New Nuclear Power Plants in the next 5 years 850
Guinnessy writes "As oil, coal, and gas become increasingly expensive, energy utilities take another look at nuclear power. The nuclear reactor builders are jostling for business as more than 26 plants may be ordered or constructed over the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. Companies in the US and UK may order an additional 15 new reactors. Physics Today magazine has a global roundup of the new plants on construction, and how the builders are getting around some of the potential road blocks in their path. I'm sure many slashdot readers would be surprised to know that some new plants will be coming online so soon."
This is why Iran wants a nuclear program (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, they probably want nukes too, but given we contained Mao and Stalin, who had a lot more of them and hated us as much for our "bourgeois capitalism", as the Iranians do for being the "Great Satan", it's not a big deal.
Re:Nuclear Waste? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a finite supply of nuclear fuel, sure. On the other hand, if we reprocess nuclear waste and take advantage of existing Thorium reserves, our finite supply will last over a hundred thousand years.
Considering that ice ages tend to disrupt hydro power generation and occur rather more frequently than once every hundred thousand years, I'd say that nuclear power is less finite than hydro power.
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, nuclear plants to not produce pollution comparable to coal power. Nuke plants take in relatively small amounts of fuel and produce a relatively small amount of contained waste. Coal plants take in a huge amount of coal and produce a huge amount of waste, some of which is contained and some of which is vented into the atmosphere.
Nuclear waste is scary but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:5, Insightful)
100 or 200 years isn't a long time. (Score:3, Insightful)
We know there are renewable resources out there, and in many places they are abundant. Talk about mining material from extraterrestrial sources all you want. There's no need to do that when all we need is already available to us. All we need to do is put slightly more resources towards learning how to efficiently tap those resources, and we won't have to worry about mining for coal, or drilling for oil, or disposing of nuclear waste.
Here's hoping we get one soon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, people will just blame that I'm fat on being lazy, it's not like there could be other contributing factors.
What we need to do first... (Score:2, Insightful)
That being said, we need a lot of nuclear power. We have the technology to control it, we have the smart people to maintain it. All we need now are death sentances for contractors who attempt shoddy work, supervisors who place safety after work shifts, and CEOs who place profits ahead of all else.
Oh, and we need to make sure these plants are built in weather neutral states. No tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc etc etc.
Coal is not the answer. Look at all those dead lakes in Canada. Anyone taken a look at the acidity levels of rain in the New England states? It measures up there with tomato sauce.
Wind and hydro - not enough to meet our insatiable demands. They can contribute to it, but they can't pull all the weight. Oil - forget it - it's going to run out or become more expensive that other means of producing power sooner rather than later. While I'm sure there will be future technologies we will be able to utilize, we need nuclear power now to fill in the gap.
For anyone concerned about radiation, check some numbers over at DOE. Plant workers can receive no more that 300 milirads of exposure before the red flags go up. A single flight from Tokyo to New York takes you high enough up in the atmosphere to expose to you 900 milirads.
Re:New Nuclear Reactors (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that decentralized power won't be present at all in The Future. But discarding centralized power generation entirely would be foolish. Use all the tools you have at your disposal as appropriate. The Future will involve both.
Re:coal (Score:3, Insightful)
From the Wikipedia article on the subject of coal:
Coal also contains many trace elements, including arsenic and mercury, which are dangerous if released into the environment. Coal also contains low levels of uranium, thorium, and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into the environment may lead to radioactive contamination.[6][7] While these substances are trace impurities, enough coal is burned that significant amounts of these substances are released, paradoxically resulting in more radioactive waste than nuclear power. [italics mine]
As Cecil Adams, author of the Straight Dope once said on this topic: "It would give me great pleasure if the Teeming Millions could learn to think rationally about these things." High-energy, technic civilization is realizing that it needs more energy dense solutions to its power needs, not less. The only two power sources capable of meeting our near-term needs are coal and nuclear, and coal is far from safe. It's time for us Americans to fucking get over our mindless, 1960's-era "no nukes, no nukes!" anti-tech knee jerking and start making some realistic choices. Do we want the lights on and clean air, do we want the lights on and lung cancer, or do we want the lights off? You decide
Perhaps if NASA and Russia had been able to go on with their early space programs and had followed the success of Apollo-era projects by building a substantial, continuous manned presence in near-space things might be different. That might make a network of orbiting power satellites practical
And before all you pro-solar, pro-wind, pro-tidal, pro-{insert alternative energy system here} get on my case, I have one question: do you know what a terawatt-hour is? Do you truly understand that most sophisticated maufacturing processes absolutely require reliable power? The industrialized countries are long past the point where they can survive without dependable electricity in mass quantities. To paraphrase Tim Allen: "We just need more power, that's all we need." More power, and lots of it. At our current state of technological and scientific advancement, there are very few ways to get it.
