Progress Energy announces intention to apply for nuclear permit

The News and Observer ^ | Aug 29, 2005 | AP

[chimera]

Ft. St. Vrain used those water bearings on the helium circulator and when there was leakage from those into the surrounding materials there was no end of problems. The modular HTGR will not have those. Remember, Ft. St. Vrain was a FOAK-type project. We had never dealt with helium circulators that large before.

In the history of engineering science, there have been many cases where some system designs have failed, or fallen out of favor, or been replaced by "better" things (e.g., John Ericcson's original design for "caloric" engines). Relatively few new things work the first time out without problems of one kind or another. That happens, and is how we learn and make progress. We should not emphasize out of context and to an inappropriate degree the failure of one project of one design. There have been gas-cooled reactors in Europe that have had a good operating record. We have emphasized LWR technology in this country because of its history and proven performance. Changing direction is often difficult because of institutional inertia and a relative lack of experience and infrastructure. A robust national program to develop the MHTGR concept would provide real dividends down the line, especially if hydrogen becomes important in the energy mix.

[fallujah-nuker]

The MHTGR looks like it can scale down so it can be used for process heat for oil refineries, saving the longer chain hydrocarbons for cracking into gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel. Also for ship propulsion.

[wolfpat]

When I get a couple of days off I need to google the new High Temperature Gas designs. Looks interesting.
But Progress Energy will build either a Westinghouse AP1000 or the GE ABWR since Robinson and Harris are Westinghouse units and Brunswick is GE.
Pre-TMI, CP&L (the precursor company to Progress Energy) had ambitious plans to go almost all nuclear, with the one reactor at Robinson, 4 reactors at Harris, 3 reactors at the South River Project near Clinton for base load, and the 2 BWRs at Brunswick for swing load (with an option for 2 more).
Then TMI and Carter's 25%+ interest rates turned the nuclear world around. But things are getting better now.
I still question the wisdom of building new plants until Yucca Mountain is in service.

[fallujah-nuker]

"Pre-TMI, CP&L (the precursor company to Progress Energy) had ambitious plans to go almost all nuclear, with the one reactor at Robinson, 4 reactors at Harris, 3 reactors at the South River Project near Clinton for base load, and the 2 BWRs at Brunswick for swing load (with an option for 2 more)."

Would have meant a lot less CO2 in the atmosphere. Sounds like we can thank "nook-you-ler" engineer Jimmy Carter for Katrina! He caused a lot of global warming.

[chimera]

It certainly has advantages from the standpoint of thermal efficiency. I was part of a DOE review group that looked at the various Generation IV concepts and it was coming down to some competing HTGR designs or a liquid metal reactor. Of those, I'd have to go with the gas-cooled models, based on experience and modularity. Westinghouse has a water reactor, the IRIS, but that was more of a "Generation III plus" than Gen IV, which was looking at things like long core life, as well as modularity.

[chimera]

My sense is that the next nuke plant built here will be an evolutionary model, one of the Generation III concepts already on the books. LWR technology is just too entrenched in this country to consider a big jump to Gen IV right away. I think those will have to come out of the DOE "2010 Project".

That said, something like an ABWR sited on a pre-approved site would be a sweet way to go. And somebody has to step up and be the test case for the NRC's "one step" licensing process. I just hope the business model currently in vogue in this country (avoid risk, go for short-term gains) will allow it.

[fallujah-nuker]

Would the liquid metal designs you looked at have been breeders? I think we should be going that route and reprocessing fuel, the present cycle is very wasteful. A lot of the waste problems go away with recycling the fuel, we should be using unfissioned U-235 and plutonium.

I seem to recall an experiment in the seventies, I think under Rickover, where a PWR was loaded in way to produce as much fuel as it used, or at least came close. Do you remember that, I googled but found nothing, but I sure think I do remember it?

With the HTGR I think you could build a power plant in a shipyard and float it to where it will be used. Most of the US population and industry is within a hundred miles of the coast or inland waterways. It would be fueled when it reached its permanent location, and designed for ease of dismantling at the end of its life.

[wolfpat]

Google "Clinch River Project".
The problem with using plutonium in a reactor is that you have to be careful of going prompt-critical.
The French had the Superphenix project. It didn't pan out as hoped.
Reprocessing spent fuel would be good, as about 60% of the original U235 is still in the spent fuel. But nobody wants to take the chance in uncertain political times.
Chem-Nuclear was ready with a reprocessing plant in the 70's, but Carter put the nix on that because he was afraid terrorists would get their hands on the plutonium. Reagan rescinded Carter's order, but by that time Chem-Nuclear had abandoned the plant, and wouldn't reawaken the project because it looked like Kennedy might succeed Reagan.

[chimera]

Those liquid metal designs included both breeders and burners. You might try googling "IFR" or "Integral Fast Reactor", for a very sweet concept that involved essentially a closed fuel cycle.

I agree that long term we're going to have to look at breeders and also reprocessing. Also, because of disposal volume with once-through fuel (like we do now), at some point full actinide recycle is going to have to be done. If it isn't, fuel disposal becomes a problem. Come 2008, "someone" is going to have to make a decision regarding a second repository site. Given the political/legal headaches that Yucca Mountain has had, going through all that again is not going to be very palatable.

