NRC approves two new nuclear reactors for Georgia

[Atreus21]

Originally Posted by DisgruntledVirus

Fusion is always 50 years away. The NIF (google it) and ITER (IIRC that's the right letters) are the closest to sustained fusion we have currently. And they haven't produced a net gain of energy yet AFAIK.

In other words, don't hold your breath for fusion.

Drat. I guess that means I can't hold out hope for an antimatter reactor either, huh?

[1prophet]

Originally Posted by First

Nuclear power isn't all that controversial actually, even among Dems and some environmentalists. It's just extraordinarily difficult to find places to build these plants since no one wants a reactor in their backyard, and that's just easily verifiable reality. It hurts real estate prices and depresses surrounding businesses even though nuclear is very safe these days, from what I've read.

All in all, it's not a sustainable energy source because you can't find enough places to build them. Can't wait for the day when solar is more efficient and cheap.

Sad isn't it, no one wants nuclear reactors in their backyard but don't bat an eye to the trillions spent on oil wars, environmental damage, lives lost,and the political instability including terrorism so Americans can have their cheap energy, because its OK to shit in someone else' s yard just not your own.

Have Americans deal with the full ramifications of their cheap fossil fuel energy and see how fast they change their minds on nuclear power.

[crashtestdummy]

Originally Posted by Atreus21

Only mildly relevant question:

What is the state of research into fusion reactors?

Wikipedia sez it ain't likely to be commercialized until at least 2050. Bummer. I'll be...almost 70.

I guess that's not so bad. Maybe by then scientists will have figured out that thingie with telomerase that stops aging.

It's funny. In college, I took a course on nuclear fusion by a professor who was a big proponent of the topic. The main purpose it served was to convince me that we'll never see fusion power in my lifetime. The problem lies in the complexity. Look at all the current power sources we currently have: they're all astonishingly simple. Outside of wind and hydroelectric (which are mechanical but also very straightforward) and solar, nearly all power generation comes from of a self-sustaining reaction to generate heat. Even nuclear fission, the main difficulty is limiting the energy output of the process once you have the purified isotopes.

Let's compare that to fusion power. Deuterium and tritium have to be heated to incredibly high temperatures so that the atoms are completely ionized into a plasma, where the heat will force the nuclei to fuse. This plasma must remain concentrated, and also not touch any other matter (as it will chemically react). As it stands right now, there are two popular approaches to maintaining that plasma:

1) Magnetic confinement fusion. Here, a gigantic toroidal magnetic field is created, into which the atoms are fed as they are heated. This field must be perfect in geometry. The biggest problem here is that it takes so much energy to create this field and heat the plasma that the power output needs to be incredibly high to exceed the input. Furthermore, the reaction isn't self sustaining: once you turn off the magnets, the process halts.

2) Inertial confinement fusion. This one's even crazier. You make a beryllium pellet filled with deuterium and tritium embed it in a gold-plated shell, and shoot it into the center of a chamber at about 100 m/s. As the pellet reaches the center of the chamber, it is shot with 92 (or more) simultaneous laser beams that heat and compress the pellet to form the desired plasma. What results is a mini thermonuclear explosion, the heat of which is harnessed for energy.

If fusion is ever to be a viable option, there will need to be far simpler approaches.

[CLite]

Originally Posted by dmcowen674

Originally Posted by dmcowen674
Westinghouse is in name only, it is owned by Toshiba Japan



At least you did not make an asinine comment towards me.

I commend you on your knowledge of the old U.S. Compamy but it is no longer a U.S. Company.

As you can see by link I provided, Japan is the majority stake holder.

You are an amazing ability to ignore the relevant information in a post. I fully understand that Toshiba is the majority stake holder and that has no effect on what I wrote in my previous post.

[cybrsage]

The nice thing about the magnetic bottle approach is the safety mechanism built in...no magnetic bottle, no reaction, reactor shuts down.

Still too complex, though. Too touchy for real world use.

