First new US nuclear reactor in 20 years goes live

[PoliticAverse]

(CNN)The Tennessee Valley Authority is celebrating an event 43 years in the making: the completion of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.

In 1973, the TVA, one of the nation's largest public power providers, began building two reactors that combined promised to generate enough power to light up 1.3 million homes.

The first reactor, delayed by design flaws, eventually went live in 1996. Now, after billions of dollars in budget overruns, the second reactor has finally started sending power to homes and businesses.

Standing in front of both reactors Wednesday, TVA President Bill Johnson said Watts Bar 2, the first US reactor to enter commercial operation in 20 years, would offer clean, cheap and reliable energy to residents of several southern states for at least another generation.

Read the rest at: http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/us/tennessee-nuclear-power-plant/index.html

[Tikki]

1. Are they going to store the nuclear waste in abandoned coal mines!!!!

Tikki

[PoliticAverse]

2. Apparently the waste will be stored on-site in casks...

See:

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2014/aug/27/nrc-approves-nuclear-waste-storageto-allow-tva-to/265594/

(.pdf) https://tva.gov/file_source/TVA/Site%20Content/Environment/Environmental%20Stewardship/Environmental%20Reviews/Independent%20Spent%20Fuel%20Storage%20Installation%20Facility,%20Watts%20Bar%20Nuclear%20Plant/Final_EA_WBN.pdf

[Tikki]

3. I feel for that community...environment will be f***ked up...

forever....Don't know about coal mining waste damage there but
casks holding nuclear waste are a joke.


Just one of dozens and dozens of articles that tell the truth about the industry..

25 years on at America's most contaminated nuclear waste site

Hanford, Washington, has long been the most contaminated nuclear waste site in the US. But critics say poor management has put the site in further danger.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26658719


Tikki

[NickB79]

6. Onsite cask storage isn't really comparable to the places you cited

This is what onsite dry cask storage looks like:

Which is a little bit different than the thousands of barrels of mostly liquid radioactive waste buried haphazardly that ruined places like Hanford:

[Tikki]

7. Actually it's all about who will over-see storage...the contractors...often..

many, many different contractors over the years and their profit margins
versus a lethal product.

Lethal for as long as you and any of your or my progeny live.

Tikki

[NickB79]

12. My point was, dry casks do not leak like barrels of military waste do

So the danger is far lower than in places like Hanford.

However, your point about contractors is well taken. Nuclear waste storage shouldn't be overseen by for-profit contractors.

Personally, I don't think we should be opening ANY new reactors, given how I personally feel we're past the point of no return with regard to climate change and are a few decades away from widespread societal collapse, but that's just me

[nationalize the fed]

9. Excellent- here's another BBC investigation on Sellafield UK

Sellafield safety concerns uncovered by BBC Panorama
5 September 2016

A BBC investigation has uncovered a catalogue of safety concerns at the UK's most hazardous nuclear site.

Panorama found parts of Sellafield regularly have too few staff to operate safely and that radioactive materials have been stored in degrading plastic bottles.

The programme was told that parts of the facility are dangerously rundown.
Sellafield says the site in Cumbria is safe and has been improved with significant investment in recent years.

The Panorama investigation was prompted by a whistle-blower - a former senior manager who was worried by conditions.

He explained that his biggest fear was a fire in one of the nuclear waste silos or one of the processing plants and said: "If there is a fire there it could generate a plume of radiological waste that will go across Western Europe."...snip
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37255980

Richard Bilton uncovers the truth about Sellafield. He finds an ageing and run-down plant, where nuclear waste is stored in dangerous conditions and insiders fear a serious accident.

US TV doesn't do documentaries like that anymore, shame. What to think about a generation that makes a radioactive mess and leaves it to their descendants to babysit. All to power iPhones and football games. What a disgrace. And using fission to boil water is absurd to begin with.

[Tikki]

10. Thanks for the article.....nuclear..a fools folly.

When I was young it was patriotic and all and now
it is a cruel joke on communities.


Tikki

[NNadir]

11. How come people making this insipid complaint about so called "waste," never give...

...a shit that coal waste is stored, um, in people's lungs and, in fact, in the flesh of every living thing on this planet?

It is asinine to the extreme for people who know nothing whatsoever about nuclear chemistry or nuclear physics to complain about "nuclear waste."

Seven million people die each year, every year, from air pollution.

That's about 800 an hour.

In the half a century of commercial nuclear operations, so called "nuclear waste," has killed no one.

And I note that Hanford, essentially a weapons plant, hasn't cost any lives either. Somehow the people who complain about Hanford have very little to say about Napalm factories, because palmitic acid, the "palm" in Napalm is, um, "renewable."

The so called "renewable energy" industry just soaked up two trillion dollars in the last ten years, with no meaningful result. The accumulation of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere is accelerating, not decelerating. We will never again on this planet see a value lower than 400 ppm.

Nuclear energy, by contrast, saved 1.8 million lives that would otherwise have been lost to air pollution, and it might have saved tens of millions more, were it not for the contempt for science and engineering held by those who hate nuclear energy largely because they are incompetent to understand it.

Have a nice weekend.

[tonyt53]

4. TVA is also building combined cycle natural gas-fired units and shutting down coal-fired units

[asiliveandbreathe]

5. Cheap - cheap??? - really -

Maybe after the billions in overruns..Now, after billions of dollars in budget overruns,



Reminds me of the Big Dig in Massachusetts..talk about overruns...

[OnlinePoker]

8. And TVA just raised electricity rates to their wholesalers

Which, of course, causes the price for consumers to go up. As the following article says, people in that region are being more conservative with their electricity requirements.

http://www.heraldcourier.com/news/tva-electricity-rates-to-rise-oct/article_35c36005-8796-54cf-b4ff-a7f7040a2f84.html

Supply siders say that more supply and less demand will benefit the consumer with lower prices, but it seems the opposite happens more often than not when it comes to the base products we need. The corporations still need to make their profit margins so the consumer gets it in the end.