TVA commissions first new nuclear reactor in US in 20 years

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RegGuheert

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The TVA has just brought online a new nuclear reactor rated at 1.15 GW. The project was completed on budget for $4.7 billion dollars.

This power plant cost a bit more than twice what the Ivanpah concentrating solar generator cost. The new Watts Bar Unit 2 plant uses one-half the land area of Ivanpah but produces over 14 times as much electricity. It also produces 24 hours a day rather than during the daytime only.

It also doesn't kill birds or burn natural gas.

Edit: Changed production ratio from 30:1 to 14:1 and added reference to natural gas consumption.
 
Great news, really. I try to charge my Leaf between 2 - 5am to get maximum share of electricity from our nearby 2 nuke plants. Together with natural gas plants, I get over 100mpg CO2 equivalent to gasoline cars.
 
RegGuheert said:
The TVA has just brought online a new nuclear reactor rated at 1.15 GW. The project was completed on budget for $4.7 billion dollars.

This power plant cost a bit more than twice what the Ivanpah concentrating solar generator cost. The new Watts Bar Unit 2 plant uses one-half the land area of Ivanpah but produces over 30 times as much electricity. It also produces 24 hours a day rather than during the daytime only.

It also doesn't kill birds.
How is the 30 times as much electricity calculated?
 
It takes so long to build these. Planning for this began in the 70's & 80's and it's design is similar to that era. But there are more in the pipeline:

Two new nuclear units being built by the Southern Company, in Georgia, and two more under construction in South Carolina, will employ a new, more-streamlined technology called an “advanced pressurized water reactor,” which is thought to be an even greater safety improvement over older technologies.

From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/17/the-u-s-is-powering-up-its-first-new-nuclear-reactor-in-decades/?utm_term=.38fdc300ada6
 
Too bad it's not msr thorium, uses 95% less fuel to make the same power and makes 95% less waste.

Now if we could be like Japan and offer 50lb nuclear waste powered onboard ev trickle chargers we would have our perpetual motion machines.

Sadly, us citizens can't be trusted with a few grams of nuclear material. :(

So much would be possible with fewer dbags
 
DanCar said:
How is the 30 times as much electricity calculated?
I just took the simple ratio of the claims made by the companies who are responsible for these power plants:

From the Brightsource Ivanpah fact sheet:
BrightSource said:
Average Homes Served Annually: 140,000
From the TVA announcement linked in the OP:
TVA said:
Watts Bar Unit 2 is TVA’s seventh operating nuclear reactor delivering carbon-free energy to the Tennessee Valley, helping to generate enough clean electricity to power 4.5 million homes.
But I see now that those two quotes are not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Another way to calculate the result is to compare their annual electricity production:

Ivanpah 2015 production: 655,926 MWh

Annual Watts Bar Unit 2 Production: 1,150 MW * 365 days/year * 24 hours/day = 10 million MWh/year

So it looks like the real ratio is only 15:1 (or perhaps 14:1 once the capacity factor of the nuclear reactor is taken into consideration). I will fix the OP.

Also note that the base load electricity from a nuclear reactor is immensely more valuable than the electricity from Ivanpah.

Finally, Ivanpah burned 1,251 million cubic feet (mmcf) of natural gas to produce the 655,926 MWh of electricity mentioned above.
 
RegGuheert said:
The TVA has just brought online a new nuclear reactor rated at 1.15 GW. The project was completed on budget for $4.7 billion dollars.

This power plant cost a bit more than twice what the Ivanpah concentrating solar generator cost. The new Watts Bar Unit 2 plant uses one-half the land area of Ivanpah but produces over 14 times as much electricity. It also produces 24 hours a day rather than during the daytime only.

It also doesn't kill birds or burn natural gas.

