How the TVA Can Abandon Coal Power
November 8th, 2009
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The TVA or Tennessee Valley Authority is the largest utility and power generator in the United States. It is also an enormous consumer of coal and a major polluter. The TVA is a government-owned entity that was originally formed with the intention of electrifying the Tennessee Valley, upper Southern States and Appalachian region of the US. When formed in the 1930’s, one of the major goals of the TVA was to produce large amounts of low cost electricity from the area’s hydroelectric reserves and coal. This was intended to help bring industry to the area and improve industrial economics in general.
The plan worked quite well, and the availability of electricity helped to attract Alcoa’s aluminum smelting operations to the area and later played a pivotal role in the choice of location for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
However, in the past few decades, the demand for electricity has increased and hydroelectric capacity has remained all but unchanged. This has resulted in the TVA increasingly depending on fossil fuel power generation. Not only has this lead to an extreme increase in air pollution in the Tennessee Valley, it has also resulted in catastrophic ash spills from some of the largest power plants the TVA operates.
As the largest utility and electrical generator in the US, the TVA has also become one of the largest consumers of coal in the US. The use of coal has resulted in a marked increase in air pollution in the Tennessee Valley area. Although efforts have been made to improve the exhaust treatment at TVA plants, the increase reliance in coal continues to damage the enviornment and the health of those living in the region.
TVA Fossil Fuel Capacity:
Coal Fired Plant Capacity: 15,032 MW
Natural Gas Combined Cycle: 4,662 MW
Total: 19,694 MWe
The following is intended to demonstrate a reasonable plan by which a utility as large as the TVA can completely abandon coal power generation and end the use of natural gas for base load power generation in a manner that is reasonable in terms of both time and total cost. The plan also intends to boost the total power generation of the TVA in order to enable the US to once again provide large amounts of electrical energy at low costs to industry and to insure that there is ample room to grow.
The TVA has a number of projects currently underway or under consideration to increase the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear fission. A number of plants have been partially built but are now being prepared for completion. Watts Bar, for example, has two reactors, which were mothballed before construction was completed. After years of sitting idle, the TVA completed Watts Bar Unit 1 in 1996. Now they plan on completing the second unit at the plant.
The Bellafonte nuclear plant was planned as a two unit reactor, but construction hauled, primarily for political reasons, with the first unit 88% complete and the second about 58% complete. The TVA hopes to finish construction of the units and has also proposed adding two additional reactors to the site. It is generally agreed that completion of the first unit is the most economical decision for the plant, as all the major components are in place and most of the construction involves subsystems. However, for the second reactor, it is not entirely clear whether it would be economical to finish the construction of the reactor or to replace it with a newer design. Components of the reactors are no longer in production and may need to be fabricated or modified for reactor two.
Recently, there has been some debate as to whether or not Bellefonte should be completed with four reactors or scaled back to two. Local “enviornmental” groups have fought the project tooth and nail at every opportunity. However, if completed, the Bellefonte power plant would finally allow for the retirement of the massive Widows Creek coal fired power plant, a 1.6 gigawatt power plant, located about 15 miles from the Bellefonte plant location. Widows Creek is the site of a recent ash spill and is the region’s largest source of air pollution.
Currently Active projects or ones recently proposed:
- Complete Watts Bar Unit 2: 1,180 MWe
- Complete Bellefonte Units 1 and 2: 2,500 MWe
- Build the two proposed AP-1000 units at Bellefonte: 2,300 MWe
Total: 5,980 MW
The TVA also owns a number of sites where nuclear power plants were planned or where construction began on nuclear power plants but never got past the earliest stages. These sites are situated in areas where the infrastructure would support large power generation and are near rivers that could provide necessary cooling.
The Hartsville Nuclear Plant was planned to have four boiling water reactors and was to be located in Hartsville, Tennessee. It was canceled in the early 1980’s. The TVA still owns the property, although it is now planning on selling it as an industrial park. The site has one completed cooling tower structure and a second cooling tower foundation. These are the only structures that are likely to be useful in construction of a new plant. There are also areas where the reactors were to be located that have been dug out and have had some foundations poured. These may or may not be partially reused as the foundations of new structures.