[hal2kilo]

Originally Posted by Modelworks

http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/



There are some good videos on the site, like the passive cooling one where they explain how with no power or intervention from a person the reactor can shutdown and self cool. A really well thought out design.
http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.co...recooling.html

Convection cooling is standard on nuclear subs. Those new designs better have it.

[hal2kilo]

Originally Posted by monovillage

I won't believe it actually happened till they are really built and providing cleaner, safer energy for the citizens.

And all this time I thought you were a small government, nobodies getting any gumbment hand outs from me kind of guy.

[CLite]

Originally Posted by DisgruntledVirus

Fusion is always 50 years away. The NIF (google it) and ITER (IIRC that's the right letters) are the closest to sustained fusion we have currently. And they haven't produced a net gain of energy yet AFAIK.

In other words, don't hold your breath for fusion.

ITER isn't even close to being built yet, but it will produce a rather significant net gain of energy. In grad school my plasma physics professor was quite excited about it, although he still readily admitted that commercialization is a distant, distant future. The step from experimental to commercial is usually bigger (in any industry) than the step from theory to experiment. ITER will accomplish the first step and it's results will be used for the basis of the second.

[CLite]

Originally Posted by hal2kilo

Convection cooling is standard on nuclear subs. Those new designs better have it.

Nuclear sub designs are so secret that the equipment suppliers don't even have benchmarks on the equipment they provide. A company like B&W will give a steam generator to the navy and the navy will just let them know if it passes requirements or not, without giving them any additional benchmarked parameters like steam quality during power excursions. The wall between navy nuke and civilian nuke has been traditionally insurmountable.

[monovillage]

Originally Posted by hal2kilo

And all this time I thought you were a small government, nobodies getting any gumbment hand outs from me kind of guy.

You'd be wrong then. Government has a legitimate place in this country and obligations and duties it needs to fulfill. I'm opposed to Government not doing what it's supposed to be doing and doing what's it's not supposed to.

[Griffinhart]

Originally Posted by DisgruntledVirus

Fusion is always 50 years away. The NIF (google it) and ITER (IIRC that's the right letters) are the closest to sustained fusion we have currently. And they haven't produced a net gain of energy yet AFAIK.

In other words, don't hold your breath for fusion.

What? You don't have a Mr. Fusion powered Delorian yet? Internal combustion is so 1980's.

[hal2kilo]

Originally Posted by monovillage

You'd be wrong then. Government has a legitimate place in this country and obligations and duties it needs to fulfill. I'm opposed to Government not doing what it's supposed to be doing and doing what's it's not supposed to.

So it's OK for the government to completely subsidize an industry as long as you agree with it and are personally gaining from it. Got it.

[monovillage]

Originally Posted by hal2kilo

So it's OK for the government to completely subsidize an industry as long as you agree with it and are personally gaining from it. Got it.

Whoa dude, that's even stupid for you and you've set the bar pretty low.
I support private companies building power plants and making profits.

[Brovane]

Originally Posted by First

Nuclear power isn't all that controversial actually, even among Dems and some environmentalists. It's just extraordinarily difficult to find places to build these plants since no one wants a reactor in their backyard, and that's just easily verifiable reality. It hurts real estate prices and depresses surrounding businesses even though nuclear is very safe these days, from what I've read.

All in all, it's not a sustainable energy source because you can't find enough places to build them. Can't wait for the day when solar is more efficient and cheap.

I believe that is why they decided to start construction at a site with 2-nuclear reactors already.

[rcpratt]

Originally Posted by Brovane

I believe that is why they decided to start construction at a site with 2-nuclear reactors already.

I can't speak for Vogtle, but that's not really why we're doing it. There are a lot of reasons...convenience of proximity for shared staff, shared administrative buildings, existing switchyards and transmission corridors, etc. Although I'm sure the fact that it makes it easier on the public is certainly a benefit.

[DrPizza]

Hurray! Progress at last, after decades of going backwards.

[hal2kilo]

Originally Posted by monovillage

Whoa dude, that's even stupid for you and you've set the bar pretty low.
I support private companies building power plants and making profits.

