First New Nuclear Plant in US in 30 years

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."

What, no comments?

Everybody busy reading TFA?

Re:What, no comments?

There is plenty of uranium, especially if you include extraction from sea water [wikipedia.org] (which is probably economical since the price of uran is a very small part of the cost of running a nuclear plant.)

Besides, reprocessing spent fuel (which is not currently done in the US) increases the energy output of a given amount of uranium 60 times [wikipedia.org]. In addition, reprocessing removes (burns) various troublesome byproducts which would otherwise require long-tem storage.

Re:What, no comments?

What you really want is a reaction which progresses fully, leaving only non-radioactive elements. After all, if the waste product is radioactive, that means it's still got potential energy in it, has it not?

Re:What, no comments?

It basically becomes impossible to achieve that and still have a net energy output.

To simplify things greatly - Many of the byproducts (especially the final one, lead) poison nuclear reactions and make it so that if the fuel contains more than a certain amount of those byproducts, it is no longer capable of sustaining fission.

Unfortunately, most current reactor designs (including new ones) are quite inefficient in this regard. More efficient reactors get shot down for various reasons. For example, the IFR research reactor was shut down by politicians because of proliferation concerns - even though the reactor was less of a proliferation threat than even normal civilian PWRs. (They saw "breeder" and instantly thought "nuclear weapons" even though the IFR waste material would have been useless for producing weapons-grade fissiles.)

The IFR had some great advantages - It was far more efficient in terms of extracting energy from uranium, and it could burn basically any actinide (including those normally considered "unburnable waste" from other reactors). Compared to PWRs, its waste was MUCH more radioactive (bad), but significantly shorter lived (very good) - Something like 50-100 years half life for the longest-lived byproducts, as opposed to thousands of years for the waste actinides from PWRs.

Re:What, no comments?

Oh, the IFR was a LONG way from becoming commercially viable (It was a proposed research/test reactor for the technology), and breeders are still very much a research-only phenomenon, but a major contributor to this fact is that even research breeders get axed/not approved because of shortsighted and/or clueless politicians that don't understand what they're regulating.

You've gotta crawl before you can walk, but politicians keep on stopping researchers/designers from crawling.

Re:What, no comments?

I would also note that Earth is the only place in our solar system that has oil, but many others, like Mars, will have uranium.

Re:What, no comments?

Not to mention seawater extraction, which could provide thousands of years of fuel. Sure, it's something like 8 times as expensive, but fuel costs for nuclear reactors are proportionally low compared to their overall costs (much of which deal with amortizing the capital costs for construction).

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.

Sun != Forever

The sun won't last forever either, so should solar, wind, hydro, etc be abandoned as possible energy sources. Yes there are differences in time scales, but several centuries I would think at least qualifies as a long term solution. All future energy problems aren't going to be solved today, but other break throughs will happen in several centuries that will lead to other ways of of converting energy.

Re:What, no comments?

several centuries != forever

Pff. All we need is relliable power for another 50 years or so until we can figure out fusion.

Re:Boom

No. The design of a nuclear bomb is very different from that of any nuclear reactor. They CAN spew radioactive material all over as with Chernobyl, but that was a very different and flawed design.

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!

Coal is "natural"....

Coal is natural, it's cute, you can hold it in your hands. People have been using it for thousands of years.

Nuclear is something done by evil scientists wearing white outfits and radiation-monitor tags. It's obviously not to be trusted.

Re:Boom

Chernobyl was one such example.

To achieve this goal, instead of being water-moderated (like in all civilian US reactors), it was graphite-moderated.

This meant that if the water boiled off, it would actually increase output power (among other things). U.S. civilian PWRs lose the ability to continue the reaction if the coolant disappears because it is also the moderator.

In the case of Chernobyl, the graphite moderator had other problems - When the initial steam explosion occurred, the lid on the reactor pressure vessel was blown off, and exposed the graphite to air. Superheated radioactive flammable material + oxygen = BAD.

Chernobyl could not have happened in any U.S. reactor, both due to differences in safety policies and in fundamental reactor design. The worst accident in U.S. history (TMI) released less radioactive material into the environment than some coal-fired power plants release in just one day of operation due to trace amounts of uranium in the coal they burn. (There's one coal plant in Utah that is especially bad I believe.)