The Yellow Creek Nuclear Power Plant was to be located near Luca Mississippi and was planned to have two boiling water reactors. It was canceled in 1984, with approximately 30% of construction complete. The site was to be reused as a facility by NASA for the fabrication of solid rocket boosters, but this too was canceled. The site has the foundation of one cooling tower, which is the only portion of the plant that might be reusable. However, the site also has railroad infrastructure, including on-site spurs and has surface roads that have already been constructed. It also has a connection to major regional high voltage power lines. The area has suffered high unemployment since the cancellation of the nuclear plant and subsequently the NASA project and would benefit from a large project like a nuclear plant.
The Clinch River Site was to host a 350 MWe a fast spectrum breeder reactor, making it the first commercially operated breeder reactor in the 1970’s. The plan was canceled by the Carter Administration over “proliferation concerns.” It might be worth noting that the Carter Administration never seemed to mind the weapons plutonium that was being fabricated into nuclear weapon cores at the Savannah River Site. The site does not have any infrastructure in place but is cleared and is located near a major river and regional power distribution lines.
Suggested Use of these sites as well as existing nuclear power plants:
- Construct four unit ESBWR nuclear plant at the Hartsville Site: 5,800 MWe
- Construct a two unit AP-1000 nuclear plant at the Clinche River Site: 2,300 MWe
- Construct a two unit APWR nuclear plant at the Yellow Creek Site: 3,400 MWe
- Add a third reactor to Watts Bar (AP-1000): 1,150 MWe
- Add a third reactor to Sequoyah (AP-1000): 1,150 MWe
- Add a fourth reactor to the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant (ESBWR) : 1,450 MWe
Total Additional Generating Capacity: 15,250 MWe
Total of proposed projects and projects already under consideration: 21,230
It should be noted that this would yeild a much greater amount of average generating capacity than the equivalent capacity of fossil fuel units. While the total fossil fuel capacity of the TVA is 19,694 MWe, this would represent all of the plants running at full capacity – which is only a small portion of the time. Nuclear plants would be expected to operate at near 100% capacity at all times except during refueling and maintenance outages. Load balancing should not be an issue, as the TVA has ample hydroelectric reserves. During times of low demand, hydroelectric facilities can be kept in standby mode, conserving reservoir levels and allowing for much higher draw rates when necessary.
To provide for effecient load balancing and higher average power production, hydroelectric power stations may require some upgrades to generating capacity. Improved load balancing can also be accomplished by upgrading hydroelectric installations with pumped storage capabilities. The TVA already operates large pumped storage facility at Raccoon Mountain. The Racoon mountain facility can generate 1.6 gigawatts of electricity and can operate at full capacity for 22 hours before depleting the reservoir.
The reason for proposing that an AP-1000 be installed at Watts Bar and Sequoyah is that both plants already use Westinghouse PWR reactors that would integrate well with an AP-1000. Browns Ferry already has three GE boiling water reactors and Hartsville was initially planned to use GE boiling water reactors and has been surveyed by GE for the purpose. The Yellow Creek site would be more than capable of supporting two APWR reactors.
This proposal is for an additional eleven reactors with construction at six sites, three of which are already operating nuclear plants. This is not an impossibly large or ambitious proposal and could very easily be completed in less than twenty years.
The following costs are based on actual projects which are complete or near completion in countries outside the United States. It CAN be done in the US, but only if we actually decide to do so:
The AP-1000 has an estimated overnight cost of approximately 1.2 billion dollars per unit. Construction underway in China has demonstrated that this is an entirely reasonable estimated cost, as the Chinese projects are already ahead of schedule and under budget. Unfortunately, current regulations in the United States have forced costs much much higher than they are elsewhere. Identical units to those being built in China for about one billion dollars each are planned for the United States by Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light and the Georgia Power company at an expected cost of approximately six to eight billion dollars each. The ESBWR reactor is expected to have a per-kilowatt cost similar to that of the AP-1000, with each full unit costing about 1.6 billion dollars. The ESBWR is based on the ABWR design, although it incorporates several design changes aimed at reducing costs. Experience with construction of ABWR reactors in Japan shows this to be a reasonable estimate for total cost. Unfortunately, estimates for the cost of constructing such units in the US are as much as ten times or more what the cost of these reactors would be elsewhere.
