
First new U.S. nuclear reactors in decades approved - CWuestefeld
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuclear-20120210,0,3657441.story
======
simonsarris
As a state that's 49% nuclear power (New Hampshire) I really welcome this
news. It almost seems too good to be true.

I hope we will someday be able to close down the single coal plant in my state
(coal is 14% of NH power).

For all its faults I think Nuclear has gotten a bad reputation from an
extremely small amount of catastrophes. Obviously those events are very
salient in the public's mind, but it is worth remembering that coal plants are
a catastrophe _every single day._

There are lakes in New Hampshire with abnormally high mercury levels that have
never been touched by humans save for testing the water. Coal from as far as
Ohio give rise to uncomfortable asthma statistics. I know it won't be soon,
but there's at least one technology I can't wait to shutter.

~~~
r00fus
Have these new designs improved on water usage problems [1]?

Although I agree about the closure of coal plants, it seems nuclear still has
water usage issues (cooling needs) and given the upcoming fresh-water crisis
[2], wouldn't solar be a better bet?

[1]
[http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_technology...](http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_technology/got-
water-nuclear-power.html)

[2] <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12291371>

~~~
tptacek
Is solar feasible at the scale we're talking about? What's the $/kwh?

~~~
ethereal
I have some experience with solar energy at the small scale (1-2 kwh arrays)
and I can say that at the consumer level, the cost for a solar array is now
dropping to roughly $0.50/watt. It's still nowhere near the scale/cost of
nuclear/coal but it's definitely more feasible than it was ten years ago.

Using the figure of $0.50/watt, to construct a 50MW plant would cost $25
million for the panels alone; bring in the infrastructure, mounting, and
remember that the panels lose roughly 10% of their capacity every ten years.
Plus account for cloudy days (not as much of an issue in, say, Arizona) and
you start to realize that solar isn't a very viable option.

It works really well at the consumer/personal/business level but fails
horribly at large, centralized setups. For those about to mention the `good
sunlight' requirement, I will provide some refutation for that: my panels are
located such that there is a good 30-degree angle to the east the sun has to
peak before the light reaches them. The only time that power becomes an issue
is the three weeks either side of the winter solstice; at which point I have
to start watching my power consumption and regulating computer use etc.

I've assembled the array (roughly 1.5KWh) over the past ten years or so; the
cost has been small considering what the equivalent would have been to
purchase electricity from the power grid.

I have rambled on for quite a while here, for which I apologize. I guess the
TL;DR version is: I don't think solar is feasible at large scale, but it seems
to be at a small scale in my own experience.

~~~
pjscott
Is that price per watt of peak power production, or per watt of average power?
Solar tends to have a fairly low capacity factor, which is important to
include in economics calculations.

~~~
ethereal
That is per watt of peak power production.

------
electromagnetic
Finally a step in the right direction. We need dependable energy that can live
with society.

Smog from coal power kills 24,000 American annually (and $53 billion in
damages: IE from its relation to non life threatening diseases like pneumonia)
. Nuclear has killed 31 workers in its entirety of operation. The WHO
estimates Chernobyl may have caused 4,000 civilian deaths since the accident,
the Union of Concerned Scientists says 25,000.

I don't get why a single coal plant is still open when even the worst nuclear
disaster on record is just another normal day for fossil fuel usage.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Probably has something to do with that whole town that's uninhabitable. People
are funny that way.

~~~
zeteo
Haven't heard anyone arguing for the elimination of the chemical industry
after the Bhopal accident.

~~~
nitrogen
Note to dead responder mark_up
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mark_up>): your account (and every
comment you have posted) is, for whatever reason, flagged. Was your first
comment massively downvoted and/or flagged, then deleted?

------
greyfade
It's baffling to me that so many people seem unwilling to accept the idea that
maybe, perhaps, we've learned a few lessons about building safe nuclear
reactors over the last 50 years.

It's also baffling to me that the widespread ecological disaster that coal-
and oil-fired plants directly cause (and I'm not even referring to climate
change!) is somehow more acceptable than the limited, mostly controlled
circumstances of a handful of nuclear reactor failures (which Chernobyl has
proven is not a permanent state of affairs.)

~~~
InclinedPlane
As a rule humans are catastrophically bad at estimating and ranking risk.

People are afraid of strangers abducting their kids, of air travel, of nuclear
power. They aren't generally afraid of cheeseburgers, raising kids who don't
exercise, cars, and coal power, but they should be.

~~~
greyfade
How is it possible that the Human Race has survived until now, given those
facts?