Re:I remember the 1950s. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, I think you drank the kool-aid. Nuclear reactors works fine, and overall are much safer than fossil fuels. You actually got what you were promised. But along the way the fossil fuel industry got serious about controlling public perception, so that everybody knows that nuclear power is deadly dangerous and coal and oil are sweet, kind and friendly.
They do this in all sorts of ways, but here are a few examples:
Nuclear power may not be perfect, but even the horror stories are better than what we're drifting into by letting the fossil fuel industry lead us down the garden path.
--MarkusQ
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Waste? (Score:4, Insightful)
As compared to where we are putting the waste from burning fossil fuels -- which is straight into the air?
Re:100 or 200 years isn't a long time. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear had not been invented
Transistor had not been invented
No-one had been to space
Materials science could not build a jet engine
Laser did not exist
Radar had not been imagined
Are you seriously saying we go to ultra-expensive solar/wind today because of a resource that you think may run out in 200 years?
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:5, Insightful)
At, and here's an important bit, present fuel costs.
As fuel costs increase, reserves go up, because stuff that wasn't worth exploiting before now is. Fuel costs don't even have to increase too much before uranium extraction from seawater becomes economical, to about $400/lb. The amount of uranium in the oceans at this moment is enough to power the entire world's current energy demand for 7 million years, about 5E9 tons of the stuff.
There's enough uranium around that by the time we run out of it, we'll be able to construct large-scale solar power satellites and ginormous groundside microwave rectennas. And we don't have to confine ourselves to uranium; there's even more thorium around than uranium, and while that won't sustain a chain reaction, it'll fission just fine in an energy amplifier, and you can breed more fissile fuel in the process.
It's doubtful that we'll ever get fusion working, but there's so much fission fuel around capable of driving one plant design or another that if we haven't figured out solar collection satellites by the time we start feeling the pinch of running out of it, we'll deserve to go extinct.
Details [stanford.edu].
"He comments that lasting 5 billion years, i.e. longer than the sun will support life on earth, should cause uranium to be considered a renewable resource."
Uranium recovery from seawater [jaeri.go.jp].
Re:New Nuclear Reactors (Score:2, Insightful)
To my knowlege (and I am an electrical engineer), a very miniscule portion of our power is being generated by so called distributed generation. Why? Because in most cases it doesn't work financially. As un-sexy as they are, large power plants are much more efficient and cost effective than most small DG installations (including solar).
At present, nuclear power is our ONLY feasable solution to the looming environmental crisis. We have the technology now. We've proven it can be cost-effective. The fuel supply is nearly limitless with reprocessing and new reactor technologies. We can build electric cars now, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil now.
What are we waiting for???? The time to act is NOW.
Re:coal (Score:5, Insightful)
No it doesn't, 99.5% of the thorium and uranium gets caught by the fly ash precipitators. Radon gas is released, but then wikipedia gets stupid: if it's released, it's not nuclear waste. The proper claim is that, while operating as designed, coal plants will release more radioactivity than nuke plants. "[...] the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern [coal-fired] power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment." [usgs.gov]
Moreover, as for radioactive material, with the coal plant, that's it. There's no need for the whole decommisioning process with lots of radioactive material, because the plant itself and the fly ash isn't particularly radioactive. Same source: "One extreme calculation that assumed high proportions of fly-ash-rich concrete in a residence suggested a dose enhancement, compared to normal concrete, of 3 percent of the natural environmental radiation."
And before all you pro-solar, pro-wind, pro-tidal, pro-{insert alternative energy system here} get on my case
Ya gotta have a better argument than that.
On-demand plants like coal-fired ones can help smooth out the peaks and valleys. (I'll admit ignorance on whether any current nuke plants can operate in an on-demand mode and would have any benefit -- such as the fuel lasting longer -- in doing so.) And there are plenty of systems for storing and releasing power, batteries are by no means the only ones. Moreover, lots of industries are perfectly capable of adjusting their output as grid power waxes and wanes, and thus the price falls and rises. Large numbers of windmills in the sparsely populated Midwest could produce a good portion of our power needs, and are nearing cost-effectiveness, even without subsidies like Price-Anderson and the money spent on Yucca Mountain.