Given the choice of living 5 miles from a nuclear PWR, and 5 miles from a coal plant - I'll take the PWR!

Re:Boom

Can this type of powerplant actually blow up and cause a nuclear explosion?

No nuclear power plant can blow up in a nuclear explosion. First, the enrichment level of nuclear fuel for power plants is far too low to be able to cause an explosion, and second, even those reactors that use highöy enriched fuels have fuel elements in configurations that are unsuitable to create explosions. Remember that atomic bombs both need a very high enrichment level and a very precise shape to be able to explode. That's why it is difficult to produce atomic bombs.

Re:Boom

Reprocess it and generate mopre power is tho. Things that are radioactive are generally pretty good power sources.

Re:Boom

Well Im in the UK so Ill say Sellafield [wikipedia.org] which if you read that youll probably say "But that had a large leak recently!". And yes they did due to a design flaw. Also Japan does a lot of reprocessing. It has a bad reputation around the world due to things like West Valley that you mentioned. However I dont think this makes the idea of reprocessing invalid as such. I mean I dont see nearly as many people being concerned at the enormous amount of uranium and thorium being released into the atmosphere from coal fire power plants. As power generation system has their pollutants.

Location, Location, Location

Plans for nuclear power in the UK seem to be taking an interesting turn. Greenpeace UK recently looked at proposed sites for new reactors in the UK and found that four proposed site may be unsuitable owing to the risk of sea level rise: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/the-impacts-of-climate-change-on-nuclear-power-station-sites [greenpeace.org.uk]. The South Texas reactor site is one of 14 currrent or decommisioned civilian power reactor site in the US that are located in tidal regions. With a 2014 start date, a 40 year reactor life and a 20 year decommisioning phase, the South Texas reactor site could be subject to 5 meters of sea level rise: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/2/2/024002/erl7_2_024002.html [iop.org]. That raises serious questions about the wisdom of siting the new reactors close to the present reactors and it might make more sense to seek an inland source of cooling water.

Another location issue pertains specifically to Texas. Texas wind power has been growing very rapidly and may easily meet anticipated demand. Wind costs about $1.30/Watt to build while the nuclear plant, at this early phase, is anticipated to cost $2.20/Watt without modifications that come up in the licensing process or construction delays that genrally plague large projects.

South Texas may not be the best place to test the waters on new nuclear generation.

Re:Location, Location, Location

I thought rising sea levels would be a plus. Plenty of cooling around. Just make it capable of operating submerged.

There are a fair number of nuclear powerplants operating underwater. Reasonably stationary ones would be even easier :).

Re:Location, Location, Location

One can show/prove how/why something is bad science, not state it without further comment.

Re:Boom

Hydroelectric is one of the most environmentally destructive ways we can produce power. That and most of the naturally prime spots to put hydroelectric plants have already been used.

I would use all other options before hydroelectric.

Re:Boom

It's worse than that -- the wood will rot in an anoxic environment, and produce methane, not CO2. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas. You don't have to just consider the plant matter that was there when you flooded, but also incoming organic material. I saw a study that suggested that one dam produced three times more greenhouse gasses per megawatt than an equivalent coal-fired plant.

Hydroelectric was once seen as the "green" solution, but it isn't really anymore. It does have it's uses, mind you -- a good example being how quickly new power can be added and taken away from the grid. It pairs nicely with solar and wind as a consequence.

Hey!!

So this is what Ahmadinejad was called there to inaugurate! Cool.

Re:And 30 years ago, STP 1 and 2 were started

What's funny is the cost overruns that plaqued the first two aren't mentioned.

Oh, how I lament those cost overruns, and their deleterious effect on the dental hygiene of the project.

The Solution seems to be...

The Solution to "Not In My Back Yard" [wikipedia.org] seems to be "We'll just expand existing facilities."

The STP site in Matagorda County, Texas is considered to be one of the best sites in America for nuclear expansion. The 12,220-acre site and 7,000-acre cooling reservoir were originally designed for four units.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to apply for nearly enough sites to allow for a significant boom in building.