~~~
lincolnq
Our risk estimation brains are based on the ancestral environment. Technology
multiplies impacts.

~~~
marchdown
Okay, so some part of our risk estimation ability comes from risk-evaluation-
specific heuristics that have developed in ancestral environment. But how much
impact does this have on the result of any serious evaluation? How easily do
the ancestral parts get overridden by rational correction or outright
calculation?

------
zeteo
"two new atomic energy reactors at an estimated cost of $14 billion [...]
known as AP1000s, built by Westinghouse Electric Co."

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000>:

"China has officially adopted the AP1000 as a standard for inland nuclear
projects.", "In the spring of 2007 China National Nuclear Corp. selected the
Westinghouse/Shaw consortium to build four nuclear reactors for an estimated
US$8 billion."

So the same model is built in the US for 7 billion each, and in China for 2?

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Regulation is a bitch.

That being said, I could see passing certain demanding regulatory tests and
designs in the US could add a significant amount, perhaps even a billion, but
I would guess raw supplies and labour are cheaper to source in china as well?

~~~
ScotterC
Going rate at the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is 250+ $/hour to just
review documents which are several hundred thousand pages long.

'One of my key concerns was the effect on the schedules for new license
applications – not only do applicants have to pay $273 for every regulator
hour, but they have to pay the staff and contractors that they use to apply
for permission and answer regulator questions. Longer licensing processes cost
more in salaries and other overhead and they push potential revenue out into
the future.'

<http://atomicinsights.com/2011/12/audit-the-nrc.html>

~~~
pjscott
Loan interest also accumulates over time. It's a major part of the cost of US
nuclear construction, because the process takes so long.

------
jakeonthemove
Nuclear reactors are the best source of energy - they just need more research
and improvement, and you can't do that without actually building and running
some of them on a large scale.

The sun is one huge nuclear reactor, and recreating that wherever we need it
is simply awesome. Thorium reactors look promising and if fusion becomes
feasible within ~100 years, that would solve a lot of problems...

The so-called "catastrophes" are nothing compared to the lives lost on coal
plants and the whole coal power chain. Let's not forget that Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are bustling with life, Tokyo is doing just fine with that "deadly
radiation" around them (all things considered, of course), and Chernobyl is
actually very green (no pun intended - plants and trees are growing nicely,
the only ugly stuff laying and rusting around is human-made)...

~~~
lispm
just harvest the sun.

~~~
jakeonthemove
Definitely, but where it's not possible, cut out the middleman and create your
own sun :-)

~~~
smokinn
France is on it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER>

------
ScotterC
Hopefully this will be a good start towards a new understanding of nuclear
power. Also, we need to start building again in order to keep the knowledge of
craftsmen that know how to build these. From pipe welders to concrete
specialists, let alone the nuke engineers needed. N-Stamp skills could be
forever lost in this country if we abandon this power source.

------
xpose2000
Thorium anyone? <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1>

~~~
ChuckMcM
Would be awesome wouldn't it?

The weird thing is that we have to excise, as a species, this notion that
nuclear power's risks are unmanageable. That takes time, and a lot of people
dying. Not from nuclear accidents but just dying of old age and with old
fashioned ideas and an inability to get past their emotions and back into
reasoning about something.

For all its promise, investment in Thorium is a non-issue until we can prove
that we can license and build new nuclear plants. Sure Larry or Sergei could
fund it but the challenge is in the deployment.

The comment above about how they cost $2B for the Chinese and $7B for the US
is indicative of that challenge. That and a liability cap which makes them
insurable in the first place. If you're government gets to just say what is
going to be true then you only pay the cost of building it, which is much much
less.

~~~
afterburner
You're commenting on a article that states a nuclear reactor of current design
was approved, so what's your complaining for? Your "side" seems to be winning,
despite the current crop of designs not being the blessed thorium reactor...

~~~
ChuckMcM
I'm only observing. The AP1000 design was originally proposed by Westinghouse
in early 2004, based on entirely understood physics and components. Here we
are 8 years later seeing the approval. I attribute much of that delay to a
requirement that Westinghouse prove it would never fail. Meeting such a
standard has been, for many years, effectively impossible, even for designs
with a known history.

Thorium reactors don't have any of the 'known' history to rely on and so they
have to prove something which cannot be proven without building one. In order
to get past that cognitive stall, one has to 'take the risk' of actually
building one with the promise that should the risk pan out as being Ok, the
reactor will be allowed to continue to exist. It has been politically
impossible to do that with a new nuclear technology in the US for some time.

Some cynics have suggested that the _only_ reason the NRC licensed it in the
US is because China is going to build them and the US wanted a local copy so
that they could use as a model should they want to take the Chinese reactors
offline "the hard way." I don't subscribe to that level of cynicism.

So ultimately I believe that Thorium reactors are worth pursuing, however any
work beyond theoretical requires a different political climate than the one
we've existed in to this point. Fortunately that is changing. I would love to
find ways to help people with their emotional response to nuclear power, that
will be a necessary part of putting us back on to a path of a sustainable
future.