If the United States decides to follow the example of countries like France, Japan, Romania, China and South Korea, then the above proposed project could be accomplished for a total cost of under forty billion dollars. Spread over the course of ten to twenty years, this would not be a n unrealistic expense for the TVA. The cost spent on the reactor construction would be recouped through the lower operating costs and increased power production over the course of their operation. Depending on the electricity market the debt from construction could be paid down in as little as ten years.
Estimated Cost Breakdown:
(based on experience in China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Romania with some increase expected due to the expense of labor in the US)
- Four ESBWR reactors at the Hartsville Site, utilizing primarily existing infrastructure for transmission of power: ~ $15 Billion
- Two AP-1000 reactors at the Clinche River Site: ~$5 Billion
- Two APWR reactors at the Yellow Creek Site: ~$8 Billion
- Additional Reactor at Watts Bar: ~$2 Billion
- Additional Reactor at Sequoyah: ~$2 Billion
- Additional Reactor at Browns Ferry: $3 Billion
Total Cost: Approximately 35 billion dollars for this proposal is entirely reasonable, although it could possibly even be done for less, if the overnight costs can be reduced to the levels that Westinghouse and General Electric estimate of about $1000 per kilowatt.
However, for this plan to be workable, it is absolutely imperative that delays due to regulatory issues be avoided and that excessive artificial costs be eliminated. The experience of other countries proves this can be done, but if the current US system remains in place, this proposal will be impossible.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, History, Misc, Nuclear, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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November 8th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
The mentality you are talking about in this plan seems to be dead in the US and most of the old industrial world. It can be summed up as “Lets generate more power than we need and the ample extra electricity will attract buisiness and give room to grow.” It’s valid, and historically, it works quite well. If you built it, they WILL come, whether they be aluminum mills or data centers. This is not really the way anyone seems to run a utility or planning commission anymore. Now it is more like “How little power can we get by with” and you only build additional capacity when you absolutely have to.
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November 8th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Why not? Isn’t having more energy than you actually need an optimal situation? You can never have too much energy. That is for sure. Why not shoot for more generation than absolutely necessary in the interest of attracting enterprise and if you don’t, you can always sell the excess to other utilities.
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November 8th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Q said:
There are many reasons. In part, it is the difficulty and expense of building plants, due to regulations. Also the risk involved (note the number never completed = money down the drain). Another part is that the current industry model makes profits razor thin. A number of states have “decoupled utility profits from consumption” which is supposed to encourage effeciency, but really, it means that they tax the utilities and control rates in a manner that makes it very bad buisiness to upgrade your system at all.
Really, as things are “effeciency” means that you are not supposed to make money on selling more power and it gets even worse, because there are penalties for selling more power, which of course, means producing more power. Also, there are regulations that would force you to add a certain percentage of “green” energy for every new plant you build that is not “green” and that includes nuclear.
The other things include taxes on new facilities versus old ones. Old dirty power plants are actually good buisiness (unfortunately) and the current laws make this even more of an issue. If you build new plants then you might end up not running the old ones all the time and if you do that, you can risk losing your ability to use them. Let me explain: If I own a 75 year old coal plant, standards will improve for coal power plants, but I can still run my 75 year old smoke factory regardless of new regulations, because it is grandfathered. Also, I pay almost no taxes on it because it’s depreciated and also it might be under old tax code. If I shut down the plant for a season for maintenance or even if I just transfer it from base-load to reserve, I could lose that grandfather status.
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November 8th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
BTW: The TVA could possibly get around this or at least some of it, being a federally owned entity. It might be a logical place to start.
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November 8th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Typo in the title, “abandon” is missing an ‘a’.
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November 9th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Engineering Edgar said:
That’s nuts!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10116544-54.html
Yes the point is to reduce consumption, we already consume more than is sustainable. Instead of building another 1000 mega-watt power plant, you save 1000 mega-watts, in other words “nega-watts”. That’s better for the environment and better for our pocket books, as in entails lest investment in expensive infrastructure. Whether you think nuclear is the solution or not, Obama is right to be focusing on decreasing consumption, that’s something I thought everyone agreed on, but apparently not.