Edit: Changed production ratio from 30:1 to 14:1 and added reference to natural gas consumption.


why does this comparison remind me of using only exhaust from a gasser to compare emissions?
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
why does this comparison remind me of using only exhaust from a gasser to compare emissions?
An irrational bias against nuclear power and for solar power, perhaps?

The costs were included in the comparison, so that gives a rough estimate of emissions involved in the creation of the two plants.

Per kWh, we have the following rough comparisons:

- Ivanpah consumes about 30X as much land area per kWh produced.
- Ivanpah consumes about 6X as many resources per kWh produced.
- Ivanpah burns infinitely more natural gas per kWh produced.
- Ivanpah kills infinitely more birds and bugs per kWh produced.

Sorry, but Ivanpah is NOT an environmentally-friendly solution to electricity generation.
 
RegGuheert said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
why does this comparison remind me of using only exhaust from a gasser to compare emissions?
An irrational bias against nuclear power and for solar power, perhaps?

The costs were included in the comparison, so that gives a rough estimate of emissions involved in the creation of the two plants.

Per kWh, we have the following rough comparisons:

- Ivanpah consumes about 30X as much land area per kWh produced.
- Ivanpah consumes about 6X as many resources per kWh produced.
- Ivanpah burns infinitely more natural gas per kWh produced.
- Ivanpah kills infinitely more birds and bugs per kWh produced.

Sorry, but Ivanpah is NOT an environmentally-friendly solution to electricity generation.

just missing the cost and impact of the nuclear waste handling and disposal.

In reality, any solution that can be at least partially addressed by the individual is not one that will get support or a level discussion concerning all aspects of its implementation, use and long term ecological impact. This is why Solar does not pencil out. It is because we as individuals can take the matter into our own hands. Big Energy simply cannot allow that to happen.

There is little doubt Nuclear would win on several fronts, but it also loses on a few but lets not get blinded by the number of bullet points because Nuclear loses in a very big way.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
This is why Solar does not pencil out. It is because we as individuals can take the matter into our own hands. Big Energy simply cannot allow that to happen.
I am not a fan of utility solar. PV solar belongs on our rooftops. But not all solar is created equal. Ivanpah is about the worst of the worst when it comes to "renewable" energy.
DaveinOlyWA said:
There is little doubt Nuclear would win on several fronts, but it also loses on a few but lets not get blinded by the number of bullet points because Nuclear loses in a very big way.
Fair enough. My complaint is that CA is eliminating excellent solutions for electricity production such as hydroelectric and nuclear and replacing it with very costly and damaging "solutions" which cannot (yet) replace baseload production.

TVA, OTOH, embraces both hydroelectric and nuclear. The main drawback of that approach is that it makes it a bit hard to justify PV when electricity is so cheap.
 
Well there is simply no "one size fits all" solution and maybe centralized Solar in that area is less feasible but we are seeing too many power plants generating huge profits and huge mountains of waste and have yet to see any hint of a long term solution.

The very fact that Solar is so scalable makes it an invaluable source. Yes its part time and yes its a bit of a land hog but it can also be utilized without using an extra inch of real estate. A great FB post about Target becoming the #1 solar power source among retailers. They have a LOT of roof space! But because solar takes power out of the total control of the utilities, it will not have major financial backing. But we may not need that. The solar movement is doing very well in some areas while just now getting recognition in other areas.

We also have to look at the fact that Nuclear plant costs are not going to go down without some sort of major break thru but Solar is because its not a mature science yet. We are still building it, still figuring it out. As I see it, the only thing that is stopping solar is not land use, its power storage. Solve that and I don't see Nuclear having much of a chance in most of the country.
 
RegGuheert said:
My complaint is that CA is eliminating excellent solutions for electricity production such as hydroelectric and nuclear and replacing it with very costly and damaging "solutions" which cannot (yet) replace baseload production.
Hydro has large environmental costs which is why many large dams are being dismantled on the west coast.

Cherry picking a solar plant which would not be built today as an example of why solar is bad, is just that picking cherries.

