New Nuclear power plants

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper

If freedom of religion were the big change in Saudi Arabia, by 20 years from now there would not be a terrorist threat because terrorists would cease to have their role model for the society they wi***o create.

Before 1915 and the British imposed Wahabee take-over anyone could visit Mecca and the Turkish Empire permitted churches and synagogues to be build anywhere with its boarders.

Apparently Europe is perfectly happy to live with the terrorist threat forever in order to get cheap oil. Is America also willing to live with the terrorist threat forever?

You have a very good feel for economic geopolitical history. The more that one studies it one becomes either a believer in divine grace in our not destroying the whole of creation or a sarcastic cynic decrying every thing that happens. Your question is put forward as well thought out and challenging to the readers. A breath of fresh air worth thinking about.

[spbed]

I was watching a business show last nite on CNBC. His theme was to buy 2 companies stocks as he felt that nuclear power was coming back into vogue

[jchnhtfd]

Don makes a comment regarding the cost of a nuclear power plant vs. other power sources, and his figures are entirely accurate. However, in my humble opinion, they are also somewhat misleading. (Don -- please don't take this wrong -- it's not an attack on you!!!).

First off, there are two major reasons why the cost of a nuclear power plant is high. The first is that the safety level designed into the plant is extraordinarily high in comparison with any other engineered contraption. As cmulligan (welcome aboard!) noted, many parts of a nuclear facility have triple or quadruple redundancy; it is uncommon for any part on a conventional plant to even be duplicated. Not only that, but nuclear qualified parts themselves are designed and tested to far higher standards than those in conventional plants; all that costs money. Then there are also additional items in a nuclear plant which are not in conventional plants, such as containment vessels (which aren't exactly cheap).

All these things raise the capital cost of building the plant itself. However, a full economic analysis (life cycle costing) of a plant, including these costs, will show that in fact the life cycle cost is not too much greater than a conventional facility.

The second thing which raises the cost of a nuclear plant, however, is that it takes an incredible amount of time and a very expensive application and review process to get one built, which simply doesn't happen with a conventional plant. I do not have the exact numbers, but my experience with other types of facilities subject to extensive review and public comment suggests that it would be prudent to budget an amount at least equal to the total capital cost of construction for the application paper work, and an amount at least twice the capital cost for the appeals process if the project is controversial. I'm not kidding: I've been there, and the above is a very low estimate.

That said, there is another area of cost for power generation which tends to be completely overlooked in discussions such as this (it's also an area of risk which tends to get overlooked, but that's another thread altogether!): fuel extraction, both in terms of hard dollars and in terms of environmental impact. A nuclear power plant's fuel is not, by any means, inexpensive. However, over the lifetime of a fuel load, it is a very minor cost, whereas the fossil fuels for conventional plants, whether coal, oil, or gas, are a major part of the cost of the plant in hard dollars. Further, the environmental impact of mining and processing the small amount of fuel needed for a nuclear plant is trivial in comparison with the environmental impact of mining much of eastern Wyoming, for instance, to provide fuel for conventional plants. It is very difficult to place a dollar sign on environmental impacts, however -- not to mention controversial.

Then there is a third area of environmental impact: wastes. Everyone is familiar (I hope) with the furor regarding disposal of the wastes from a nuclear power plant, and it is a problem, but it is a solvable one. I hope that everyone is also familiar with the possibility of global warming. One of the major 'greenhouse' gases is carbon dioxide and, my friends, there is no way -- no way at all -- that one can generate power from a chemical reaction involving a fossil fuel without generating carbon dioxide. Further, there is no commercially feasible way of removing the carbon dioxide from the exhaust. What will the cost of continuing carbon dioxide emissions be? It is a subject of great controversy, of course. However, if the consensus of scientific analysis of global warming is correct, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be, the cost is incomprehensibly high.

Are nuclear power facilities too expensive? Nooo... I certainly don't think so.

