses, what with fusion not actually being even remotely viable. GP seems to be offering the opinion that they will improve to compete more favorably with the best (even before considering environmental concerns) large-scale generation methods before fusion is viable, which may be overly pessimistic in terms of fusion progress, but then again, given how consistently fusion has failed predictions of imminent viability, isn't at all implausible.
    - amckenna 11y ago
      Actually there are potentially some large breakthroughs in fusion power depending on how the new Wendelstein 7-X does when it is turned on later this year. Stellarators are pretty cool and if they prove viable could lead to a big shift in the field away from tokamaks which have stalled in efficacy improvements. Here is an article about it: http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-r... And here is a great video showing the design in amazing detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA
    - norea-armozel 11y ago
microDude 11y ago
So, where do Small Module Reactors (SMR) fit onto the authors timeline of reactor development? Do SMRs show any promise, or are they just an iteration of the same ideas, but at a smaller scale.
delinka 11y ago
"[During failure,] only a small amount of water transfer (about ten garden hoses worth) is necessary [...] to keep the reactor stable." How much is "ten garden hoses worth"? Are we talking running ten garden hoses at full capacity for a few seconds? A couple hours? I very much dislike comparisons like these in reporting, especially when discussing safety.
- astrodust 11y ago
  They didn't say how long the hose is. Maybe it's a mile? To the moon and back?
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    I've never seen a garden hose a mile long. Typically they are shorter than 25m.
  - shawn-furyan 11y ago
    I would think the author means flow rate, not static volume. That would be a hopelessly unintuitive, and as you demonstrate, incomplete analogy if it were meant to represent the static volume needed.
- kevinchen 11y ago
  I think it's meant as a rate measurement, not volume. They want readers to visualize spraying the reactor with 10 garden hoses as the rate of cooling needed in an emergency.
- afarrell 11y ago
  Water transfer seems like it calls for a measurement of flowrate. So the real question is: how fast is the water flowing through a pipe of that diameter?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Doesn't that depend on pressure as well?
deftnerd 11y ago
I wonder how this new plant will affect the power costs to consumers and especially wholesale power costs. The Chattanooga area just turned up their municipal fiber network to 10 Gbps and a lot of tech companies are moving there. With inexpensive power and good connectivity, it might be a prime location for data centers.

129 points by sasvari 11y ago

ck2 11y ago

design from the 60s, built in the 70s and ceased production in the 90s put into operation in late 2010s what could possibly go wrong