Interesting bit of trivia about nuclear dangers (Score:3, Insightful)
Energy is the key to the world (Score:2, Insightful)
Energy ultimately determines how much things cost and how easy it is to make things, so the cheaper it is the better.
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Move towards wind or hydro. (Score:2, Insightful)
the biggest FUDs of the XX-iest century (Score:2, Insightful)
The truth is that the coal power plant throws more radioactive material into the environment per unit of produced power, then you'll find contained in the solid concentrated nuclear waste from the properly operated nuclear power plant. When I said "properly operated" I meant reactors operated by sane and rule-oriented people who do not switch off safety dead-switches in order to experiment with a with the exiting "toy" they control (yes, I do refer to power plant operators).
Re:coal (Score:4, Insightful)
but then wikipedia gets stupid: if it's released, it's not nuclear waste. The proper claim is that, while operating as designed
Ah, it's not waste, it's POLLUTION. Nuclear power plant waste isn't pollution because it's not released into the enviroment. Coal pollutes, because it releases a good portion of it's waste products into the atmosphere, including hazardous ones.
Here's the deal: You take the 24 tons of nuclear waste produced by a nuclear plant, grind it up, and mix it with 200,000 tons of something more or less inert, like sand.
Now compare it with the 200,000 tons of fly ash [uic.com.au] contaminated with such things as toxic metals, including arsenic, cadmium and mercury, organic carcinogens and mutagens (substances that can cause cancer and genetic changes) as well as naturally-occurring radioactive substances.
Which is more dangerous at that point?
There's no need for the whole decommisioning process with lots of radioactive material
How often have we extended the life of current nuclear reactors? Most of them seem to have a longer actual service life than their rated 20-40 years. Think of it like a driver's license. They operate for that long, then are re-examined before an extension is granted. Besides, it's just an additional expense. It's not like coal mining that both destroys the enviroment, pollutes, and costs hundreds of miners their lives each year.
Large numbers of windmills in the sparsely populated Midwest could produce a good portion of our power needs, and are nearing cost-effectiveness
I'll tell you what, we get some new nuclear plants up, multiples of the same type so we can get some economy of scale going, and we'll see how competitive windpower, and solar for that matter, is.
Oh, and Lincoln, NE's power company, right in the middle of the Midwest, decided to stop expanding wind power, because their mills were only producing usable electricity about 25% of the time. So it's not like it was saving them generation capacity.
As for Yucca Mountain, that's what you get when you let the government mess with the economy. They're horrible at it. Let the power companies figure something out. For that matter, let them reprocess the stuff.
Re:and who controls it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Mr. Anonymous? There's a Ms. Pandora [wikipedia.org] here to see you. Something about learning the secret to stuffing things back in their bottles and boxes?
I hate to break it to you, but nuclear power isn't going anywhere. It's too damn easy to build a bomb. All we can do is try to restrict access to materials (good luck; as soon as a country has enough industrial infrastructure, that's it) and keep our seismometers turned on "extra-sensitive". Beyond that, there's nothing we can do. Uranium is plentiful, and the technology for a basic nuclear weapon (read: gun device) is not terribly sophisticated. And we simply can't deny countries the right to build up their industrial infrastructure without severely impairing their development and creating new enemies. (Though we can embargo the necessary equipment to make sure they don't get it before they develop it for themselves.) So what would you have us do? Mind wipe everyone who's ever heard of nuclear technology?
Re:Nuclear power is the greenest power (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean an uncontrolled release of nuclear materials from a plant can be devistating.
In a meltdown everything stays inside the containment buildling. The core *melts down* and sits in a pool of slag at the bottom of the containment building inside a big pit constructed soley in case the reactor ever melted down. This is exactaly what happened at Three Mile Island. No release of anything nasty (tritium is rather benighn).
The RBMK type reactor in Chernobyl that exploded was built by the Soviets for the sole purpose of making plutonium. The probems that reactor design had with stability were ignored because it could be refuled without shutting down. What happened at Chernobyl was not a melt down but a steam explosion caused by running the reactor at too low power *AND* not having a containment building.
The steam explosion hazard present with the RBMK type reactor is not present in any commerical reactor in the United States.