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November 9th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Jason Ribeiro said:
Thanks for pointing that out. I corrected it. I actually am not *that* bad a speller. I just overlooked that type-o
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November 9th, 2009 at 3:01 am
Bruce said:
The Jevons effect or paradox always catches up with those “nega-watts”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Yours is a common misconception and not everyone agrees on this precisely because of this phenomena. Only in isolated cases (micro scale) does efficiency pan out to reduced consumption, but when applied to the wide landscape of a nation (macro scale), efficiency ends up making room for and creates more consumption. It’s counter intuitive but the results speak for themselves. Don’t get me wrong, efficiency is a great thing but the expectation that it will reduce consumption on a massive scale is a massive cognitive error. Think about it, machines and buildings are improved and made more efficient all the time, yet consumption rarely ever goes down unless there’s an economic slump like there is now.
Imagine for a moment what could be done if we had limitless cheap abundant clean energy. Places like Australia experiencing a 10 year drought could desalinate sea water and turn deserts into to crop land to help feed more people. Machines could suck the CO2 out of the air to maintain a constant 350PPM in the atmosphere. Unlike the misanthrope Paul Ehrlich, I happen to believe people would do good and be responsible given abundant clean energy. But we don’t have to be THAT ambitious, all Dr Buzz is proposing is a way to clean up a major supplier of energy in the Tennessee Valley to prevent a lot of pollution effectively at a reasonable cost.
Please give up on Amory Lovins and his “negawatts”. Nothing that man has predicted has ever come true.
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November 9th, 2009 at 3:34 am
Bruce said:
Bruce, given the choice of:
A) Reduce consumption and have a small reduction in environmental damage
and
B) Massively increase the supply *and* reduce continuing pollution to close to zero by switching over to a far more environmentally friendly source whose actual front end cost (as opposed to the artificially inflated cost we tend to see) is about the same as any other major industrial project
I’ll go with (B), myself.
You can freeze in the dark or broil in the sun if you like; I refuse to add to the list of several hundred North Americans every year who die because energy costs are too high for them to heat their homes in the winter (no ref but I remember seeing the number 300/yr in a report last year) or air condition them in the summer (ref for ~400 Americans dying of heat waves per year as of 2002 http://slate.msn.com/id/2068612/).
Your argument is built on a faulty premise – we consume more than is sustainable only if you insist on remaining with 19th century sources of power (fossil fuels, wind, and hydro). Going to uranium and thorium gives us more energy than we could reasonably use in the next several millenia. It’s like a farmer saying “we eat more than we can produce” while leaving 90% of his land unused because he can’t be bothered to work it. It’s only true if you assume that we will act like complete, criminally stupid, idiots. Otherwise, your argument falls apart.
Artificially raising energy prices through unnecessary regulation (increasing utilities’ operating costs) and blocking the development of new and cheaper generating capacity (especially while forcing older capacity to shut down due to disrepair) is murder, plain and simple. I suggest that you take a long hard look at what you are advocating, and that you read the obituaries this winter – the death of every old man who freezes to death because he cannot afford to heat is upon your head and those of your fellow travellers.
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November 9th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Bruce said:
Bruce,
Here’s a link to a post i made at talk polywell:
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1588
It contains a quote form a letter that was posted on Jerry Pournelle’s website:
Smart Grid
I’ve worked for several of the largest utilities in the country, so this is first hand knowledge.
The utility companies are pretty well stuck. They’ve been vilified by the current administration only slightly less than insurance companies. As regulated utilities, they have a moral and ethical duty to provide safe, reliable, inexpensive power to their consumers, yet they’ve been hijacked by the green movement. In many places, rather than building clean-coal plants for example, which are the cheapest generation capacity currently available, they are building wind and solar facilities with are the most expensive. More important, these new technologies are unreliable, and can only be used for peak power demands, rather than base-load generation. Power storage technology simply isn’t advanced enough to address the situation on a large scale, and across every climate in the country. Even if we had additional generation capacity, we don’t have the transmission capacity to move the power to population centers.