hga 11y ago
Given how much experience we have with this class of reactors, and the inherent safety of PWRs (e.g. TMI, vs. BWRs like a Fukushima), and that the organization running it has long, continuous experience in running these, not much, I'd expect. They only unique danger comes from it being mothballed for so long, and the possibility that resulted in undetected degradation (anything more that corrosion?).
- zamalek 11y ago
  Agreed. If PBR is to be taken as the flagship of reactor safety (physics prevents a problem from ever occurring), the safety features in Gen II PWR come pretty damn close. You'd need a long cascade of extremely unlikely events in order for it to dangerously fail, for example, the reactor vessel being bent so that the rods are unable to be affected by gravity. Having first breached the concrete and steel whatever caused the catastrophe would also need to bend uranium.
  - hga 11y ago
    Indeed. TMI was pretty close to a worst case disaster for a PWR with a partial, uncontrolled meltdown, with a lot of corium ending up on the bottom of the vessel where it did exactly what was planned, sat there not particularly bothering anyone except the company which would have really rather continued generating power from the reactor. I'd have to double check, but as I recall if you were standing outside the containment vessel, you'd have received the dosage you'd get from sleeping with two other people (potassium-40) ... which we should clearly outlaw right now due to that grave danger (along with living in the Mile High city of Denver, commercial jetliner travel, and eating bananas).
    - 3JPLW 11y ago
      > a lot of corium ending up on the bottom of the vessel where it did exactly what was planned Yes, that's what happened, but I wouldn't say it was planned. Popular wisdom at the time was that the corium should have melted the whole way through the containment vessel. It was only afterwards that they discovered that the water and corium itself helped keep the steel containment vessel cool enough to prevent melting (albeit just barely).[1] Yes, almost no radiation was released. But we got very lucky. It was close to melting through the containment vessel. "By some estimates, the core was 30 minutes away from melting through the eight-inch-thick steel reactor vessel when cooling water was finally restored."[2] 1. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-01-30/news/mn-17003_1_nuclear-fuel http://articles.latimes.com/1994-01-30/news/mn-17003_1_nucle... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/tmi/stories/cleanup032889.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/tmi/...
      - hga 11y ago
        Yes, that's what happened, but I wouldn't say it was planned. Popular wisdom at the time was that the corium should have melted the whole way through the containment vessel. The "popular wisdom" is utter propaganda bullshit; have you ever wondered why the popular at the time and mentioned in [1] "China Syndrome" is for some inexplicable reason is not longer bandied about? The design of the reactor vessel allowed for this and withstood the stress without the bigger concrete containment vessel even coming into play. Note even in [1]: Besides the insulating property of the fuel and the strength of the steel vessel, previous studies had shown the concrete bases on which U.S. reactors are built also would hold up against melting fuel, Beckjord said. That you are confounding the reactor and containment vessels in your posting suggests to me how effective that propaganda has been.
  - rsync 11y ago
    I don't have anything new to say about TMI/PBR/PBM, etc., however this sentence stands out: "You'd need a long cascade of extremely unlikely events in order for it to dangerously fail" Have we learned nothing at all ? Even when given extremely relevant and instructive examples within the last 10 years ? From Fukushima to Lehman Brothers, we continue to be shown that these unlikely events are highly correlated - even if they are extremely unlikely individually. The Tsunami comes with the Earthquake
    - zamalek 11y ago
      > Fukushima With Fukushima they knew what the problems were and chose to make an half-assed attempt at safety - for example: the 2008 Tsunami study was ignored. I guess what could be surmised is that nuclear power is only completely safe in the absence of human nature. Which makes you correct in a round-about way. However, it is unsafe in comparison to what? Nine times out of ten not being able to breath anywhere on the planet, forever, seems like the more dangerous prospect; versus making a specific piece of land uninhabitable for a few thousand years. Nuclear waste is far easier to see, which makes us more aware of it and hence our monkey brains believe it is more dangerous ("smoke just dissolves into the air!"). I can't think of any power solution that doesn't have severe drawbacks; however, nuclear is at the very least not the top contender in that list.
      - smileysteve 11y ago
        > However, it is unsafe in comparison to what? Nine times out of ten not being able to breath anywhere on the planet, forever, seems like the more dangerous prospect; The arsenic and other emissions from a coal plant are roughly measurable to a nuclear MELTDOWN every 10 years.
        zamalek 11y ago
        ... and because of the current anti-nuclear sentiment, when South Africa faced a power crisis they decided to build the biggest coal power plant in the southern hemisphere[1]. I honestly can in no small way whatsoever see that as a win for the environment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station Thanks for that factoid.
melling 11y ago
There must be more to the story: "And when the newer generation’s passive advanced safety features are taken into consideration, the AP1000 reactors should be about 100 times as safe as existing plants."
- sgc 11y ago
  Right, but this is not one of those. It is a case of using existing infrastructure because it was already 80% built.
baldfat 11y ago
If you look at the environmental cost of coal and oil for electricity the impact seems to be more. Here is a list of Environmentalist for Nuclear Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pro-nuclear_environmentalists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pro-nuclear_environmen... From what I have read into this and taking the data into an untrained eye seems to make sense to use modern nuclear. http://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/types-of-nuclear-reactors/ http://ieer.org/resource/factsheets/types-of-nuclear-reactor...
- hga 11y ago
  The biggest problem with nuclear power generation is external to the technology, it depends on the legal and regulatory regime, and how good a safety culture the country can develop for it. On the latter factor, Japan has amply demonstrated over 3+ decades they have absolutely no business doing anything in this area (a judgement I reached long before Fukushima). To compare to a vaguely comparable culture, the PRC seems to be doing well, but wonder if that's due to a much greater lack of transparency. While I haven't looked at it closely, France sure seems to be doing well (76% of their electricity production, at good points and with lots of exports), but the usual political suspects propose to fix that. Canada as well?? The US finished going bat-shit crazy on the subject under Carter (perhaps because he was on the cleanup crew of this first generation (1947) reactor after it suffered a meltdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRX, and, yeah, it's another reactor with a positive void coefficient). You're not going to see economic nuclear power in the US for the foreseeable future unless you foresee a counter-revolution that removes power from the NIMBYs and BANANAs.
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    I'm not sure I'd recommend Japan give up nuclear. Their horrible track record just means that their nuclear plants are single order of magnitude safer than their coal plans, rather than the normal 2 or 3.
    - illumen 11y ago
      Coal is terrible, but it's not the only alternative. Nor is coal the cheapest alternative.
enraged_camel 11y ago
Your comment is a fantastic example of why laypeople are not equipped to properly evaluate the risk profile of nuclear power.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  And what proportion of the critics are so equipped.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ju-st 11y ago

