Looky here: new nuclear reactors being built in the USA

[MillCreek]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nuclear-power-far-from-dead-as-us-sees-startup-of-first-reactor-in-20-years-2016-06-14?siteid=rss&rss=1

I had no idea.  Speaking of which, are we any closer to building a permanent waste depository?  Is the facility in Nevada still pretty much dead?

[RoadKingLarry]

Maybe we could sell the waste to Iran.

[French G.]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nuclear-power-far-from-dead-as-us-sees-startup-of-first-reactor-in-20-years-2016-06-14?siteid=rss&rss=1

I had no idea.  Speaking of which, are we any closer to building a permanent waste depository?  Is the facility in Nevada still pretty much dead?

Thank Harry Reid. Middle of nowhere, perfect place. Greenies killed uranium mining here in VA.

[RevDisk]

There's 4 more reactors in the works, but that's still depressingly low. We should be replacing reactors with standardized units for cost effectiveness, safety, reliability and availability of parts. Let everyone else burn fossil fuels for grid power or overpay with wind/solar.

[Ben]

There's 4 more reactors in the works, but that's still depressingly low. We should be replacing reactors with standardized units for cost effectiveness, safety, reliability and availability of parts. Let everyone else burn fossil fuels for grid power or overpay with wind/solar.

Word.

[Perd Hapley]

Speaking of which, are we any closer to building a permanent waste depository?  Is the facility in Nevada still pretty much dead?

Just dump it over here, next to the landfill fire. 's all good.

[Jamisjockey]

I still think the waste should be shot at the sun.

[AJ Dual]

I still think the waste should be shot at the sun.

Why? It came out of the ground, it can go back. Much easier to bury it on the continental shelf at a subduction zone. Plus, spent fuel can be reprocessed and used again for a net energy gain.

And we could use the Americium 241 for RTG's for deep space probes where longevity is more important than energy density, and Pu239 for propulsion bombs for Orion starships.

We'd have to get an addendum to the Non Proliferation Treaty, or just honeybadger it, and tell the rest of the world to FOAD. Who wouldn't want Walmarts and McDonalds on the moons of Jupiter?

[MechAg94]

I still think the waste should be shot at the sun.

Just think of the near panic when the booster rocket explodes on lift off.

[Firethorn]

There's 4 more reactors in the works, but that's still depressingly low. We should be replacing reactors with standardized units for cost effectiveness, safety, reliability and availability of parts. Let everyone else burn fossil fuels for grid power or overpay with wind/solar.

Indeed.  I think that the number should be an order of magnitude higher.

Approximately 100 nuclear power plants is enough to provide roughly 20% of our electricity.  Keep in mind that each plant has 1-4 reactors.  So, roughly speaking, 400 1GW reactors would be able to provide 100%.  Not really, because demand is uneven, but as they come online I figure that electricity would become cheap enough that we'd want to use more electricity for various things.  Electric cars, maybe.  More industry.  Etc...

Anyways, let's say that the reactors have a median life expectancy of 50 years, and the idea eventually becomes one that we build a new reactor next to the old one, tear down the old one, then build a new one on the same spot when the one next door starts getting old.  That translates to 8 reactors coming online a year, and if construction takes 5 years, that means you need to be building 40 at any one time at various stages of completion.

[HankB]

. . . Speaking of which, are we any closer to building a permanent waste depository?  Is the facility in Nevada still pretty much dead?

Why not just check the waste as baggage on American Airlines, or perhaps send it through USPS at the Chicago office, with a FIREARMS label?

In either case, no human being will ever see it again . . .

[Regolith]

I still think the waste should be shot at the sun.

That isn't realistically possible. It is actually not at all easy to get something to crash into the sun; you first have to decelerate it enough to knock it out of the sun's orbit. If you're sending it from Earth, you'd have to decelerate it most of the way from 67,000mph, and that takes a lot of fuel, particularly since fuel costs increase drastically the heavier something gets. And that's not counting the cost to get it into Earth orbit to begin with.

It would be cheaper to get rid of it literally any other way.

[grampster]

Dixie Lee Ray recommended many years ago to encapsule the waste in lead, wrap it in very thick glass, stick it in a rocket and drive it into the silt at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.  Even in the unlikely event the capsule fractured (nearly an impossibility according to her)  The depth of the ocean and volume of the water the distribution of the problem would be insignificant.