~~~
DennisP
Fortunately for the cynics, China is making a big investment in liquid thorium
reactors as well.

I've actually had a lot of success advocating liquid thorium to people who are
otherwise strongly anti-nuclear. Having a completely different fuel, with
small amounts of short-lived waste and easily-understood safety features, goes
a long way.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Me too, however I have thoroughly unsuccessful in getting anyone in the
legislature past the word 'nuclear.' Once, during a moment of lucid depression
about the energy picture, someone pointed out that the Indiana legislature
once tried to change the value of Pi to 3.2 to make it "easier to deal with."
[1] It was suggested that if we could get a liquid thorium process redefined
as a 'fossil fuel' then perhaps we could get permits to build 'new' fossil
fuel power plants.

The UK has an interesting thorium program as well and that may yet yield the
needed 'proof of concept' that we don't have in the US (nor can we get funding
to build).

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill>

------
moonchrome
What about micro nuclear reactors ? eg.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S>

I'm unfamiliar with the details but simply based on the concepts :

\- It solves the large scale catastrophe potential, a small reactor should
threaten a very limited area (correct me if I'm wrong)

\- It can be installed incrementally because of small unit costs and could be
distributed/mass produced dropping the costs.

\- Power loss from transmission is cut down to a minimum because this sort of
micro reactor would be installed close to the consumers.

So any drawbacks I'm missing ? Why not subsidize that (if we have to subsidize
something, simply going on technical/economic merits, I would prefer they
don't subsidize anything) ?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
As the article mentions; these reactors are legally just as dangerous as a
full-size installation; it'll take a lot of political legwork to make them
feasible. Said politics would be a tad more difficult than usual; since your
average voter will think of the following:

a) you're literally putting nuke plants in people's backyards. folk will worry
about getting green suntans.

b) assuming they're meant to be autonomous; there's the issue of potential
sabotage. they're small nukes, but they're still nukes. (and if they're
networked, could be even worse than a centralized plant)

PS: perhaps this design would be far more sensible as a cluster (housed like a
normal nuke plant); theoretically the entire plant would be safer as the
smaller reactors would be easier to control and contain if things went south.

~~~
moonchrome
I'm not a nuclear physicist but in what way is a nuclear reactor equivalent to
a nuke ? AFAIK reactors can't actually reach the critical level that's
required to create a nuclear explosion - it's a completely different design,
different isotope concentration, so the biggest threat is exposure to
radioactive materials and maybe heat/pressure explosion. And 4S has passive
safety mechanisms so sabotage would have to be manual, chain sabotage would be
impossible, especially if they were properly monitored.

The biggest safety concern I've heard is that you could use them to create
small quantities of weapons grade plutonium, but I guess if you know how to do
that you could get it in other ways.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
They aren't; that's what people will think of them as though. It's taken us
this long to actually build a new plant period; it'll be a while longer before
people are convinced it's safe to live across the street from one.

~~~
joejohnson
This contradicts what you said in your first post: "they're small nukes, but
they're still nukes. (and if they're networked, could be even worse than a
centralized plant)"

What is the issue? That they are dangerous or that people perceive them to be?

~~~
pjscott
"Nuke", in this case, was being used as a shorter way to say "nuclear
reactor". Nuclear reactors are, of course, completely different from nuclear
bombs.

------
stream_fusion
If engineers could pursue nuclear power free from influence and interference,
then I would have full confidence in their ability to create safe systems.
Unfortunately politics and other forces have a way of always intruding.

Feynman's analysis of the Challenger disaster, and of the engineer who stayed
up in the middle of the night refusing to sign-off on the launch in the face
of commerical and political pressure ought to give anyone pause. In fact he
was able to cite the exact reason for failure that occured - gaseous breach of
the O-rings, due to operation outside design paramters. The fact his career
was also finished, is the icing on the cake.

Chernobyl(cumulative maintenance procedural failures) and Fukushima (concrete
walls too low to withstand the Tsunami) also stand as evidence that science
and engineering doens't exist in a vaccum and always gets co-opted.

~~~
DennisP
Chernobyl was a reactor that (1) caused the reaction rate to increase as the
temperature increased, a property viewed as madness today, and (2) had no
containment building whatsoever.

Fukushima was better, but was still a reactor from the 70s. There were
reactors right next door, built in the 80s with better safety features, that
withstood the same events just fine.

Modern designs are much better than those 1980s reactors.

------
hristov
This is bad news. If you read the article to the end you will see that the
whole thing is funded with taxpayer money. Also, the electricity bill payers
will be expected to pay extra to make up for the additional costs of nuclear
energy.

This is only happening because of subsidies, and if we are to subsidize
something we should subsidize renewable energy which is rapidly growing and
decreasing in cost as opposed to nuclear which keep increasing in cost as new
dangers of nuclear plants get discovered.