[kevarc]

"It does make sense to have a coal or gas plant on the same grid as a nuclear plant. It's best for a nuclear plant to have a steady output while other types like coal or gas can more easily and safely vary their output."

Not quite right - coal and nucs are great for base load operations. Neither is that good for load matching. Gas fired turbines are the best for load matching followed by a gas fired boiler. And you do not shut boiler plants off and on, it generally takes 4 to 5 hours to get a gas fired plant on line, and a lot longer to get a coal fired plant back up. Shut down time is hours, not minutes,. You have a set procedures to bring them up and down to prevent tearing the equipment up. What you do for coal and nucs is sell the power cheap at night. hopefully covering your costs. It is chaeper in the long run than trying to yo-yo the output. It is easier on the equipment.

Some large industrail plant, with real time demand meters, take advantage of this by doing things at night. There has been a renewed interest about running plants at night to take advantage of this.

[cmulligan01]

I want to say a few things. I don't work in the power or nuclear power industry but my Dad did for over a decade.

About TMI I believe one part that wasn't mentioned was some part of the valve that caused the problem had quadruple redundancy and 3 of the 4 parts failed.

It does make sense to have a coal or gas plant on the same grid as a nuclear plant. It's best for a nuclear plant to have a steady output while other types like coal or gas can more easily and safely vary their output. That is what was and as far as I know is still done in Arizona. Palo Verde is run time while another plant (Ocatillo or Saghuro, maybe both) are shut off at night when the demand goes down and are fired up before dawn so the supply can match the demand.

daveklepper, I unfortunetly don't believe terrorists would go away with an overthrow of the Saudi government and I believe that's the only way there will ever be freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia. Terrorists like bin Laden don't see Saudi Arabia is a role model of a society they want. They believe that society is corrupt and decadent and want it destroyed. We can look at neo-Nazi who long for a society that was defeated and destroyed 60 years ago.

I think if America were somehow to go in a direction like France and have most of the country's power supplied by nuclear power the railroads would be against it. The major railroads would look at a possible change in coal volume and see it hitting their bottom line. I'm not an expert on the steam-diesel transition era but I wonder if there would be any similarities to the railroads seeing a constant source of revenue threatened.

[daveklepper]

If freedom of religion were the big change in Saudi Arabia, by 20 years from now there would not be a terrorist threat because terrorists would cease to have their role model for the society they wi***o create.

Before 1915 and the British imposed Wahabee take-over anyone could visit Mecca and the Turkish Empire permitted churches and synagogues to be build anywhere with its boarders.

Apparently Europe is perfectly happy to live with the terrorist threat forever in order to get cheap oil. Is America also willing to live with the terrorist threat forever?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by JOdom

QUOTE: Originally posted by adrianspeeder

Doo doo doo Lookin' out my back door.



Adrianspeeder

Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band,
Take a ride on the flying spoon, doo doo doo,
Dinosaur victrola,
Listening to Buck Owens,
Doo, doo, doo, looking out my back door.

Or at least that's how I remember it. Somebody must have been doing some REALLY good hallucinogens to come up with those lyrics. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I'm having trouble remembering the words.

JOdom, Think: Hatch, Altamaha River, Baxley, Southern Co, GPC, etc,etc. You know more than you think. - PL

[88gta350]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173

This is an interesting thread, but unfortunately I dont have a clue.

Can someone point me in a direction to learn the basics of nuclear power?

ed

www.nrc.gov has some basic info on nuclear power and how it works.
www.nei.org also has some info, including security... keep in mind it's funded by the utilities.