[RevDisk]

I know many folks here are not overly fond of France... But we're insanely hilariously backwards compared to their nuclear program.

France has 58 working nuclear plants, generating 75% of its national power grid. I say again, 75%. Three quarters. We're at 20%. A third of our power is coal fired, which releases a LOT more hard radiation than nuclear power. Gewehr could probably tell you which stuck out more on airborne radiation detection platforms.

They reprocess spent reactor fuel. We really don't. We take perfectly usable fuel, and treat it like waste. That's essentially like using maybe 5-10% of the fuel in your car's gas tank, putting the remainder of the gas in a tank outside your house and refilling your car. Then complaining that tank is dangerous. 

They stuck to one design. Driving down cost, easing safety compliance, reducing part availability issues.

France actually educates its citizenry on nuclear power. Our education doesn't, and unfortunately even propagandizes against it.

They didn't bury their waste. They "stockpiled it". Above ground. More expensive, but people right or wrongly didn't psychologically want nuclear waste buried under their towns. If it's in the psychological equivalent of a well guarded warehouse, it doesn't freak people out as much. More expensive, less secure, but people don't worry nearly as much. Worth the cost. Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory will essentially be an underground storage facility, but it sounds better than "nuclear waste dump".

Normally, I roll my eyes at people who think Europe is better than the US in every regard. Even in this case, most of Europe is backwards, provincial and uneducated. France however puts us to shame. 

We should emulate them. A minimum of 75% of our power from fissionables, reprocess waste, take care of the PR aspects of leftover fuel storage (NOT 'nuclear waste', leftover fuel for future use), unified designs in as few combinations as plausible, rolling construction/decomissioning and educating the citizenry.

[Ron]

There's 4 more reactors in the works, but that's still depressingly low. We should be replacing reactors with standardized units for cost effectiveness, safety, reliability and availability of parts. Let everyone else burn fossil fuels for grid power or overpay with wind/solar.

Rev for Secretary of Energy.

[roo_ster]

Rev for Secretary of Energy.

Plus one.

[Mannlicher]

a Brother in Law of mine, is pretty high up in The Southern Company.  He is working on the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant Units 3 and 4 in Georgia.  Lots of interesting stories about how .gov is fighting this all the way.

[makattak]

I know many folks here are not overly fond of France... But we're insanely hilariously backwards compared to their nuclear program.

France has 58 working nuclear plants, generating 75% of its national power grid. I say again, 75%. Three quarters. We're at 20%. A third of our power is coal fired, which releases a LOT more hard radiation than nuclear power. Gewehr could probably tell you which stuck out more on airborne radiation detection platforms.

They reprocess spent reactor fuel. We really don't. We take perfectly usable fuel, and treat it like waste. That's essentially like using maybe 5-10% of the fuel in your car's gas tank, putting the remainder of the gas in a tank outside your house and refilling your car. Then complaining that tank is dangerous. 

They stuck to one design. Driving down cost, easing safety compliance, reducing part availability issues.

France actually educates its citizenry on nuclear power. Our education doesn't, and unfortunately even propagandizes against it.

They didn't bury their waste. They "stockpiled it". Above ground. More expensive, but people right or wrongly didn't psychologically want nuclear waste buried under their towns. If it's in the psychological equivalent of a well guarded warehouse, it doesn't freak people out as much. More expensive, less secure, but people don't worry nearly as much. Worth the cost. Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory will essentially be an underground storage facility, but it sounds better than "nuclear waste dump".

Normally, I roll my eyes at people who think Europe is better than the US in every regard. Even in this case, most of Europe is backwards, provincial and uneducated. France however puts us to shame. 

We should emulate them. A minimum of 75% of our power from fissionables, reprocess waste, take care of the PR aspects of leftover fuel storage (NOT 'nuclear waste', leftover fuel for future use), unified designs in as few combinations as plausible, rolling construction/decomissioning and educating the citizenry.

I agree, except I don't think we should only have one design. Given the size of our country, comparatively, we ought to standardize a few designs (while investing in research towards others) to better be able to compare risks and performance over time.

[RevDisk]

I agree, except I don't think we should only have one design. Given the size of our country, comparatively, we ought to standardize a few designs (while investing in research towards others) to better be able to compare risks and performance over time.