There are many reactors which have problems operating right now because of local/regional water supply issues. Either water levels are too low or temperatures are too high... And it will only get worse in many states.

Worse as in 'even if the climate stops screwing around, most states have done a shitty job managing growth in relation to their water resources'.

Eeeeeeeexcellent...

[Taps fingertips together.]

I'm torn...

On the one hand, no matter how much time and effort is put into building a nuclear reactor, there's always a small chance that human error will cause a catastrophic meltdown leading to an almost incalculable loss of human life.

But, on the other hand, they're going to build it in Texas.

Congratulations!

Well done! Nuclear energy has little alternative at this moment and the near future. I hope more people will start realising that as the energy crisis becomes more severe.

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:Congratulations!

if the same amount of subsidies spent in nuclear is spent on solar and wind , there would be no economic contest from any other source, This can be true for some very sparsely populated, very windy and very sunny country. For a normal European country, neither solar nor wind nor tidal energy will do. Do you have any idea how much energy you need to melt down a ton of steel or to make a ton of cement? Consider the fact that France which is fiercely independent produces more than 70% (for the correct numbers use google, I know it is more than 70%) of its electricity by nuclear power plants. Just in order to minimise their dependence on foreign countries. If they could do it with solar and wind and tidal, they would, believe me.

Good

It's about time we started building new nuclear reactors. Anyone who wants to seriously reduce our oil addiction must look at nuclear -- it's really the only cost effective alternative, and it's safe, all the FUD aside.

Ironically, the FUD comes from greens, that should be supporting the things. But then again they've protested hydroelectric (kills fish), wind (kills birds), geothermal (OMG, it is cooling our crusts), so /shrug.

Advanced Boiling Water Reactor?

I just call... vaporware!

unfortunate

I had hoped that when new nuclear reactors showed up in the U.S., they would be of more sensible designs, like pebble-bed or thorium. *sigh*

Re:unfortunate

The pebble-bed reactors are still several years out; they're considered gen IV, which are expected to arrive in 2030. The thorium reactors aren't particularly new (MSRE was what, the 60's?), but operators have been reluctant to build one, as they are radically different and nuclear power plant operators are a tad conservative... I suspect it might require a little nudging from the government. The ABWR is a gen III+ reactor, and not a particularly advanced one at that. They, however, do have a proven success record and, like most modern designs, incredibly safe.

US sources of energy

For reference. I found these here. [wikipedia.org]

Coal-fired plants - 49.0 percent
Nuclear plants - 19.8 percent
Natural gas-fired plants - 19.2 percent
Petroleum-fired plants - 1.8 percent
Conventional hydroelectric power - 7.1 percent
Solar, wind, etc - 3.1 percent

We need nuclear, but not like this. Breeders!

If it's not a fast breeder reactor, it's not a solution to the energy problem.

U235 would run out within the next 60 years, IIRC, if we got all of our power from traditional nuclear powerplants like this one!

However, the world has tons of U238, so breeders could provide power for a long time. And if you made the changes necessary to run the breeders on Thorium instead of U238 (Thorium is even more abundant), then you coul provide power nearly indefinitely.

Breeders also solve the waste problem: The reason radioactive waste is so dangerous is that it still has tons of energy in it; the decay is the slow release of that energy. Since breeders extract so much more energy from fuel, their wastes have much shorter half-lives, and decay to the levels of naturally-occurring ores within a few hundred years -- which isn't great, but (1) sure beats the millennia we're talking about with our current wastes, and (2) seems to be a timescale society can handle.

We need breeders. Pebble-beds are wasteful; they (1) don't breed, and (2) generate a lot of pebble-coating waste. Anything but breeder reactors, and solar/wind/geothermal/hydro, is a waste of time. Breeder reactors are the only technology we currently have that can solve the energy problem. We should be building breeders.

Re:Why?

It's not instead of. It's in addition to. "Pave Arizona with solar cells" vs "Build new nuclear plants" is a false dichotomy. All of these things are better than oil, especially given the foreign dependencies that entails. So we do several of them in parallel, while we figure out what the best answer is. My hunch is that we will continue to generate electricity from many sources for a long, long time to come. Just as the best approach to renewable energy is not solar, or wind, or hydro, or biofuels, but probably a mix of all of these, the best answer to reducing fossil fuel usage probably includes a mix of alternatives.

