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| Science & Technology |
| How I learned to quit worrying and love nuclear power |
| 2008-03-30 |
| By Mike Thomas Levy County is too far north of Tampa Bay and too far west of Ocala to be of much use to anybody. And that makes it just perfect for Progress Energy. Here, out in the woods off U.S. Highway 19, the utility is planning to build what would be the state's next nuclear power plant. The estimated completion date is 2016. Locally, the only major controversy comes from neighboring Citrus County, which houses the utility's Crystal River nuclear plant and is miffed it isn't getting this one. The state of Florida is gung-ho, which means no major obstacles from the Public Service Commission or Department of Environmental Protection. Nuclear power is the only option available to meet Gov. Charlie Crist's ambitious goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A new state law will allow Progress Energy to begin collecting money for the $17 billion facility in advance. So the utility's customers could see a $9 bump in an average electric bill beginning in January. To speed up the federal review process, Progress Energy plans to use a next-generation Westinghouse AP1000 reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission already has signed off on the basic design. The only way this plant does not get built is if Progress Energy makes a business decision not to build it. That I can make such a statement without being laughed out of the newsroom shows how far we have come in our view of nuclear power. Like other utilities, Progress Energy no longer will reinvent the nuclear power plant with each new facility. The industry now plans to replicate the same basic designs over and over. This cuts costs, increases familiarity and allows lessons learned at one plant to be incorporated at other plants. With the Westinghouse unit, Progress Energy will learn from the experiences of the Chinese, who will have the first ones running in 2014. What differentiates the Westinghouse from older plants isn't the reactor. It is the water-cooling systems designed to prevent it from overheating and melting down. Simply put, we've got the same engine but a much improved radiator. The old safeguards rely on an elaborate network of generators, pumps and pipes, all of them potential points of failure. Intense monitoring is required, introducing the possibility of operator error. The new plants will use passive designs that rely on forces like gravity to deliver cooling water. This vastly reduces the number of pipes and pumps, thereby eliminating many failure points and improving reliability. This also reduces costs and the odds of operator error. I would much rather live down the street from a Westinghouse AP1000 than a coal-fired plant. But the most compelling reason for this new facility can be found at the Crystal River nuclear plant. There, at the bottom of a pool about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, you can see all the radioactive fuel rods created by 31 years of operating the plant. And there is room for more. Producing an equal amount of energy from coal would create millions of tons of pollution, ranging from toxic mercury to greenhouse gases, spewed up the smokestack and dispersed around the globe and into the atmosphere. Nuclear power forces you to confront your mess. And even the small amount there is of it could be cut by more than half if this country decides one day to reprocess and reuse old fuel rods. Hopefully, like this proposed Progress Energy plant, that day will be coming soon enough. |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #9 Try as they may to argue/demand the contrary, the Bloggers at OILDRUM + PEAK OIL ONLY END UP MAKING THE CASE FOR MORE NUCENERGY, NOT PAR OR LESS. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-03-30 21:43 |
| #8 I'm rippin out my counter tops NOW! |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-03-30 20:22 |
| #7 A little factoid - "The health risks from granite radiation are small yet not as small as other health risks. For instance, the granite in the Thomas Jefferson building in Washington D.C., will give you an incremental cancer risk 50 times greater than the Super Fund clean up trigger levels." Now extrapolate that for all the buildings in DC and you begin to understand the strange behavior of beltway inhabitants. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-03-30 20:16 |
| #6 There is no way the waste will ever be completely free of radiation. However, in the newer designs the waste will be only a bit more radioactive than the granite counters. |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-03-30 13:58 |
| #5 Well, this radioactive stuff comes out of the ground, doesn't it? Let's put it back in the ground after we're done. And launching it into the sun is no solution. The most reliable rockets explode too often, not to mention the cost of putting a pound of anything outside the earth's gravity. |
| Posted by: gromky 2008-03-30 13:55 |
| #4 We already have the answer to waste: breeder reactors. Pebble beds can be dseign to do this (uranium/thorium), in addition the traditional pultonium/uraniaum breeders. Take the "waste, process it and put it back in the reactor. IT gets irradiated and turns into fuel, which is then burned to inert material. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-03-30 12:28 |
| #3 Ship the nuclear waste to the Sun. Win-win. |
| Posted by: doc 2008-03-30 10:02 |
| #2 Nuclear Power's day will come again. But first there has to be a solution to the waste issue. Part will have to be reprocessing, another part will have to be long term storage like Yucca Mt. But another part will have to be a reactor that allows the "burning" of waste products to not only generate power but to reduce their radioactivity. All of these solutions require technology that anti-nuclear activists hate with a passion. But they are things we will have to adopt because even if we shuttered every nuclear reactor world wide this second we would still have the waste problem. Sometimes I think that the reason we don't have a real solution to the waste issue that anti-nuclear types can accept is then nuclear becomes a viable option. |
| Posted by: Cheadrehead 2008-03-30 09:57 |
| #1 The largest sustained nuclear reaction generator in our neighborhood operates about 93 million miles from earth and is responsible for the death of tens of thousands every year from skin cancers. I still await the environmentalists court case to get that shut down. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-03-30 09:46 |