[Anonymous]

I wish I had a Photo to post just how close I live to the Ft calhoun Nuclear Plant.
Everyday it don't bother be that much,but,I do know that there is a Dangerious threat with the Power that the Terrorists can cause if something where to happen.
And I do no for one thing that it is not very easy living right next to a ticking time bomb that could go off at any time. I hate Nuclear Power. I just hate them. And you can be D*mn sure that we as Americans that we are not safe at all. Nuclear Power is an open inventation for the Terrorists in this country. I just hope the people are much prepaired for what could happen if something where to happen. We as Americans had better just hope and pray to the Holy GOD above that nothing ever where to happen in these Dangerious times. That's it. WE ARE "NOT" SAFE AT ALL.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173

This is an interesting thread, but unfortunately I dont have a clue.

Can someone point me in a direction to learn the basics of nuclear power?

ed

donclark, I think you have found a new student. - PL

[MP173]

This is an interesting thread, but unfortunately I dont have a clue.

Can someone point me in a direction to learn the basics of nuclear power?

ed

[Anonymous]

Well put together Don. TXU has been highly respected as a generator for many years. The part on the nuclear plants I thought was one of the best ways to describe the matter as I have read in many a year. Being a proponent of Nuc as well as Coal I believe that the two forms of generation on the same grid would give great flexability and savings to the useing public. As for railroads, the availability of low cost electrical power for mainline service would usher in a time of expanding opportunities for steel on steel technology.

[Overmod]

If I remember correctly, the chief problem at TMI was that the valve leaked only slightly -- enough that it registered 'closed' via sensor, but set off the temp gauge in the exhaust. When it came open enough to allow the primary loop to depressurize to the point that steam bubbles were forming in the system, there wasn't anything giving a credible indication of the problem. The major issue with Craig's training was that he wasn't supposed to 'think for himself' and use any kind of common sense when he felt the bubbling -- he was supposed to stick to the manual's procedures... and, of course, there was nothing in the manual about what could be causing steam bubbles with the pressurizer closed, BUT there were good reasons to shut the ECCS down when no indications said the water in the core was low.

I had a fundamental issue with the way the control panel worked -- even before the issue of all those yellow tags came up. If you have a bunch of complex valves in a diagram, it's extremely poor practice to have GREEN indicate open, and RED indicate closed, particularly if no discrimination is made between accident conditions where valves need to be open and when valves need to be closed. We took this up with some interest in ITU group R10 when dealing with critical information systems. Meanwhile, the incident printer -- *printer*, for heaven's sake -- was something like 14 minutes behind, and its output didn't discriminate critical information from status information in a credible way. Oh, did I mention the horns? Including the really, really loud one? YOU try to think, or even look stuff up in manuals, with that going on.

BTW, one of the big issues at TMI 2 was that the control rods melted and ran out the *bottom* of the core at a comparatively early stage of the incident. Which meant that both the initial moderation to 'cold shutdown' and subsequent dissipation of induced radioactive heating (for about the next 12 years) was done with materials injected into the primary coolant. (If you look at aerial photographs of the plant years later, during the cleanup, I believe you'll see a bit of steam in one of the cooling towers...)

88gta350, I believe the estimate was that the core ran uncovered about 43 minutes -- yes, scrammed, but note what happened after the rods melted out and the zirconium reacted with the steam... I think we DID see just about a worst-case operating (as opposed to material failure or catastrophic trauma) accident for a PWR generator...

For anyone who thinks TMI 2 was junk because its construction was accelerated to get it into the rate base... the primary coolant pumps are very big things, and after the incident they were running in a high-radiation environment and as I understood it, inaccessible for maintenance. Pump ran TWELVE YEARS without attention, while Bechtel pulled the core piece by piece, and they shut it down normally when they got done.

[SALfan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by adrianspeeder

Doo doo doo Lookin' out my back door.



Adrianspeeder

Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band,
Take a ride on the flying spoon, doo doo doo,
Dinosaur victrola,
Listening to Buck Owens,
Doo, doo, doo, looking out my back door.

Or at least that's how I remember it. Somebody must have been doing some REALLY good hallucinogens to come up with those lyrics. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I'm having trouble remembering the words.