The breeder concept you're thinking of was the light-water breeder design that used the Shippingport reactor as a test bed. Basically a fertile blanket was fitted to a more or less conventional LWR core. You can adopt LWRs to get breeding ratios at or close to 1.0, which would certainly extend the life of existing uranium reserves.

[RightWhale]

There were originally two trillion barrels of oil on earth. One trillion has already been consumed. We're halfway. The rest won't be so cheap to get at. Can we afford to build enough nuclear plants to replace the oil that won't be available?

[wolfpat]

Can we afford to build enough nuclear plants to replace the oil that won't be available?

Can we afford not to?

[RightWhale]

That's the point. No, we cannot afford to replace our number one resource. It is too late. Woe unto them who waited thirty years past their warning.

[wolfpat]

Liberals won't be happy until the entire world is pushed back to an agrarian society. They are the reason more nuclear plants haven't already been built.

With oil running out, and clean coal technologies costing more, nuclear is more economically attractive.

With the advent of standardized nuclear plants, and the streamlined licensing process, nuclear plants will soon be able to be built in 5 years.

The problems are all political.

[fallujah-nuker]

Checked out the IFR, sounds good. Found a link with info on the Shippingport LWR breeder:
http://www.atomicinsights.com/oct95/LWBR_oct95.html

Also found a link to a Gas Cooled Fast Reactor (GFR):
http://nuclear.inl.gov/gen4/gfr.shtml

The thing that amazes me is reading back to what was planned when Eisenhower was president, we seemed to have been more advanced in our thinking a half century ago. This link has some interesting editorials:
http://www.atomicinsights.com/AEI_period.html

I love how he refers to "Heavy Metal Power."

[tet68]

It IS time to develope alternate sources of energy!
I'm thinking yuppie health clubs and gyms.

Hook up those stair steppers, those treadmills, those
stationary bicycles to generators and let THEM feed the
grid!

[chimera]

Woe unto them who waited thirty years past their warning

This is a key point that most of us here who understand the problem have discussed in the past. Many policymakers and almost all of the general population do not understand the lead time and up-front investment required to accomplish such a transition. The system simply isn't set up to account for that. We live a society with a political system that has "development cycles" in the range of two or four or eight years. You simply can't do long-range planning on that basis. We've tried it (the CRBR, for example) and as soon as the political winds blow differently the project gets trashed.

I get flamed all the time on FR because of my "lack of faith" in the "free markets" when it comes to this kind of thing. That faithlessness is well-founded when you've got a business model in vogue that stresses minimizing risk and placing extreme weight on sjhort-term profits. IOW, don't do anything that risks the next quarterly bottom-line, because your shareholders will be pissed and you won't get that $15 million bonus at the end of the year. For that reason, private business won't take it on unless they have some reasonable assurance that they'll get a huge return in a relatively short time. So to heck with technology development and infrastructure investments. It's better for "the bottom line" to get into the "energy trading" business and ship jobs over to Bangalore. We see where that has gotten us.

Until we raise up a generation of political, business, and technology leaders who understand the broad view, and who have an understanding that paying some mind to the longer-term picture is in all our interests, we'll be faced with short-term shocks and shortages, being whipsawed by events we neither understand nor control. Unfortunately, the all-consuming greed for personal wealth and status, even at the expense of the country and our fellow citizens, friends, neighbors, and family, holds strong sway among many. You see it right here on FR, and it manifests itself in many forms. I hope it's not too late to change, but I have my doubts.

[Sonny M]

Is this going to be a pebble bed reactor?

[WHBates]

"Sharon Harris a little south of Raleigh has one reactor and was designed to handle 3. Put it there.

It would be a great idea because there is plenty of space in the OCA and Security has already been upgraded. It was actually built to handle 4 units, I think. It has spent fuel storage capacity for 4 units.

But sadly it probably won't happen, it's too close to Raleigh. Raleigh is growing in that direction.

[Diver Dave]

I don't have any knowledge of nuc plant operations, but I did work construction on a couple plants in Washington state (FFTF and WPPSS 3) plus a turn-around maintenance period on another (100N at Hanford).

WPPSS 3 construction was halted at 70 -75% complete. The money pit dried up.

FFTF (FastFluxTestFacility) worked on the liquid sodium piping systems.

Twenty plus years after the fact, I was recently contacted about medical testing available for former workers in the industy.

[chimera]

But sadly it probably won't happen, it's too close to Raleigh. Raleigh is growing in that direction.

We need to work to educate people that having a reliable, economic source of zero-emissions baseload electricity supply near a growing population center is a good thing. It provides a stable energy supply, which is needed for sustained economic growth. Being (relatively) close by means minimizing transmission losses, plus endows a sense of "ownership". IOW, people in a state with a reliable electricity supply at stable prices are a heckuva lot better off than people in, for example, California, when shortages and price spikes are the rule.

People need to realize that they came come out greatly ahead by siting these facilities in their "backyards". I've always thought that the people of Nevada, for example, could really leverage the Yucca Mountain deal in their favor if they'd just stop listening to fearmongers and environmental wacko naysayers.