Re:Why?

I'll equate nuclear fission energy to other forms of energy when somebody finally releases the true figures of the cost per kW/h.

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.

Here's why:

Because most of the UN is made up, not of noble scholars and thoughtful people...they're the kind of people who took control of a small nation in the middle of the night from their cousins, kill their own civilians for fun and bully the nation next door to get more resources, once they realize they've squandered their own. See also Chavez; taking the farms from the white owners left a lot of land to work, and at gunpoint it gets worked quite poorly, lowering the amount of food for the populace.

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:Here's why:

Would you point out where he said he hates France? It's un-fucking-believable that you got moderated insightful for applying a stereotype to all of America.

Re:Hypocrisy

If you throw white phosphorous and napalm under the chemical weapon boogie-man umbrella then you have to include every weapon that explodes. Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and cyclonite (C-4) are as much chemicals as WP and Napalm. Sorry to rain on your US-bashing parade.

Re:Hypocrisy

Excuse me for not trusting a mad religious crack-pot dictator with an apocalyptic world view not to use a nuclear program to leverage his position in the world, and intimidate or harm "the great Satan".

Iran? I thought you were referring to GWB there for a moment.
The Republic of Iran is a democratically elected theocratic republic [cia.gov].

-metric

Outrageous

Your "lesser of evils" excuse for dropping the bomb is based on false premises. Both the argument that Japan would not have surrendered if not the bomb, and the argument that more would be killed in conventional war is heavily disputed. Still, try it the other way around: Let's say Iraq had nukes, and decided to deploy them on Washington DC as a response to the US invasion. Let's say 200.000 dead. Looks better than the 500.000-1M dead Iraqis estimates. Sounds good to you? Iran acts as rationally as any other country (and certainly USA does not excel in this regard) in terms of defending her national interests in the power struggle world of international relations. No crack pot, no apocalypse is required to explain her behavior. The USA has demonstrated in Iraq that she is willing to dominate with force non-nuclear enemies. The lesson everyone has learned is that if they are to go against the will of the US, they need to get nukes ASAP. It is the only deterrent.

Re:Hypocrisy

> I guess what the rest of the world hates is that we're able to do the math. 100,000 or 10 million?

Quote from Leo Szilard [wikipedia.org] (Wikipedia) who played a major role in the Manhattan Project:
"Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?"

Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense?

You should look into how they handle the radioactive waste from coal plants. CO2 isn't the only bad thing they throw into the atmosphere.

Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense?

I think that before any new nuclear facility is licensed, its operators should be required to pay in advance for the disposal of its spent fuel. I don't think it's right that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer.

I'm sure you can come up with some other demands that make it impossible to build nuclear power if you try a bit..

Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense?

It's certainly better than burning oil/gas

In terms of carbon footprint, it's miniscule in comparison.

Sure there's toxic side by-products, but who's not to say that plutonium can't be used in something else?

Oh wait it can,

radioisotope thermoelectric generators (think long lived spaceprobes)

annnndd.....

fast breader reactors, which produce more Plutonium than they consume, which can then be used as fissile material for OTHER nuclear reactors...

Processing it is admittedly difficult, but a well known problem and established procedures.

So storing it is only one option. Take your scaremongering about nuclear energy back to the 80s where it belongs. It's by far the greenest option IMHO.

Re:Does Nuclear Energy Really Make Economic Sense?

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.

Re:Not ready for the responsibility

Wait, you're using something that happened in Russia 23 years ago as a reason why the US is not ready to have nuclear power today? Or maybe you mean Three Mile Island, which was 28 years ago in Pennsylvania, but caused no deaths or injuries? How many people died this year in coal mining incidents?

And then you cite hackable control systems for oil power plants are a reason to avoid nuclear power plants (which are generally far more security-conscious)?

There are issues with nuclear power plants, specifically what to do with the waste long-term.* However, nuclear power plants themselves are actually quite