back of napkin calculation: 1180 MWh; 4.5 billion dollar capex; 2.4ct/kWh opex[1]; 50$/MWh income yearly power production = 1180MWh * 24 * 365 = 10'336'800 MWh yearly revenue = power production * 50$/MWh = 516'840'000 USD yearly costs = power production * 1000 * 0,024$ = 248'083'200 USD capex / (revenue - costs) = 18 years Doesn't look like a very interesting investment choice!? 1: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/economic-aspects/economics...

hga 11y ago
Any reactor build during the TMI singularity is going to have an outrageous capex, and a better calculation would be to ignore the sunk costs and look at the figures going forward. You also need to allow for refueling downtime, these aren't constantly refuelable designs like the outlawed in the US old generation CANDU and Soviet RBMK (outlawed due to their positive void coefficients, something the latest CANDU design addresses). From vague memory, assume no more than 90% yearly uptime. ADDED: And you get an upvote if for no other reason than that you're doing the math. I wish a lot more people would do that.
- jerven 11y ago
  90% is a best of fleet number. But for economic analysis you should really assume a lower number, unless you can guarantee that you are the cheapest producer at all times. As demand during the day can be near double of that in an area during the night, once your type of plant is over 50% of local supply your capacity factor is not a limit but demand side is. 4.5 billion capex is a really good number for nuclear in a competent regulatory environment. Still its double the estimated project cost when started. Funnily enough nuclear and renewables really compete hard because of this. Extra power production is nearly nothing for both compared to opex and capex, so if you can produce you shall until returns hit 0. Both love energy storage for that reason. Nuclear is more dependable i.e. less peakers on because of supply issues. But capex for wind and solar are trending too be lower, as is time to market. Leading to less risks, which affects project planning a lot. CSPs with inbuilt storage tend to go to lower generator capacity factors so that they can take a share of the peak shaving market, due to their relative good dispatch ability (send power to the market when wanted, instead of when you can). Wind and solar projects tend to be online and producing quickly in time measured from first concrete poured to power send to market, certainly relative to nuclear in practice. Projects also tend to be smaller scale and in independent phases. Nuclear is added a GW at a time to the market, solar and wind in smaller 50-100mw projects. i.e. wind&solar are project wise much more agile.

irremediable 11y ago

Exciting, but too little too late? As I understand it, there's a good chance we've already doomed ourselves to the necessity of using geoengineering to fix our climate.

