First nuclear reactor coming online in the U.S. in 7 years

#5
#5
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#12
#12
NEO said:
Buddy works at Hatch which is part of GP. Used to have a swimming pool and park on their facility grounds for employees. Nice pool. Water was a lil green and made me tingle but the glow at night was worth it.
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My first trip to a nuclear plant after graduating from UT was to look into a suspected Surveillance Sample Holder Tube (SSHT) failure at Oconee in SC. They are tubes welded to the outside of the core barrel to hold metal samples for testing at specified intervals to determine the degree of radiation damage to the reactor and internals. One SSHT was thought to have partially broken free - from the repetitive impact type noise detected by the Loose Part Monitoring System and the specific sensors detecting the noise. We had to figure time delays to satisfy everyone an SSHT was the noise source since the tube wasn't accessible with fuel and the core barrel in the reactor. The best way to do that was to hit the reactor vessel flange with a hammer and measure the time delays to temporary accelerometers mounted around the flange. This was done on one unit shut down for refueling ... with the head removed.

I can tell you it was very spooky climbing down a long ladder and walking around an open, water filled reactor radiating that nice blue light. Everything we carried was taped down and tied off so that absolutely nothing could go in the reactor. I've been in containments many times - a couple while operating at reduced power, and even one time when the Health Physics people knew our names and Social Security numbers, limited our stay time while installing instrumentation, and periodically pulled us out to check dosimetry because we were approaching limits, but none really lived up to that first trip.
 
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#15
#15
AM64 said:
My first trip to a nuclear plant after graduating from UT was to look into a suspected Surveillance Sample Holder Tube (SSHT) failure at Oconee in SC. They are tubes welded to the outside of the core barrel to hold metal samples for testing at specified intervals to determine the degree of radiation damage to the reactor and internals. One SSHT was thought to have partially broken free - from the repetitive impact type noise detected by the Loose Part Monitoring System and the specific sensors detecting the noise. We had to figure time delays to satisfy everyone an SSHT was the noise source since the tube wasn't accessible with fuel and the core barrel in the reactor. The best way to do that was to hit the reactor vessel flange with a hammer and measure the time delays to temporary accelerometers mounted around the flange. This was done on one unit shut down for refueling ... with the head removed.

I can tell you it was very spooky climbing down a long ladder and walking around an open, water filled reactor radiating that nice blue light. Everything we carried was taped down and tied off so that absolutely nothing could go in the reactor. I've been in containments many times - a couple while operating at reduced power, and even one time when the Health Physics people knew our names and Social Security numbers, limited our stay time while installing instrumentation, and periodically pulled us out to check dosimetry because we were approaching limits, but none really lived up to that first trip.
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That sounds worse than the morning I came into work and discovered that my office building was roped off by "Caution Asbestos" tape like it was a crime scene. I'm still waiting for that lung cancer diagnosis.
 
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#18
#18
evillawyer said:
Dems need to support nuclear. It's part of the solution. Dealing with nuclear waste is not an intractable problem.
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As usual the politicians have the issue completely backwards. They champion EVs when our grid is barely keeping up now. Fix the grid first (most likely with nuclear...we have uranium out the wazoo) and then plug in anything you want.
 
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#19
#19
MurphyVol said:
As usual the politicians have the issue completely backwards. They champion EVs when our grid is barely keeping up now. Fix the grid first (most likely with nuclear...we have uranium out the wazoo) and then plug in anything you want.
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I read an article last night about the grid and the inability sometimes to handle the solar and wind power dumped into it. It was pretty good, and I'll try to find it and post the link. There are a few issues - some technical and some financial. A lot of solar and wind is disruptive when it exceeds demand - something has to be idled. If it's a real power plant then you really impact maintenance and operations cost because you can't just shut them down or go below an idle level. If you curtail power at any kind of facility, then you aren't paying the capital cost. When you get down to it, the only people regulating power and demand are utilities like TVA, Duke, etc; everybody else is a bunch of cowboys with no responsibility in maintaining order - they aren't going to regulate grind input. Next the real utilities are the ones who built and maintain the transmission infrastructure; solar and wind are just strap hangers who didn't put in the work.

The other part is technical and very touchy. That's the frequency - 60 Hz, and bad things happen when that is not precise. Overloading the grid or not producing enough power to meet demand or facilities that produce power and are not precise on frequency and phasing are real problematic. Again the real utilities have dealt with and know how to handle it - the renewable crowd not so much. Certainly the solar and wind outputs can vary from moment to moment depending on sun and wind. It's really a mess just waiting to happen.
 
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#20
#20
AM64 said:
I read an article last night about the grid and the inability sometimes to handle the solar and wind power dumped into it. It was pretty good, and I'll try to find it and post the link. There are a few issues - some technical and some financial. A lot of solar and wind is disruptive when it exceeds demand - something has to be idled. If it's a real power plant then you really impact maintenance and operations cost because you can't just shut them down or go below an idle level. If you curtail power at any kind of facility, then you aren't paying the capital cost. When you get down to it, the only people regulating power and demand are utilities like TVA, Duke, etc; everybody else is a bunch of cowboys with no responsibility in maintaining order - they aren't going to regulate grind input. Next the real utilities are the ones who built and maintain the transmission infrastructure; solar and wind are just strap hangers who didn't put in the work.

The other part is technical and very touchy. That's the frequency - 60 Hz, and bad things happen when that is not precise. Overloading the grid or not producing enough power to meet demand or facilities that produce power and are not precise on frequency and phasing are real problematic. Again the real utilities have dealt with and know how to handle it - the renewable crowd not so much. Certainly the solar and wind outputs can vary from moment to moment depending on sun and wind. It's really a mess just waiting to happen.
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Yes, I have skimmed some of that too and it's a mess. I'm not anti-green anything, I'm for what makes sense. If there's a business case for solar, wind, hydro...whatever, that's fine. I'm all for cutting carbon emission if we can. But they will never be more than a miniscule portion of our power (unless there's some miracle scientific breakthrough). Nuclear is the answer but everyone has cowered down to the anti-nuke crowd for so long. Also, most of our politicians are dumb, short-sighted and just focused on the next election.
 
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#21
#21
Nuclear is effectively dead in the West. It will thrive in the East. And there's not much to be done.
 
#25
#25
85SugarVol said:
Did you read the thread title?
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You mean the ones that went $16B over budget and will be the first and last of their kind in their country of design? The ones that took a miracle and the pressures of sunk costs to finish? Ya, we might get some one off builds. But it is effectively dead.

I'm a big nuclear technology advocate. I'd ask why the 70s designs that will be operated safely for at least 80 years can't be built out again. It's the only technology we have regressed on in that we can't do what we did 50 years ago. And it's because the West, fundamentally, can't do it anymore. Can't design it, can't build it, can't regulate it, can't politic it, can't finance it. It's effectively dead here. It will thrive in the East where those problems don't exist.
 
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