If you want to look at nuclear gone bad, there's plenty of examples of those - just north of here there's a plant called SONGS - mothballed because the utility and contractor made a critical mistake and so costly to fix that it was determined to be more cost effective to replace it with other sources of generation. So much for being too cheap to meter.

As far as your earlier claims that nuclear power kills infinitely fewer birds that Ivanpah, that's almost certainly exaggerating - all human activity has an effect on wildlife. Never mind that buildings, cars and cats are the biggest man-made causes of avian deaths, but I don't see many people clamoring to dismantle those.

"Baseload" is a myth since no power plant is 100% renewable. And the problem with large plants is that the effect of one going down is much more difficult to mitigate than distributed generation. Baseload is an old argument used to promote inflexible generators when what we need are flexible generators so we can integrate as much renewable energy as possible.
 
drees said:
Hydro has large environmental costs which is why many large dams are being dismantled on the west coast.
Dismantling the electricity solution with the lowest environmental impact per kWh and replacing it with production with about the highest impact is ludicrous.
drees said:
Cherry picking a solar plant which would not be built today as an example of why solar is bad, is just that picking cherries.
Making straw man arguments about something I never said or implied is just that: a straw-man fallacy.
drees said:
If you want to look at nuclear gone bad, there's plenty of examples of those - just north of here there's a plant called SONGS - mothballed because the utility and contractor made a critical mistake and so costly to fix that it was determined to be more cost effective to replace it with other sources of generation. So much for being too cheap to meter.
I never said nuclear was too cheap to meter. Another straw-man argument?

Regardless, nuclear power remains the safest form of electricity generation.
drees said:
As far as your earlier claims that nuclear power kills infinitely fewer birds that Ivanpah, that's almost certainly exaggerating - all human activity has an effect on wildlife. Never mind that buildings, cars and cats are the biggest man-made causes of avian deaths, but I don't see many people clamoring to dismantle those.
Ignore the massive environmental damage of Ivanpah if you must, but I will not.
drees said:
"Baseload" is a myth since no power plant is 100% renewable. And the problem with large plants is that the effect of one going down is much more difficult to mitigate than distributed generation. Baseload is an old argument used to promote inflexible generators when what we need are flexible generators so we can integrate as much renewable energy as possible.
Actually, the myth is that the grid will be stable without baseload generators to provide spinning inertia. You don't have to take my word for it. Rather, you can look at what happens when grids loose their link to baseload. The massive power outage which took down the entire grid in South Australia is quite instructive. Three things jump out at me:

1) Once the grid connections to other states were severed or weakened, South Australia's grid stability was greatly reduced
2) Large groups of wind generators dropping offline simultaneously was "the straw that broke the camel's back."
3) The failure which occurred in SA was predicted to happen by the grid operator, AEMO, in October 2014, about two years prior to the event:
AEMO said:
While these developments benefit SA and the NEM, having a high proportion of wind and PV generation can present a risk for SA if the Heywood Interconnector link to Victoria is disconnected at a time when all local conventional synchronous generators are offline. This occurs as wind and PV generators, by themselves, are not able to provide the required controls to ensure system security.
What you call a myth is the reality in South Australia.

Further reading:
SA Blackout: Three towers, six windfarms and 12 seconds to disaster
Another Statewide Blackout: South Australia's Wind Power Disaster Continues

Again, eliminating affordable, environmentally-friendly, safe and effective baseload power generation with "solutions" which do not meet the requirements of the electrical grid is a foolhardy adventure.

Will we get there eventually? Sure. But let's take logical steps rather than foolish ones.
 
RegGuheert said:
Ignore the massive environmental damage of Ivanpah if you must, but I will not.
So you will ignore the impact of large hydro, but won't ignore the impact of Ivanpah? Got it.