And by the way there are problems with this new advanced design too. A
structural engineer that worked on the project says that the shield building
is not well tested and there is no reason to assume that it can withstand the
earthquakes and hits it is supposed to withstand.

pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1033/ML103370648.pdf

~~~
zeteo
"What makes a difference in Georgia is that the state has ruled that
_customers_ are going to have to pay, he said."

Not taxpayers. Subsidies have actually been going to wind and solar for quite
a few decades (see Solyndra) - not to nuclear.

~~~
afterburner
If people are steeling themselves for high electricity bills, then why not
focus on renewables where the current technology is improving very quickly?
When the amazing thorium reactors show up I'll reconsider, but until then...
why be willing to pay big for nuclear?

~~~
ams6110
I would assume (though I'm not fully up to date) that the so-called "safer"
reactor designs such as high-temperature gas cooled, pebble-bed, or thorium
reactors are still pretty much research projects. They are likely at least a
decade or more away from commercial scale feasibility.

~~~
DennisP
One exception is the Integral Fast Reactor, which was near production-ready
when Clinton cancelled the program in 1994. GE-Hitachi has a similar design
called the PRISM which has been approved by the NRC for a full-scale demo
reactor. GE is trying to sell it to the UK to burn up their plutonium
stockpiles.

In the IFR tests at Argonne, researchers cut off the cooling system entirely,
and the reactor just quietly shut down, with no damage.

A great new book on the IFR is Plentiful Energy by Till and Chang, two senior
scientists at the Argonne project.

------
nextparadigms
If they are going to use taxpayer money, can't they focus on something that is
more forward looking like Thorium reactors, or even subsidizing renewable
energy?

~~~
LeafStorm
They are already subsidizing a _heck_ of a lot of renewable energy. And I
don't doubt that there is NSF-funded research on thorium reactors going on
somewhere in the United States.

~~~
DennisP
I'm on a mailing list with some prominent people involved with liquid thorium
reactors, and they're not aware of any current government-funded research in
the U.S. (There's plenty in China, though.)

------
_delirium
Generally good news I think, although as the article hints, the economics
still seem to be tough, at least without any sort of more stringent regulation
or taxation of their ultra-cheap competitors, goal and natural gas. It seems
like either price will have to come down, or these quite generous federal
subsidies will have to be extended to a number of additional new plants, in
order to make the (very large) construction expense have a sufficient ROI for
a private-sector company to undertake.

------
ciparis
It's all going to come down to two things: are the workers any good, and do
they give a shit.

Just like everything else.

------
blktiger
About time.

------
mkr-hn
I thought this was already approved months ago when I first heard about it.
I'm glad it's moving forward.

------
pash
As a counterpoint to all the comments like this:

 _> It's baffling to me that so many people seem unwilling to accept the idea
that maybe, perhaps, we've learned a few lessons about building safe nuclear
reactors over the last 50 years._

I would suggest that the real problem with nuclear energy is that _we don't
know how dangerous it is_. And we have no means of estimating the danger that
isn't obviously inadequate. You see, nuclear disasters don't happen because
engineers are incapable of designing failsafes and containment buildings.
Nuclear disasters happen because it's impossible for engineers to envision all
the possible failure modes. The confluence of events that causes a meltdown is
inevitably something the engineers didn't design for.

In an enlightening article [0] written after the Fukushima disaster, a
physicist and expert on nuclear safety argues that

\- severe accidents at nuclear reactors have occurred much more frequently
than what risk-assessment models predicted;

\- the probabilistic risk assessment method does a poor job of anticipating
accidents in which a single event, such as a tsunami, causes failures in
multiple safety systems; and

\- catastrophic nuclear accidents are inevitable, because designers and risk
modelers cannot envision all possible ways in which complex systems can fail.

In other words, everything we "know" about nuclear safety is wrong.

0\. [http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/beyond-our-
imagi...](http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/beyond-our-imagination-
fukushima-and-the-problem-of-assessing-risk)

~~~
jerf
Your argument is too powerful. It proves engineering as a whole is impossible.
It equally proves we should never build any sort of building, because it could
fall down and kill people and we can never be 100% sure we've prevented it.

It's an irrational appeal to emotion dressed up in rational trappings.

~~~
pash
_> Your argument is too powerful. It proves engineering as a whole is
impossible._

No. It's an argument that we have no good way of estimating the damage caused
by rare, spectacular failures in complex systems. But thanks for the down-
vote.

 _> It's an irrational appeal to emotion dressed up in rational trappings._

No. It's pointing out an epistemic hole, one that is essentially the reverse
of the sunrise problem [0], that has been discussed by countless philosophers
of science, probability theorists, and scientists across dozens of fields. I
suggest you read the article I linked and some of the papers it cites rather
than make a spectacle of your downright hurr-durr ignorance of the subject.

0\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem>

