Progress Energy announces intention to apply for nuclear permit

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

[chimera]

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

Sodium-cooled reactors come in a variety of designs. The FFTF used the loop design, as did Superphenix in France, as well as Phenix (France) and Monju (Japan). The IFR used the EBR-II as the test bed, which was a pool-type design using natural convection and it demonstrated a tremendous degree of inherent safety. There is a third design, the pool/loop concept, kind of a hybrid that incorporates features of both.

The anti-nuke kooks killed the sodium reactor development in this country, especially the IFR, which was truly revolutionary. Once you kill a technology, it's awfully hard to get it back. That's why Generation IV designs are leaning towards the gas-cooled concept, while Generation III is looking at evolutionary changes in LWR technology.

[Lloyd227]

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

Actually, it's designed to handle 4.

My office used to be located in the area where Unit 4 would have been built.

[wolfpat]

Do I know you? Or were you working for Daniels? Or both?

[fallujah-nuker]

"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)"

I've lived in Washington State since 1961, I remember in the 8th grade we debated the WPPSS plan, the class approved it by a large margin. I think at that time (1972 or 73) there were 8 reactors planned. IIRC they ended up completing 1 at Satsop and 1 at Hanford, with 3 more mothballed? I think they planned to use 3 different reactor designs, which blew any chance for economy of scale. I've heard the French just keep building the the same plant design.

[wolfpat]

Is this going to be a pebble bed reactor?
No. If it's built ar the Harris site, it'll likly be a Westinghouse PWR. If not, it might be a System 80 or an ABWR.

[wolfpat]

They didn't get the one at Satsop.

[fallujah-nuker]

Thanks for the update, the cooling tower is very visible from the highway so I thought one may have been built.

[fallujah-nuker]

"The anti-nuke kooks killed the sodium reactor development in this country, especially the IFR, which was truly revolutionary. Once you kill a technology, it's awfully hard to get it back. That's why Generation IV designs are leaning towards the gas-cooled concept, while Generation III is looking at evolutionary changes in LWR technology."

Heres a link for the Gas Cooled Fast Reactor (GFR):
http://nuclear.inl.gov/gen4/gfr.shtml

This link has an overview of Generation IV:
http://nuclear.inl.gov/gen4/index.shtml

[chimera]

The group I was part of liked the GCR concept because of improved thermal efficiency as well as straightforward handling of the coolant flow. Liquid metal gets a little tricky on the latter point.

Then again, we looked at some pretty exotic concepts. One was the vapor-core reactor. That one used an MHD system for first-stage power extraction. Talk about being "out there"...

[wolfpat]

You have my envy. My mom grew up in Seattle and my grandparents lived in Chehalis until their deaths. I loved to visit Washington every other summer.

[fallujah-nuker]

"...Liquid metal gets a little tricky on the latter point."

IIRC sodium reacts violently with both air and water so helium seems better being a noble gas.

[chimera]

The reaction with air is actually quite mild. Place a piece of pure sodium out in the air and this is what you will see. There will be a wisp of whitish vapor appearing from the sodium. It looks like smoke but isn't. It is the formation, slowly, of an oxide layer on the surface of the reactive metal. That's why finding sodium leaks is a relatively straightforward process. Visual inspection is usually all it takes. And since the pressures are relatively low in piping systems carrying liquid sodium, it's a lot less dangerous than looking for high pressure steam leaks. Steam escaping at high temperature and pressure from a pipe can literally cut you in half before you know it.

The sodium-water reaction is more violent because the sodium, with it's extra, loosely-bound electron, is dissociating the water molecule into free hydrogen and oxygen, certainly an explosive mixture. The reaction proceeds vigorously so you have a heat source. When you have a heat source in the presence of a volatile gas mixture, you often get a bang. So yes, you need to be careful with, say, a heat exchanger or steam generator where sodium is on one side. But that is a straightforward industrial engineering problem that the chemical industry works with all the time. Things like double-walled vessels and piping, for example, work very well.

Helium is a good one because of its inertness and also reasonable heat capacity for a light gas. The downside is that it leaks relatively easily. That's not a radioactive contamination problem so much as one where you don't want to lose your helium inventory and thus lose cooling capacity. But helium leak detection is a highly evolved science. Incredibly minute amounts of helium can be routinely detected using existing technology so fielding a system with leakage monitoring should be a manageable task.

[Lloyd227]

"Do I know you? Or were you working for Daniels? Or both?"

Daniel Construction co. I was there from Oct 84 to mid July 86. Piping, Pipe Supports, HVAC Equipment, HVAC duct & supports and Penetration seals before wrapping it up. I left just after Hot Functional testing.

Cheers, Lloyd

[Diver Dave]

WPPSS 3 and 5 are/were located at Satsop. Five got mothballed at 10% completion and 3 at the 70 -75% level.

Plants 1, 2 and 4 at Hanford and I think plant 2 was the only one to come on line. Damn shame!

After 5 shut down at Satsop, the Chinese were out and about trying to buy the unused equipment.

When 3 shut down, massive lay-off of construction personnel. We hit that unemployment office in Olympia like a blight. They just took our name, address and soc sec # and said "See ya."