RegGuheert said:
The massive power outage which took down the entire grid in South Australia is quite instructive.
Every objective analysis of the South Australian outage comes two one of either two conclusions:
1. With or without wind, the grid was going down that day.
2. Adjusting the thresholds at which wind turbines would shut down (grid anomaly ride out parameters) would have either mitigated or prevented the problem.
 
drees said:
RegGuheert said:
Ignore the massive environmental damage of Ivanpah if you must, but I will not.
So you will ignore the impact of large hydro, but won't ignore the impact of Ivanpah? Got it.
I'm not suggesting you should ignore anything. What I am suggesting is that you recognize that the damage from large hydro is much smaller on a per-kWh basis. Statements that large hydroelectric dams do massive damage do not recognize that they are extremely benign on the basis of the amount of electricity they produce.

On top of that, the hydroelectric facilities are already in place. It makes no sense to tear them down and build more-damaging facilities to replace them.
drees said:
RegGuheert said:
The massive power outage which took down the entire grid in South Australia is quite instructive.
Every objective analysis of the South Australian outage comes two one of either two conclusions:
1. With or without wind, the grid was going down that day.
2. Adjusting the thresholds at which wind turbines would shut down (grid anomaly ride out parameters) would have either mitigated or prevented the problem.
But they didn't ride through. You stated:
drees said:
And the problem with large plants is that the effect of one going down is much more difficult to mitigate than distributed generation.
In fact, the large generators had no problem weathering the storm that hit SA last month. But the wind turbines are operating out in the storm with nowhere to hide. It was exactly the distributed generation that could not be mitigated in this failure, not the large plants. Those plants were the last part of the grid standing and were not the cause of the outage.

Yes, the ride-through parameters can be changed, but, by their very nature, wind generators can never be as hardened to weather as the nuclear reactor just commissioned in TN. In addition, they do not provide the rotating inertia that SA needs to stabilize their grid. SA is now faced with a serious question: Can they operate their grid with no synchronous generation in place and/or no link to other states (which have synchronous generators)? Is there even a cold-start capability in SA with no synchronous generators? The likely answers are no and no.
 
I think this could be the last nuke built. At least I think we are near the end of this cycle.
I believe more will get dismantled than built in the coming decades.
In the mean time it should serve well over the next 20 to 50 years.

Has the waste solution been worked out yet?
 
smkettner said:
I think this could be the last nuke built. ...
Many being built in China. http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/RDS_2-36_web.pdf 10 new reactors powered up last year. I agree this technology seems to be surpassed by roof top solar and others. Nuc technology will have to vastly improved before it will make a comeback.
Has the waste solution been worked out yet?
Elon can make use of them on Mars to melt the frozen CO2. :p
 
smkettner said:
I think this could be the last nuke built. At least I think we are near the end of this cycle.
I believe more will get dismantled than built in the coming decades.
In the mean time it should serve well over the next 20 to 50 years.

Has the waste solution been worked out yet?

read somewhere some years ago about a reactor that uses spent rods as fuel. Not as efficient but solves the problem of our "soon to be bigger" that Mt. Everest aka spent fuel rods storage...
 
smkettner said:
I think this could be the last nuke built.
What about the two that DNAinaGoodWay wrote about?
DNAinaGoodWay said:
It takes so long to build these. Planning for this began in the 70's & 80's and it's design is similar to that era. But there are more in the pipeline:
Two new nuclear units being built by the Southern Company, in Georgia, and two more under construction in South Carolina, will employ a new, more-streamlined technology called an “advanced pressurized water reactor,” which is thought to be an even greater safety improvement over older technologies.

From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/17/the-u-s-is-powering-up-its-first-new-nuclear-reactor-in-decades/?utm_term=.38fdc300ada6
smkettner said:
Has the waste solution been worked out yet?
Not in any visible way. There have been some grandiose claims made recently:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN0LjXT323s[/youtube]

Here are a couple of papers on the topic:

A review article in The Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science

An article on the topic in Current Science
 
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