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This site in Sanmen, China, will house a Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor and is set to go online in 2013. China is building four AP1000s, and U.S. regulators on Thursday gave the green light for use here.
Opening the door to a new generation of nuclear reactors, federal regulators on Thursday approved a design that a nuclear watchdog group acknowledged is an improvement but still not ideal.
The AP1000 reactor, designed by Westinghouse Electric Co., is safer than the current generation of U.S. reactors, which date back 30 years or more, members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in voting for approval.
"The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions, and also has been assessed to ensure it could withstand damage from an aircraft impact without significant release of radioactive materials," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement.
Fears of an aircraft impact were heightened after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Nuclear Energy Institute praised the approval. NEI's chief nuclear officer, Tony Pietrangelo, called it "an important step closer to the construction and operation of advanced-design reactors that can strengthen America’s energy security while producing large amounts of affordable electricity to help drive economic growth."
westinghousenuclear.com
Westinghouse uses this chart to showcase the AP1000's simpler design compared to traditional reactors.
Key features of the AP1000 are its fewer moving parts than in traditional reactors, especially in an emergency where radioactive fuel needs to be cooled. Current systems rely on pumps to supply water, but the AP1000 uses a massive water tank atop its structure that uses gravity to release the coolant.
Utilities in Georgia and South Carolina are seeking approval to build four AP1000 reactors, which Westinghouse touts with a trademarked campaign: "The Nuclear Renaissance Starts Here." China is among its earliest buyers, with four AP1000s being built there now.
No nuclear reactors have been built in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and talk in recent years of a renaissance was dealt a setback with Japan's Fukushima disaster last March.
The Obama administration, which has offered the project in Georgia $8.3 billion in loan guarantees, is "committed to restarting America’s nuclear industry -- creating thousands of jobs in the years ahead and powering our nation’s homes and businesses with domestic, low-carbon energy," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday in praising the approval. He said it "marks an important milestone towards constructing the first U.S. nuclear reactors in three decades."
Nuclear energy does have an advantage over fossil fuels in that it does not emit the greenhouse gas carbon, but it faces stiff price competition from natural gas, which is much cleaner than oil and has dropped dramatically in price. Moreover, building a nuclear reactor is much more expensive and takes much longer than a power plant fueled by natural gas.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which says it is not against nuclear power in principle, said in an earlier analysis of the AP1000 that its simplified design "is far less vulnerable than existing reactors to a total loss of AC power" during an accident. "As a result, risk assessments by the designers find that the probability that these reactors will experience a severe accident is much lower. For example, these analyses show that the probability of a core meltdown is 100 times lower than that for today’s plants.
But the group added that "little experience with full-scale reactors operating at full power is available to validate computer models of these safety systems, producing significant uncertainties."
It also faulted the AP1000 for "less robust containment systems, less redundancy in safety systems, and fewer safety-grade structures, systems, and components."
Population on rise around US nuclear reactors
Westinghouse, in its statement announcing the approval, touted the safety features and noted that lessons from Fukushima were factored in.
"The innovative passive safety design was recognized by the NRC as providing significant added capability that allows the plant to safely cope with a Fukushima-type event, a significant reason why the NRC Near-term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima-Daiichi Accident recommended" approval, it stated.
More safety features in new nuclear designs
UCS senior scientist Edwin Lyman told msnbc.com that the recommendation does not constitute a formal re-analysis "to identify and correct any vulnerabilities based on lessons learned from the Fukushima accident."
"It would be more efficient and cost-effective to address problems that could be corrected at the design stage now, before any new plants are constructed," he added. "After plants are built, any new safety requirements would have to be addressed through costly retrofits and additional dependence on operator actions."
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
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It costs millions to make 1 lb of nuke fuel for rods. It takes god only knows how much energy to get from the ground to the nuke fuel state. Go spout your physic formulas somewhere else. The only reason Natural gas and Coal arent cleaner is they have been let run since the early 40's. The newest plants are doing a lot better and a whole lot safer than your home county being in a glow from a nuke accident. Much less a train load of nuke accident or a jack knife 18 wheeler full of rods accident. Japan proved if it can happen it will happen. Only when is the question not the answer. No one wants the answer, no one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4
Hey S,McIlnay, do you think papa tiger has ever seen a fuel transport cask???????????? I know he has not! Just from his talk.
WOW......great video!................kind of puts all fears to rest!
I doubt it.
...........................................ya, true................................sad...............
While this is barely a good first step in our nuclear renaissance, it is most welcome to me. Getting past the Fukushima jitters on just this simple step is all to the good, and we can hopefully look forward to fission power taking a solid role, along with a goodly number of other technologies, in meeting a very challenging energy supply problem over the next 50 years.
I have one question for all the solar supporters. How much power was used to create the solar cells and how much power do the cells produce over its useable lifetime?My next question is how toxic is the cell when it has to be disposed of? My last question is how large of a solar array is required to generate the power of 1 nuclear reactor? Perhaps thorium reactors are a better solution than uranium reactors, but either is a better choice than wind or solar.