I would agree in a sane world. Completely and unreservedly agree. If we were living in a world of efficiency, logic and reason. Or even 'bare minimum competence'. We don't live in that kind of world. Our reactor lifespans, political process and judicial theatrics make for very very long uphill battles to get a commercial reactor running. Assuming we don't go Full Russian Retard when it comes to reactor design, one design with differing model types is 'better' in real world commercial operator terms. However, research reactors are surprisingly much easier to get licensed. But are intentionally capped from many useful things, including making money. Because unshockingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is about as pro-capitalism as Joseph Stalin.

So, I very much agree with you, but unfortunately our government sucks and we have too many stupid people with strong ideological opposition to science and engineering. At the moment, we do exactly what you say. "standardize to a few designs to better be able to compare risks and performance over time". In other words, virtually every reactor in the US is a one-off with no standardization. That's the real world results of what you recommend. Driving up costs and increasing construction by years or decades. Each is like a special and unique snowflake.

Unfortunately, with nuclear engineering, math and engineering isn't remotely as important as understanding the nuances of the stupidity of anti-nuclear groups like the government, hippies and morons. They each have their own differing aspects of blind ideology, anti-science bias, willful stupidity, entitlement behavior and general obnoxiousness. They seem similar, but at the microscopic level, it's an infinite fractal of stupidity.

[never_retreat]

The only way to drive the costs down is cookie cutter them and mass produce.
Practically everyone in the US is different.
I forget the name right now but google up the one they use in Canada. They are all the same basic design and if I remember correctly they don't even need to shut them down to refuel them.

[seeker_two]

Maybe we could sell the waste to Iran.

There's always Detroit....

[Scout26]

Why not Thorium.  From my understanding it processes (re-processes) itself into something rather harmless.

[Firethorn]

Because we haven't developed thorium into a real reactor yet.  Our knowledge on it is actually less than we had 40 years ago because the idiot in charge of the NRC was all 'defund everything that isn't fast breeder reactor!'

Despite a whole lot of knowledge gained relatively cheaply with our test molten salt reactor that their budget request to make an actual test plant that would produce electricity and breed and all that being about 1% of the budget of the fast breeder that ended up going nowhere itself.

Now India and China are working on the tech.

[MechAg94]

The only way to drive the costs down is cookie cutter them and mass produce.
Practically everyone in the US is different.
I forget the name right now but google up the one they use in Canada. They are all the same basic design and if I remember correctly they don't even need to shut them down to refuel them.

It isn't the only way.  Getting the onerous govt regulation cut back to sane levels is another way.  Neither is probably realistic.

[MechAg94]

I would agree in a sane world. Completely and unreservedly agree. If we were living in a world of efficiency, logic and reason. Or even 'bare minimum competence'. We don't live in that kind of world. Our reactor lifespans, political process and judicial theatrics make for very very long uphill battles to get a commercial reactor running. Assuming we don't go Full Russian Retard when it comes to reactor design, one design with differing model types is 'better' in real world commercial operator terms. However, research reactors are surprisingly much easier to get licensed. But are intentionally capped from many useful things, including making money. Because unshockingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is about as pro-capitalism as Joseph Stalin.

So, I very much agree with you, but unfortunately our government sucks and we have too many stupid people with strong ideological opposition to science and engineering. At the moment, we do exactly what you say. "standardize to a few designs to better be able to compare risks and performance over time". In other words, virtually every reactor in the US is a one-off with no standardization. That's the real world results of what you recommend. Driving up costs and increasing construction by years or decades. Each is like a special and unique snowflake.

Unfortunately, with nuclear engineering, math and engineering isn't remotely as important as understanding the nuances of the stupidity of anti-nuclear groups like the government, hippies and morons. They each have their own differing aspects of blind ideology, anti-science bias, willful stupidity, entitlement behavior and general obnoxiousness. They seem similar, but at the microscopic level, it's an infinite fractal of stupidity.

Don't forget about coal, oil, and natural gas interests that probably push their own influence to keep using those technologies for most of our power.  Those are a big reason why we don't have a bunch of nuclear reactors like France.  We haven't been forced to.  We have a lot of our own coal, natural gas, and oil so we have cheap alternatives to nuclear.  Not all countries can say that. 

The sad part of this IMO is that environmentalists can't pull their heads out long enough to realize that nuclear power plants are cleaner with less impact than most alternatives.