[SALfan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod

Ed, when I say "breeder" I am NOT referring to light-metal prompt-critical designs (like Fermi 1). Those are nifty things, if constructed and run perfectly in a world completely devoid of terrorists, politicos, and 'unmotivated' plant personnel. Unfortunately, we have to have Walgreen's... ;-}

There are several fuel cycles that should be able to accomplish useful amounts of fissile-fuel generation (from otherwise 'waste' irradiation or intermediate daughters). I would note that most of the proposed fusion reactors can do this in their sleep, as they need blankets for the neutron flux. (The big exception is the mirror-machine device using charged fission products, which was theoretically capable of something like 94% efficiency nuclear-to-DC, but AFAIK nobody in academe is currently working on buildable technology, just as nobody seems to remember rubidium-seeded coal MHD topping. Pity!) Use lithium species in the blanket, and look what pops out at appropriate power densities...

IIRC, there were some self-regulating fuel-breeder designs out of General Atomic in the glory days. I'll have to check on this, now that somebody apparently is thinking about reviving the GA design work.

Principal problem I have with the Yucca Mountain site is that the emphasis seems to be on getting the place opened up, rather than on precisely what will be done, technically, on a plant-by-plant basis, once the stuff gets there. You do NOT want to vitrify the stuff alone, and then plant it...

That's what I love about this forum - on so many subjects, not only do I not understand the question/situation, I don't understand the answer/explanation, either. I'm beginning to think if ignorance were an Olympic sport, I'd be a gold medalist. Just call me Befuddled!

[Anonymous]

The simple truth of the matter is that nuclear power plants costs too much. The government regulations and their committees have made the costs astronomical as compared to a natural gas or coal plant. The twin units of Texas' Comanche Peak, a 2.2 Gigawatts plant and the last nuclear power plant build in America, costs were over $8 billion.

Just a few miles away the new twin units of the new efficient natural gas plant Wolf Hollow, a 730 Megawatts plant, costs were $235 million. Three Wolf Hollows could fulfill the power capabilities of Comanche Peak. With a crew of less than 100 at Wolf Hollow compared to the crew of close to a 1,000 at Comanche Peak....it appears natural gas plants are cheaper to build and operate.....although nuclear fuel is cheaper than natural gas. For example, there are more security guards at Comanche Peak than there are crew at Wolf Hollow.

For nuclear power to proceed in the future, government regulations have to be reduced significantly..... to the point a nuclear power plant similar to Comanche Peak could be built for the price of three Wolf Hollows......

In the beginning Comanche Peak was going to cost in the vicinity of $1 billion...... In the twenty years it took to build and rebuild and rebuild Comanche Peak, costs spiraled almost to the point the utility, TXU, almost stopped building it as many other utilities did in that timeframe.... Fortunately, TXU had the financial resources to continue to build it, but after it is all said and done, was not much better off than building a twin or triple large lignite plant instead.....

Currently TXU is planning to build another large lignite plant in Texas at one of the lignite fields it currently owns. This new lignite plant if built will cost much more than the three other large lignite plants TXU operates, as there will have to be an investment in scrubbers etc., which the older three don't have as they are grandfathered in..... Of course one wanders if there is anything considered clean coal.....and how many hoops the government and its regulatory committees will force the price of this new lignite plant upward....could it be as high as building a new nuclear plant?

As far as nuclear power is concerned these FAQs at this web site is a very good read:
http://www.txucorp.com/power/faqs.aspx

[Hugh Jampton]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Muddy Creek

Over the past few years spent fuel rods have "gone missing" from three nuclear power plants in the US. The fuel from the Vermont plant was found, but spent rods from two others are still lost & Congress is now taking action.

The most advanced technology in the world is worthless as long as careless, lazy, inattentive or incompetent humans are at the controls.