On our way out the gate that last time, we passed by those twin cooling towers and a co-worker commented - "...a monument to man's stupidity."

[fallujah-nuker]

I guess I never the reaction with air, I remember in chemistry that it was kept in oil in a can to keep air away from it, then a little chuck was cut out and dropped in water. My dad told me that in his high school an English teacher was pressed into service as their chemistry teacher. He was unaware that you only used a small piece of sodium, fortunately he took them outside to a pool where he dumped the entire contents of the can! He did say they did very well on the exams because you did not dare to fall asleep in class.

[fallujah-nuker]

"On our way out the gate that last time, we passed by those twin cooling towers and a co-worker commented - "...a monument to man's stupidity.""

I remember the 12% interest rates drove up cost enormously.. Extremely wasteful that the number 3 plant at Satsop was not completed, most of the money had already been spent. WPPSS ended up defaulting on the bonds, which ended up being unsecured by the State of Washington, I think the bondholders sued the broker and got a partial settlement?

[chimera]

One lesson the obstructionist intervenors have learned is that you can kill any capital-intensive project if you simply delay it long enough so that the carrying charges exceed whatever return on your investment you might reasonably expect. Environmentalist wackos have gotten good at gaming the system so that they delay a project long enough to make it uneconomical to continue. That isn't because the project itself is uneconomical, but is made to be so by unreasonable, agenda-driven delaying tactics. This is what killed many of the projects on the books in the late 1970s, WPSS being one, but others, like the Zimmer plant in Ohio, and some of the TVA units, also can be counted. Delaying tactics drove the owners of Seabrook into bankruptcy court. Diablo Canyon sat completed but unused for 10 long years while the obstructionist lawsuits wound their way through the courts. In the end, they were found baseless, as they always are, but the financial pressure on the plant owners was enormous.

After going through something like that, companies become reluctant to risk losses at the hands of the intervenors. They aren't in business to deal with that kind of crap. The obstructionists know this, and that's why they do it. The result is what we have today, decaying energy infrastructure, very little or no investment in large-scale, baseload power units, a fragile, brittle system of power transmission that is vulnerable to widespread disruption from seemingly minor causes, no new oil refineries coming online in the last 30 years (which makes the supply of gasoline vulnerable to singular events, as we have seen recently), and any number of other symptoms of an industrial and technological society in a state of decline. People in this country better wake up, and quick. The naysayers may have their way even more than they do now if we don't.

[wolfpat]

You're correct except for one tiny thing.
Zimmer was killed by the stupidity of the utility that built it. They ignored NRC documentation requirements. They didn't think they needed to bother with the paper. And in any nuke plant, if it ain't on paper, it doesn't exist.
IIRC, Marble Hill fits your description beautifully. (Unintended consequence: Harris got some good parts really cheap. I remember replacing an Accumulator Level Transmitter with one from Marble Hill)

[WOSG]

Thanks for the link.

This will be a very good reactor design.
No high pressure like the BWR or PWR designs, so fewer
safety and corrosion issues ....



Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor (LFR)
Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor diagram

The Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor (LFR) system features a fast-spectrum lead or lead/bismuth eutectic liquid metal-cooled reactor and a closed fuel cycle for efficient conversion of fertile uranium and management of actinides.

The system has a full actinide recycle fuel cycle with central or regional fuel cycle facilities. Options include a range of plant ratings, including a battery of 50-150 MWe that features a very long refueling interval, a modular system rated at 300-400 MWe, and a large monolithic plant option at 1200 MWe. The term battery refers to the long-life, factory fabricated core, not to any provision for electrochemical energy conversion. The fuel is metal or nitride-based, containing fertile uranium and transuranics. The LFR is cooled by natural convection with a reactor outlet coolant temperature of 550 degrees C, possibly ranging up to 800 degrees C with advanced materials. The higher temperature enables the production of hydrogen by thermochemical processes.

The LFR battery is a small factory-built turnkey plant operating on a closed fuel cycle with very long refueling interval (15 to 20 years) cassette core or replaceable reactor module. Its features are designed to meet market opportunities for electricity production on small grids, and for developing countries that may not wish to deploy an indigenous fuel cycle infrastructure to support their nuclear energy systems. The battery system is designed for distributed generation of electricity and other energy products, including hydrogen and potable water.

[WOSG]

The best answer for fast reactors is liquid metal in the form specifically of liquid lead-bismuth (Pb-Bi). This is how the Russians ran their submarine fleet, they have 50 years of experience with it. Lead is liquid from 150C to 1500C, so is a very stable environment for a very hot reactor core. It has many advantages over sodium, and few disadvantages.

Lead doesnt slow down neutrons like water does, so enables 'fast' reactors that can be breeder reactors.

If we had a fleet of 300 nuclear power plants, 90% of them current-style (BWR etc), and 10% of them fast liquid metal reactors, our nuclear 'waste' problems would go away. We'd be able to recycle spent nuclear fuel in the fast reactors, and reprocessing would cut the waste to 3% of the current level, and that wast would be radioactive but with much shorter half-life, so the level of waste overall would be miniscule compared to the current 'once-through' scheme that sends valuable actinide (plutonium, uranium) potential fuel underground at Yucca mountain.