As demand increases, we are headed for widespread brown and blackouts, and the utilities know it. The lead time on new plants can be up to 25 years, and transmission lines can be 10 years. For some, Smart Grid is a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable for a few more years by reducing power consumption, since they can’t build cost- effective new base load generation capacity (coal, gas, hydro, nuclear), for others, it’s simply a means to advance a green agenda and control our standard of living, and for the rest, a way to boost profits and defer costs.
What they call Smart Grid has been wrapped up in nice pretty packaging, but from the consumer standpoint it involves installing a meter that has two-way transmission capability. This will allow them to do several things, beginning with automated meter reading, and moving on to variable rates, which means charging different rates at different times of the day. Later, it could allow them to ration power, create rolling brown/blackouts on a property by property basis, and expand the use of ’saver switches’ on a mandatory basis to turn off certain appliances (e.g. dryers and air conditioners) whenever the utility company (or in theory, the hacker) wants. I have yet to have anyone explain to me how letting the utilities (and government) monitor and manage my power usage benefits me. It doesn’t.
Now there are modifications to the electric grid itself, but those are somewhat different. Until recently, the grid was managed using a protocol called SCADA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA , which is not accessible outside the SCADA network. That software has been written and tested over many many years, and works very well. Currently there are modifications underway to transition that network over to TCP/IP. It’s not so much that there is new software, as that there’s a new protocol.
Of course there will be firewalls, and private networks and other mechanisms to prevent remote access, but we all know that those aren’t perfect. So essentially, we’re moving from a network that is non- routable to the Internet, to one that is routable to the Internet. I’m not so much worried about solar flares bringing down the grid (which can still happen), rather somewhat concerned about hackers doing so. It’s probably not a huge risk, but it is definitely non- zero.
In this case, the primary motivator behind the transition is money. SCADA requires the construction of dedicated network lines to each facility to be controlled, which are expensive. It requires knowledge of an increasingly arcane technology, and specialized, low-volume hardware components. By moving to TCP/IP they can leverage existing network links, reuse existing hardware and software, and reduce costs. Not a bad motivator, but security and reliability have somewhat taken a back seat.
So the net is, that Smart Grid doesn’t do much for the consumer at all. For people that are retired, spend most of the time at home (or work there), it will likely result in significantly increased utility bills for those who need to use air conditioning, or like to do laundry during the day. I see zero benefit for the consumer in the long run, and many paths to future crises. :end quote
The fact is that conservation causes pain and suffering to those who ca least afford it. Ultimately it means that you have to tell people how to live their lives. You tell them when they can do their laundry. You tell them how much they can heat their house. You tell them how much money they have to spend on their house for insulation. You tell them what kind of light bulbs to buy. In other words you take away the basic liberties that make live worth living and turning live to a socialist existence. is the kind of world you want to live in?
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November 9th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
JCARLTON said:
Are you kidding? Have you read the stuff Bruce posts here? That’s EXACTLY the kind of world he wants to live in. More importantly, it’s the type of world he wants YOU to live in.
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November 9th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
The idea of building more power production than you need at the moment in order to allow room to grow and to hopefully encourage industry and transition to electricity for transport/heating/hot water/industrial processes and other such things is very much alive outside the United States – especially in places like China, Russia and to a lesser extent some European countries.
Aluminum smelters are the classic example. Iceland built a major hydroelectric facility expressly to bring in Alcoa and some other industries which will quickly pay it off with rates and taxes. Russia has built reactors and dams for industrial purposes and China is building nuclear plants and coal plants and hydro plants because they want to continue to grow their domestic industry.
It’s been a long time since the US had the mentality of actually trying to make a lot of energy, as opposed to squeek by with what we have, but that was once the order of the day. The TVA was partially formed to produce ample low-cost electricity. This caused a boom in textile mills in the area. This attracted several major aluminum smelters, later consolidated under Alcoa. It also resulted in major industry coming to the region during the second world war. This included chemical factories, aircraft factories and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Of course, this has historically been a winning formula – if you have more energy than you really need, you’ll find use for it and be more wealthy for it as well. When the first plants were built in Niagra Falls, they initially provided more electricity than the region even needed, and this caused a small industrial boom.