Wayne

Maybe it was Homer Simpson,, we works in the industry

[88gta350]

QUOTE: Originally posted by up829

My understanding of TMI is that a relief valve stuck open, but the control room indicator light was designed to show that the command had been sent to close the valve, not that the valve was actually closed.

I've sometimes wondered if a slab of some type of material could be installed at the top of reactor vessels, which would melt and scram the thing via gravity into a solid mass, before the melting point for the vessel itself was reached.

You are correct about the valve. The light indicated the message was sent to close the valve, not that it was actually closed. It was stuck open and all the problems stemmed from there... the operators assumed the valve was closed. And due to the complexity of a reactor, and the heat it generates, I don't think any type of mass is feasible. If you have an uncontrolled chain reaction going, it would continue even after any type of mass was on top of it, and it would melt right through whatever that mass was. A reactor in meltdown can reach temps over 5000 degrees. Not to mention, the reactor vessel itself, where the reaction takes place, is inside the plant's containment building. That containment building is such a complex mess of tubes and wires and hoses and gauges and switches that I don't know how you'd squeeze any mass in big and heavy enough to encase the vessel.

[Anonymous]

My understanding of TMI is that a relief valve stuck open, but the control room indicator light was designed to show that the command had been sent to close the valve, not that the valve was actually closed.

I've sometimes wondered if a slab of some type of material could be installed at the top of reactor vessels, which would melt and scram the thing via gravity into a solid mass, before the melting point for the vessel itself was reached.

[Anonymous]

Over the past few years spent fuel rods have "gone missing" from three nuclear power plants in the US. The fuel from the Vermont plant was found, but spent rods from two others are still lost & Congress is now taking action.

The most advanced technology in the world is worthless as long as careless, lazy, inattentive or incompetent humans are at the controls.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

Over the past few years spent fuel rods have "gone missing" from three nuclear power plants in the US. The fuel from the Vermont plant was found, but spent rods from two others are still lost & Congress is now taking action.

The most advanced technology in the word is worthless as long as careless, lazy, inattentive or incompetent humans are at the controls.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by passengerfan

It takes ten years to bring a new Nuclear plant on line. Their are at least a dozen that were mothballed that could be brought on line much sooner. I started this thread to get interest in Railroad electrification and so far we have talked around the subject but nothing serious has come forth. If we are ever to become halfway energy independaent that the nukes are the only way to go and look at the fossil fuel savings if the railroads electrify those heavy traffic mainlines. Sure the installation of the overhread won't be cheap, but by the same token oil is only going to continue to rise in price. Isn't it really time for the major roads to take a serious look at electrifying lines such as Marias Pass, Blue Mountains in Oregon, Donner, Cajon, Tehachapi, and the Coast Line come immediatly to mind.

A well written and objective posting. Do know this however; the plants that were mothballed in the 80's were for the most part customized pressurized water reactors. While this will probably be a usable technology for the future, it is no longer the cutting edge. There is much discussion among the commercial utilities (investor owned) and the NRC about standard design for the future. This will cut the time down required to build a reactor unit. As far as railrods are factored in, I agree with you on the use of electric propulsion. The amount of fuel oil put back on the market would be a great savings. There is history of the savings that electrical traction provides with both the old Pennsy and the Milwalkee Road from the past. You topic is timely and like many threads in this forum the subjects can get spread out. in this case I think it was a healthy spreading out by bringing many points to attention that are a part of the whole subject.Have a great week, PL

[passengerfan]

It takes ten years to bring a new Nuclear plant on line. Their are at least a dozen that were mothballed that could be brought on line much sooner. I started this thread to get interest in Railroad electrification and so far we have talked around the subject but nothing serious has come forth. If we are ever to become halfway energy independaent that the nukes are the only way to go and look at the fossil fuel savings if the railroads electrify those heavy traffic mainlines. Sure the installation of the overhread won't be cheap, but by the same token oil is only going to continue to rise in price. Isn't it really time for the major roads to take a serious look at electrifying lines such as Marias Pass, Blue Mountains in Oregon, Donner, Cajon, Tehachapi, and the Coast Line come immediatly to mind.