Probably a mix of various designs would be good, but each particular type should be standardized. There are also a lot of process-heat applications for the pebble-bed reactor designs. I'd like to see coal power plants converted to nuclear with silo-type pebble-bed reactors and nuclear coal-to-oil refineries to preserve the coal industry jobs while eliminating our dependence on foreign oil.
The last I heard, no solar cell or windmill has ever produced enough dollars worth of electricity to pay the cost of its production.
Well that's a pathetic lie. Do you think companies are losing money selling solar modules? Payback for my system would be less than 18 years without federal subsidies and prices have come down substantially since, with no end in sight.
Modules are warranted for 25 years but there is no real limit on lifetime. Last I heard Bell Labs still has the original ones operating sixty + years.
A solar cell is almost all silicon, (sand), with a small trace of rare earths. You would find infinitely more pollutants in your average car than you would on a rooftop array.
My 10KW array will generate over 10 MWH per year. Assuming a fifty year lifetime that would be half a gigawatt hour. And that's just one house.
Nope, it's true. I suppose that I know what I have heard and haven't. Now you expect me to believe something because you say it. Show me the proof, then I will have heard of it. You people do not underdstand that the price you pay per kilowatt is not the cost to produce it. It generally costs a comsumer 12+ cents but costs the company 5- cents to produce it.
The fact is that the efficiency begins degrading from the first day it is used.
Once you have shown me some documentation to prove that you are not what you accused me of being, I will believe it. Otherwise, I stand by my statement.
Iwonder why you are so happy to wallow in ignorance.
[ http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/solarpan/pvpayback.htm ]
Shown here are several detailed expositions and references to literature that blow your silly argument right out of the water. The technology continues to improve since this piece was written. The energy recovery time for innovative wind turbines is equally sensible if not better.
They need to shut down all these old reactors and replace them with newer more efficient and safer ones.
Not in my back yard. Every time one went online in my state the rate for electricity went up. It's already one of the highest in the country.
It's always intially going to go up to pay off the construction costs of the power-plant, but anything after that was likely just inflation.
No it will not INITIALLY go up, it will permanently go up. Solar is the ONLY source that will reduce your bills.
Not only has ours not gone down, they are now telling us the rate is going up again because of the windmills.
The nuke issue is really one. 1. Almost all the plants have outlived their design terminal date. That terminal date keeps getting extended by a commission. The Commission is made up of people. They read the papers given to them and rubber stamp another terminal date on the form. Your nuke in your back yard has been rubber stamped good to go. These are honest probably mostly god fearing people, following guide lines set for them by other honest probably mostly god fearing people afraid to loose a buck. So you live with your rubber stamp nuke for now. It will be the same tomorrow, next year, next decade, next century. More the better to rubber stamp good to go.
AND........................none of them fail! Go figure....................over designed!
Did Westinghouse Electric steal from Canada at all? http://www.candu.com/en/home/default.aspx
Has Nevada agreed to accept the/their nuke garbage yet? Did Tennesee, Ohio, Illinois, anywhere? Does any state really want it. We are talking the Voters of that state, not some rubber stampers. Probably Hundreds of thousands of tons of nuke garbage is stored on site in tanks and containers. No one wants it. What are they going to do with all of it. No one wants it. Germany doesn't want France to haul its out of France either.
A NEW DAY!
Wer'e willing to admit a few piss-ant windmills and solar panels can't power our massive infrastructure! Get the nuclear program up and running ASAP. Fossil fuels have but at most 100-150 years left.
That.............my friend is the whole point. You understand the issue very well!
Dead WRONG!!! There is a enough known coal reserves in the US to power America for a thousand years. There are 104 nuclear reactors in the US. We need to build 200-300 more.
.
Fossil fuels are finite, and cannot be relied on much longer.
Of course I will be and my grandchildren's children will be long gone before they run out, BUT we do have a very good
source of energy at our fingertips right now.
Garbage.
My company produces energy from methane in landfills with amazing results.
In the mean time, I see no problem with Nuclear power too, as long as it is managed.
http://www.deq.state.ms.us/MDEQ.nsf/page/SW_OperationalLFGTEProjectInMississippi?OpenDocumentd.
This is not advertising, the gas is already contracted. Just FYI.
Bad addy, this is the correct one.
For the landfill to energy project.
http://www.deq.state.ms.us/MDEQ.nsf/page/SW_OperationalLFGTEProjectInMississippi?OpenDocument
And this little tid bit of information was brought to you by General Electric!
Nope, brought to you by Toro Energy.
GE has nothing to do with it.
=
Is this the Stuxnet version?
Westinghouse, GE... Have we heard anything from Maytag & Amana?
If it's got a bar code we can do some shopping for a cheaper one using a cell phone application.. Maybe find a Chinese version at Best Buy or on line
In most ways I am for Nuclear power, I don't want to see more power made available to charge auto batteries. The inefficiencies are just amazing. Generation losses, transmission losses, battery storage losses, drive motor losses. They all add up to one thing LOOSE.