It would take several simultanious acts of God to make most Western reactors release any really dangerous materials.
Re:coal (Score:2, Insightful)
we shouldnt be relying on one source of energy for all our needs. as the gas & oil runs out, we will need more nuclear power, but we also need more renewables. If theres a problem with a reactor, or worse still, a reactor design is found to be faulty & power stations have to be shut down, where will we be then? or if theres a problem with the supply of uranium, we're screwed too.
tidal/hydro power, solar & wind power all have a part to play, yes they are all intermittant & dont produce much energy yet, but with improving technology & large installations, they can provide a valuable source of energy that'll never run out & is relatively pollution free. again, we cant just rely on renewables either, that'd obviously be very stupid.
coal should have a big part to play too, filters can remove most of the pollution & its a constant reliable, tried & tested source of power, that isnt likely to run out soon.
theres also other sources of energy that could play a small part, biogas, biodiesel & other plant based fuels. even waste incinerators can provide some power, or heat & also reduce landfill needs. the incinerator in my city heats most of the public buildings in the centre.
a lot of work needs to be done anyway, if we have actually hit 'peak oil', then oil & gas will only get more expensive until we start to use more alternaves.
Re:When do materials for nuclear plants run out? (Score:5, Insightful)
True for plain water reactors (most common outside of Canada and a few other places). The Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor uses a heavy water moderator that will let it burn unenriched uranium. The tradeoff is that the lower temperature of a CANDU means slightly less thermal efficiency, but you don't have to worry about enriching the uranium (energy intensive) in the first place. You can harvest plutonium from the "spent" fuel rods.
The rest of the uranium-238 is depleted uranium waste; it's not pleasant stuff
It's not that bad -- sure it's toxic like any heavy metal but it's only mildly radioactive. The stuff is used as counterweights for control surfaces of large aircraft (lead is used on small aircraft). It's also used in armor-piercing ammunition, where it is nasty, because the impact tends to break the bullet into small pieces which burn easily and leaves uranium oxide all over the place.
But yes, using various breeder reactor cycles the energy supply is pretty unlimited. The biggest argument against same hasn't been so much the waste issue, but the nuclear proliferation issue. Given the state of the world, I'm not sure that that's really a valid argument anymore. (Sure, it's a concern, but that genie is already out of the bottle -- and sending tons of money to unstable regimes because of their hydrocarbon reserves isn't helping either.)
Re:I remember the 1950s. (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem I see are those that cook the books to make things look cheap and those who pretend that something inherently dangerous (like lots of things we use with proper precautions) is not. Everyone that has handled radioactive materials that are active enough to be immediately dangerous knows to treat them with respect instead of pretending there is no problem. The advertising agencies and thinktanks full of horse judges are doing the talking instead of physicists and engineers.
Re:Mr Burns Aside (Score:4, Insightful)
Hydropower, wind, solar, tidal, etc. There are lots of possibilities. I doubt there is any magic one size fits all solution, but there are plenty of existing non-nuclear technologies if we want to use them.
Re:Go ahead... put it in my back yard (Score:1, Insightful)
I believe most people are not afraid of nuclear power. Most people are reasonable and can think - compare with flying airplane or driving cars; everyone knows that its risky but most people are still not afraid of it. I believe its just a smaller and more vocal group that are very much against nuclear power because of their poor education or rather miseducation.
We only need a couple hundred year guarantee (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Go ahead... put it in my back yard (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you know how large of a solor panal array you need to power a single (average) house? It ain't going to fit on your roof! Maybe if you pave over the entire surface of all your neighbors properties with solar cells. And don't excpect them to work at night. Think acres, not square feet.
Put a nice little wind turbine, or two, in your back yard. A nice little 300 foot high tower. Dead birds splattered far and wide. Listen to "whump, whump, whump" as the blades spin, when you happen to have sufficient wind. Don't worry about a one ton blade snapping off, and falling through your house, or your neighbors; insurance should cover that.
We're pretty much in agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
The climate changes from global warming, and associated change in habitat ranges for other species (eg: malaria) is the best chance for the carbon mongers to wipe out the human race. Nuclear power has a better potential -- if people are stupid enough with it -- to wipe out our species outright.
It just struck me--we're contrasting the potential worst case of nuclear with the expected outcome if everything works as it should with fossil fuels. And, if we do that, it's pretty much a toss up.
--MarkusQ