[88gta350]

Chernobyl's cement tomb is crumbling... and yes, the other reactor works. Same at TMI, Unit 1 still operates. Chernobyl's accident had more to do with human error than TMI's did. It wasn't so much the design at Chernobyl as the tests they were conducting while shutting down the reactor for maintainance. They lost control during shutdown, it's that simple. At TMI, inexperienced operators misunderstood what the sensors and gauges were telling them. They ended up draining water from the reactor when they should have been adding it. They misinterpreted what the computer was telling them.

For the person who said custom designs are too expensive and a standard should be made for the US... the NRC and utilities have been working on just that for a few years now. There are a number of pre-approved designs that utilities can choose from so they don't have to go through the hassle of getting their custom design NRC approved. They've also streamlined the approval process for site permitting and the other processes that go into building a plant. To date, though, no utility has committed to building another plant.

And I work at TMI now, so I'm closer than all of you!

BTW, a nuke plant worker receives no more radiation at work in a year than the average person receives in the same year from environmental sources... sun, microwaves, x-rays, etc...

[Anonymous]

Useing modular designs in a HTGCR (High Temprature Gas Cooled Reactor) as designed by California Atomics (the same folks that made the Predator UCAV) and construction techniques on a standard approved design will cut the time of construction down from 10 to 15 years to 7 to 9 years. This is exactly what the French do on their plants. Like it or not, we cannot continue to be dependant on imported oil, either for a railroad or as a nation. The almost statement was made that this would be off topic, I would maintain that it is right on target being that railroad folks and fans do understand the need for increased savings on the fuel bill and the prosperity that innovation in energy usage brings. Another of my [2c]

[Anonymous]

Chernobyl wasn't the only problem the soviet union had with nuclear power. They had many reactor accidents involving their nuclear submarines. These accidents range from Loss of Coolant Accidents, refueling accidents, loss of radiation shield accidents, and even a Promt Critical Rapid Dissambley. These accidents were caused by poor design and construction, as well as poor crew training. Not to mention that their first nuclear submarines, the November class, were built with no radiation shielding whatsoever. You can't really compare our reactors to theirs, they had a severe lack of quality control.

[Leon Silverman]

These discussions are overlooking an insideous problem with nuclear power, namely the extremely long (typically ten years start to finish) gestation period for new operating nuclear plant. Every time you read about a delay in the opening date for a nuclear plant, the estimated cost kept spiralling up like out stealth fighter planes. The reason for this is financing rules. A utility could not factor in the cost of building a new plant into its current electric rates until that plant came on line. In the meantime, the cost of building that plant had to be financed with interest. Consequently, the interest charges kept compounding much faster than simple inflation. A billion dollar plant (in labor and materials) winds up costing maybe seven or eight billion dollars due to the added interest. This eight billion dollar cost is then factored into the electric rates when the plant goes on line, meaning that the electric rates shoot up instead of down. The incremental (cost to generate an additonal unit of power) rate for a nuclear plant is miniscule compared to a fossil plant, but you have to pay down those financing costs.
A possible solution is to come up with standard power plant designs stand could be approved and built in short order, similar to the USRA designs of World War 1 (USNRA designs?).

[spbed]

Yes you are correct that the reactor that blew has been cemented over. The other one there is still generating electricity ehich is what I said.[:(]

I was in Kiev about 70 miles from Chernobyl & naturally what they said was not pleasent. Also I spoke with someone who assisted cementing up the damage plant & I rather not go into what occurred to most people who were ORDERED to cement it up. He got the highest civilian award from the former USSR for his efforts the person I spoke to.

Well yes 6 miles is more then 70 so kudos to you! [:o)][:p]

Originally posted by adrianspeeder

Originally posted by spbed

Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR  Austin TX Sub

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