Have to build more generation and transmission capability, have to build more battery assembly plants, have more caustic waste to dispose of. At some point in time, public transportation has to be made useable by the majority. It has to be easy, clean, and efficient. It is none of the above now.
All power generation has environmental issues. Coal is cheap, abundant and incredibly polluting. Coal contains trace amounts of mercury, uranium and thorium. Unless scrubbed from the stacks the mercury winds up on our farmlands and in our water. Similarly with the uranium and thorium. The fly ash from a coal plant is typically more radioactive than waste from a nuclear plant. (http://www.epa.gov/radtown/coal-plant.html)
An electric car in Ohio is effectively 80% coal powered. That is the opposite of green.
I would much rather be downwind of a nuclear power plant than a coal powered plant; there is less radiation.
Our abundant natural gas (independent of Congress) is also relatively cheap and perhaps less polluting, but fission power (and thorium systems in particular) is a lot more "green" than any fossil fuel choice. So I share your opinion of the relative radiation hazard.
I'm all for nuclear energy AFTER we develop a site for permanent storage of the nuclear waste. Storing it at each reactor in cooling pools is expensive and inherently dangerous. Dangers can be minimized but are still there!
Find and develop a permanent storage site first!
We have a permanent storage site in Yucca Mountain. But sadly a handful of fools (obama & reid) shut it down to appease the enviromental wackos.
barnyfife,
I strongly disagree with your characterization of President Obama and Harry Reid. They most certainly are not fools. However, I have to agree with you that the Yucca Mountain site should be utilized. The US GAO stated that the closure was a policy decision, not for technical or safety reasons.
Darn, I just hate it when I find we agree on something! ;-)
Irate Ken - We have a site for permanent storage, all we have to do is get rid of Harry Reid. Yucca Mountain is already so contaminated with everything evil that it can NEVER be useful for anything else. I thought when I read the article that we have a sudden outbreak of common sense in the US. Alas, after reading about half the comments, it is clear that the misinformation that is endemic to our media-driven society may still keep us from joining the rest of the industrial world in the single best, cleanest power source ever developed. Let all of you naysayers think about that while you are protesting not enough jobs because we have this idiotic nuclear paranoia given us by the Hollywood elite and the media.
Here we go again, the Kooks for Nukes wanting to build more reactors, and the leader of the parade ? GE the same ones who built the Japanese reactors that failed, I guess if at first you don't succeed fail.. fail again. The war profits must be going down and they need some more billions of Us taxpayer money. America needs another Nuke Reactor like they need another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Japan needs more reactors. No Nuke Reactor ever payed for its self , no insurance company will cover them, only the Government. Nuke Reactors only make Companies rich and America poor. We need magnetohydrodynamics , fluidized beds, or Hydrogen power, No Nukes is Good Nukes!!!
How about you turn off your computer, sell your car, and move into a cave. That is what it is going to take to live the way that will result from your ideal. Oh, and don't mind the stink from the rotting corpses of 6.9 billion of your fellow humans.
Nuclear power today is very profitable with a lower cost of power than even coal. The fleet average in the USA is 1.83 CENTS per kilowatt hour, a factor of 12 lower than a solar panel or wind turbine, even with incentives.
@jnessler,
ah, the Fukushima plant:
1. It was 50 years old and scheduled to be shut down and decommissioned this year.
2. From a technical standpoint, the plant rode out the earthquake quite well. The automated safeguards worked and shut the plant down.
3. The seawall was inadequete for the tsunami wave that rolled in. That was unexpected as the geological history of the area had showed nothing greater than a 7.5 magnitude quake had ever struck the area. The plant was built to survive a 7.5 then. It actually survived a 9.0 magnitude quake. That's some good engineering.
4. The back-up generators were in a basement. Bad idea. Mid-level engineers noticed this flaw and wanted it changed. TEPCO big-whigs said no.
5. Even in 1990 the NRC pointed out that the back-up generators were a design flaw. In 2004 the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Japan's version of the NRC) sited that report to TEPCO. Again, TEPCO refused to address that problem.
6. Yes, GE designed and built the plant. TEPCO owned and operated it. See point 1 for more information on why new nuclear plants need to be built.
if we had spent the money at home developing nuclear power instead of wars in iraq and afghanistan we would be ahead of the world. Cheney and Bush were stooges for the oil and military establishment. The American electorate has a 6th grade education and are incapable of supporting a democracy because it requires intelligence and cognitive skills to vote intelligently. Voting in the US is an emotional rather than a rational process. The power elite understand this and manipulate the electorate. Religion is fostered in this country because it necessarily implies that you don't think which is the basis of the conservative movement. Religion means conservatism and holding on to childish ideas such as Christianity, Judaism, Muslimism and any process that impedes enlightenment.
HEY IRAN. How do you like us now?
Oil and gas companies hate NUCLEAR POWER. It consumes market share which means lost $$$$.
Crude oil over $101 per barrel.