I think an ideal situation would be if an area consumes 10 gigawatts, then you should plan for 15 gigawatts. That would mean you have extra room to do things like encourage more electric heating and cooking, more electric transport, getting railroads to electrify, getting data centers, smelters, heavy industry, mining, high tech production, chemical producers etc etc to come in. Worst case senerio is you have a surplus to sell to other utilities in the area.
The problem is that it’s not the kind of market it used to be. It used to be that the more electricity you sold, the more money you made, so ideally producers wanted to generate and sell as much as they can and open up new markets if that;s what it took. Things are now designed to punish energy usage. It’s economic suicide, but it’s the way it is.
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November 9th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Bruce said:
Excellent idea. I’d like to advance some ways that we can save huge amounts of money:
1. Dump sewage into water ways as is – sewage treatment takes way too much energy
2. Eat all food raw. Cooking takes too much energy. Sure people will die of food born illness, but that will reduce consumption even more.
3. Don’t collect trash and recyclables. That takes energy. Have people burn it in their yards.
4. Replace heavy equipment with slave labor
5. legislate what kind of appliances, automobiles and light bulbs people can use… oh wait, we already do that.
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November 10th, 2009 at 3:08 am
A commenter above, Jason Ribeiro has a great post up over at Pro-Nuclear Democrats highlighting a CNN-Money poll showing that fully 76% of those polled believe that nuclear power is a “safe, clean alternative right now”
It looks like there are more than a few people in the States willing to go that route instead of doing with less.
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November 10th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Chuck P.,
Chem Geek
I think that the idea of this forum is to show people like Bruce why nuclear power is better that others alternatives and not to show our political ideas.Both of you are not doing any favor to the nuclear power cause.And I am not trying to offend any of you,I only try to show that all that us that favored the nuclear power need to bring more people in with realities and not show off them.
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November 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
elgatoso said:
Elgatoso,
While normally I would agree with you, Bruce in particular has shown himself over the past months to be both willfully ignorant and very much politically motivated (don’t take my word for it – check the comments section of about 60% of what has been posted in the last several months and see for yourself what he has posted). I think some people (myself included) have lost patience with him. It’s like trying to teach a goat – all that happens is you waste your time and annoy the goat.
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November 10th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Got it
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November 10th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I think “politically motivated” is a bit kind to Bruce — he’s the kind of Democrat I thought only existed in Republican propaganda. (Unless of course he actually is a secret Republican trying to make Democrats look like ignorant fools. Don’t really think so though…)
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November 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
George Carty said:
Nah, the current crop of Republican leadership isn’t that bright. I’ve seen others like him on other fora, though – one of whom I’m fairly sure was a paid agitator, given that he stuck almost exactly to the DNC’s official talking points lists.
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November 11th, 2009 at 8:48 am
one minor quibble – the Yellow Creek site was to have two CE System 80 PWRs, not BWRs as stated in your blog and in the linked Wiki page (the Wiki page is just wrong on that point). Though a number of the System 80 units were canceled in the 1980s, three units were completed by Arizona Public Service at their Palo Verde site west of Phoenix.
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November 11th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
gmax137 said:
I think I stated that Hartsville was supposed to have the BWR’s. I was pretty sure of that. I looked up some historic documents on Hartsville so I’m pretty sure about that. Uh, I could be wrong about some of the other details.
I don’t know that this really alters this that much anyway. In both the case of Hartsville and Yellow Creek, there’s not much that could be of use aside from the infrastructure like rail lines and the power line network. Also, the partial cooling canal should be worth using.
As far as the actual structures, all that was ever built were foundations. There is one cooling tower that could possibly be of use. As far as the other foundations, I don’t know, but in all likelihood, they would not be much help – possibly could be used for an auxiliary building, but I doubt they’d contribute all that much.
Most reactors these days are designed for their own style of containment structure, so unfortunately, I doubt the sumps and foundations for the old reactors would do a whole lot of anything. But then again, they were never past the initial phase of construction anyway.
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November 11th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
no argument from me on that, drbuzz0. Like I said it was a minor quibble. Whatever concrete work was done for the 1970’s era plants at any of these sites it will surely be demo’d prior to any new construction.
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November 12th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I think that this is topical:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/nuclear-roundup-new-plant-costs-are.html
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