Interesting read on US nuclear plants

[sailor55330]

Given all the recent press on nuclear sites, it seems we have been looking at our own a little closer. Not something that makes me feel good as I recently found out I am 20 miles from one of them.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43475479...ws-environment

[BigguyZ]

To me, this just reinforces that we need to start building new, updated, safer, and more efficient reactors here in the US. Let's bring the old ones offline and get our nuclear crap together.

[JimD]

I think the only thing the article does well is to prove that scary news sells. If you read the whole thing you find out that only two leakage incidents got to somebody's well and that the maximum exposure from any of them is less than a chest X-ray. It also points out that tritium is not a strong emitter, it is relatively easy to shield. But those facts are in the middle to end of the piece, long after they have presented the inflamatory - everybody is leaking - information. Here is a link to some information from NEI:

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats...ntrolstritium/

The author of the referenced piece has access to this information but choses to sensationalize. I think that leakage of tritium has to be addressed by the industry but I am pleased that we are catching it at levels which are not harming people - that is what we should be doing. The informaiton in the nei piece relating the level released by nuclear plants versus what is in self illuminating signs was interesting to me.

Jim

[jackellis]

I agree. Maybe Jim knows of a reference, but it would be useful to see a comparison of exposure levels from chest X-rays, flights on airliners, downwind stack emissions from a coal plant, drinking water taken from rivers that coal plants use for cooling water, exposure to naturally occurring radon gas (a potential issue where I live) and living in Denver.

In his book "Physics for Future Presidents", Berkeley professor Richard Muller points out the incidence of cancer is slightly lower in Denver, where cosmic radiation exposure is slightly higher. He goes on to point out that other factors, including potentially healthier lifestyles, may be responsible for the discrepancy rather than slightly elevated levels of radiation exposure.

Of course, it's much more fun, interesting and profitable to be a scaremonger than it is to be cool and rational.

[dbhost]

I need not read the article. For the most part MSNBC has proven itself worthless to me over the years... Actually, for the most part, journalism is really a dying art, giving way to nothing more than political hack jobs from both sides of the aisle...

[MilDoc]

Just another part of this countries very aged infrastructure. Nuclear plants are decades old in most cases and scheduled for decommissioning, many within the next 2 decades.

I agree - start now on replacement plans for the newest, safer reactors. Build them better. Build them to a single basic design so a problem at one forces a close look at all others.

Coal fired plants emit far more deadly pollution (especially lead) then they are worth.

[LCHIEN]

All the talk about turning off old plants and building new plants is all great and good but ignores one important aspect: Cost.

The reason why we are operating 20 and 30-year old plants is their huge cost - replacement costs today seem to run from estimates around 4-6 billion. Yes, the estimates for new contruction have always been on the billion dollar level but overruns have made real costs into 4x.

Another key issue is decommissioning old plants. If deactivated, then they should be decommissioned rather than just abandoned. Maybe JimD can provide better figures but few plants if any have been decommissioned fully and the estimated costs are in the $5 billion dollar range.

Notwithstanding that the old plant will need to be decomissioned anyway, closing an older plant and building a replacement will take around $10 bln and probably 10-15 years. All this to improve the safety some small factor and have no net energy availability improvement.
The economics make all these extremely difficult to do.

[jackellis]

Loring's estimates are on target, which means the cost of replacing the existing fleet of reactors that produce between 20% and 30% of our total electricity supply will run around $1 trillion (with a T), assuming they can be permitted. We could replace the entire power supply with brand new gas-fired generation for around $800 billion at today's prices (note the caveat) with fewer permitting hurdles.

My colleague is a licensed reactor operator who worked at Rancho Seco many years ago. Her take on Yucca mountain was that the safety requirements were totally unrealistic. If we placed the same safety restrictions on other forms of equally toxic waste, economic activity in this country might well come to a standstill.