OK, I'll admit to commitng the sin of hyperbole when I said completely. But, you aren't serious that you think without government subsidies we would even have a civilian nuclear program?
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_...t.cfm?ID=13779

And this.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_rel...port-0504.html

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by dmcowen674
At least you did not make an asinine comment towards me.

I commend you on your knowledge of the old U.S. Compamy but it is no longer a U.S. Company.

As you can see by link I provided, Japan is the majority stake holder.

Originally Posted by crashtestdummy

The definition of company ownership by a country amuses me. Does it really matter where the headquarters are? It's a publicly traded company, meaning that anyone in the world can buy a portion of it. What matters is the location of the jobs, which hasn't really changed.

Wrong yet again. Not one penny comes to the U.S. In fact U.S. taxpayers pay this Company billions of dollars in tax payer money every year.

Do I have to dig up that article from not very long ago?

[CLite]

While Dave is out of his mind regarding "not a single penny" coming to the USA, it is unfortunate that such a juggernaut of a company is majority owned by foreign entities.

Pretty much every commercial PWR design on the planet comes from Westinghouse. The French (Framatome --- now Areva) got their designs from Westinghouse and then proliferated them across all of creation.

Not of that really pertains to this thread though because the AP-1000 is fully designed by USA-based engineers and the only departure of USA-based engineers from the company has been voluntary retirements.

[Paul98]

Finally, I want to see a lot more nuclear power plants up and running.

[monovillage]

Originally Posted by hal2kilo

OK, I'll admit to commitng the sin of hyperbole when I said completely. But, you aren't serious that you think without government subsidies we would even have a civilian nuclear program?
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_...t.cfm?ID=13779

And this.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_rel...port-0504.html

You can take the union of concerned dumbfucks/ Citizen and shove them up your nose. Why bother posting crap from a groups like that ? I don't post crap from Fox or other joke right wing organizations, why try to pass off this shit?

[QuantumPion]

Originally Posted by CLite

While Dave is out of his mind regarding "not a single penny" coming to the USA, it is unfortunate that such a juggernaut of a company is majority owned by foreign entities.

Pretty much every commercial PWR design on the planet comes from Westinghouse. The French (Framatome --- now Areva) got their designs from Westinghouse and then proliferated them across all of creation.

Not of that really pertains to this thread though because the AP-1000 is fully designed by USA-based engineers and the only departure of USA-based engineers from the company has been voluntary retirements.

FYI Westinghouse designs reactors but they don't actually build the plants. The plant is being built by an engineering firm called The Shaw Group. And you are wrong about Westinghouse being the only PWR design. Combustion Engineering (now part of Westinghouse but originally separate), Babcock & Wilcox, Mitsubishi, OKB Gidropress (Russian), Areva, and others all make their own PWR's.

[monovillage]

There's a reason I have such contempt for "The Union of Concerned Scientists and lying assholes"

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/02/uni...-bias-and.html

This is just one of many, many instances where they lie, cheat, steal, beat children, slap girls, kill puppies and tease animals in cages to try to prove a political point.
(i'm just kidding about some of those.)

[Modelworks]

Originally Posted by rcpratt

I can't speak for Vogtle, but that's not really why we're doing it. There are a lot of reasons...convenience of proximity for shared staff, shared administrative buildings, existing switchyards and transmission corridors, etc. Although I'm sure the fact that it makes it easier on the public is certainly a benefit.

I think the biggest obstacles are the transmission corridors. A lot of the lines were put in when population density was lower and everything has grown up around them . My brother has high tension lines behind his home and they were talking about adding another set along side of those but withdrew the plans after they found they just couldn't get the route to work if they widened it with all the homes in the way since they were installed 20+ years ago.

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by monovillage

You can take the union of concerned dumbfucks/ Citizen and shove them up your nose. Why bother posting crap from a groups like that ? I don't post crap from Fox or other joke right wing organizations, why try to pass off this shit?

You might not but most of your rabid kind live by Fox, Hannity, Levin et al and re-regurgitate their talking points ad-nausieum.