wahsd 11y ago

I'm glad we have solved the nuclear waste problem.

hga 11y ago
Yeah, well, when this guy retires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Harry_Reid#Yucca_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Harry_R... we should see some progress there. And/or as the court case WRT to his stopping it proceeds, the utility companies are paying for it without getting any return and are more than a little fed up. See elsewhere for my comments on why it's not hardly the problem it's made out to be.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  Don't expect future Nevada senators to be any different than Harry Reid on the issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#Opposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... > A two-thirds majority of Nevadans feel it is unfair for their state to have to store nuclear waste when there are no nuclear power plants in Nevada. Many Nevadans' opposition stemmed from the so-called "Screw Nevada Bill," the 1987 legislation halting study of Hanford and Texas as potential sites for the waste before conclusions could be made. > The governor of Nevada had 90 days to object and did so. However, the United States Congress overrode the objection. If the governor's objection had stood the project would have been abandoned and a new site chosen.
  - hga 11y ago
    I simply expect them to be less powerful.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      They'll be pretty powerful. A single senator can secretly prevent a motion from reaching the floor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold

jobu 11y ago

The last line of the article surprises me: However, we're hoping that by the time Gen IV reactors are ready for construction (sometime in the 2030s), fusion power will have completely taken over electric power generation. Based on the current trends, it seems like renewable energy will be set to take over energy production before fusion power.

norea-armozel 11y ago
I doubt renewables can compete with a fusion reactor for high load power uses. So, I can see fusion being used in part with water desalination plants or anything to do with heavy industry.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I doubt renewables can compete with a fusion reactor for high load power uses. So Right now, the can compete favorably with fusion for most uses, what with fusion not actually being even remotely viable. GP seems to be offering the opinion that they will improve to compete more favorably with the best (even before considering environmental concerns) large-scale generation methods before fusion is viable, which may be overly pessimistic in terms of fusion progress, but then again, given how consistently fusion has failed predictions of imminent viability, isn't at all implausible.
  - amckenna 11y ago
    Actually there are potentially some large breakthroughs in fusion power depending on how the new Wendelstein 7-X does when it is turned on later this year. Stellarators are pretty cool and if they prove viable could lead to a big shift in the field away from tokamaks which have stalled in efficacy improvements. Here is an article about it: http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-r... And here is a great video showing the design in amazing detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA
  - norea-armozel 11y ago

microDude 11y ago

So, where do Small Module Reactors (SMR) fit onto the authors timeline of reactor development? Do SMRs show any promise, or are they just an iteration of the same ideas, but at a smaller scale.

delinka 11y ago

"[During failure,] only a small amount of water transfer (about ten garden hoses worth) is necessary [...] to keep the reactor stable." How much is "ten garden hoses worth"? Are we talking running ten garden hoses at full capacity for a few seconds? A couple hours? I very much dislike comparisons like these in reporting, especially when discussing safety.

astrodust 11y ago
They didn't say how long the hose is. Maybe it's a mile? To the moon and back?
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I've never seen a garden hose a mile long. Typically they are shorter than 25m.
- shawn-furyan 11y ago
  I would think the author means flow rate, not static volume. That would be a hopelessly unintuitive, and as you demonstrate, incomplete analogy if it were meant to represent the static volume needed.
kevinchen 11y ago
I think it's meant as a rate measurement, not volume. They want readers to visualize spraying the reactor with 10 garden hoses as the rate of cooling needed in an emergency.
afarrell 11y ago
Water transfer seems like it calls for a measurement of flowrate. So the real question is: how fast is the water flowing through a pipe of that diameter?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Doesn't that depend on pressure as well?

deftnerd 11y ago

I wonder how this new plant will affect the power costs to consumers and especially wholesale power costs. The Chattanooga area just turned up their municipal fiber network to 10 Gbps and a lot of tech companies are moving there. With inexpensive power and good connectivity, it might be a prime location for data centers.