US reactors eight or more years away from coming online: NEI CNO

[bananas]

http://www.platts.com/Nuclear/News/8642311.xml

US reactors eight or more years away from coming online: NEI CNO

Washington (Platts)--8Apr2008

New nuclear power plants are more likely to come online in the US in the
2016-2017 timeframe than around 2015, a senior industry representative said
Monday.

Utilities have been talking about bringing reactors into service within
the next seven or eight years, but Marvin Fertel, chief nuclear officer at the
Nuclear Energy Institute, said he believes that projects under development are
now closer to eight or nine years away from completion.

Fertel told an audience at the American Bar Association's spring meeting
in Washington that he hopes the nuclear industry could work on a limited
number of projects, somewhere between four and eight plants, for the "first
wave" of new construction.

If those projects are successful, he said, the "pipeline will be pretty
full" for the next round of construction around 2020.

<snip>

[FogerRox]

1. Before they fuel any new reactor we'll know about Polywell Fusion

about 3-5 yrs.

Burning p-b11 fuel is far more desirable than fission.

[struggle4progress]

2. I've heard "fusion is just around the corner" for more than thirty years

[Zachstar]

4. And you'll hear "Gas in on sale today! a bargin at 10USD" in under 5

[struggle4progress]

7. That OTOH does seem likely

[FogerRox]

12. THe British built the first toridial donut in the late 1930's

The Soviets got higher power in 1968. Since then its the tokamak all the time. But fusion doesnt occur in a donut, stars are spherical....


Its the Tokamak people who have been saying fusion is just around the corner for um... like 40 yrs. But Dr Bussard was the Assistant Dir of the US Atomic Energy commission and he pushed the US to fund the Tokamak, and for the last 15 yrs of his life declared it wont work.

So when the grandfather of the US fusion effort says it wont work, some listen.

[struggle4progress]

14. "Stars are spherical" -- but so what? Macroscopic geometry is irrelevant to the nuclear physics

in any scheme I've heard of: the real problem is that somehow one has to overcome the EM forces (which are inverse square at atomic scales, hence therefore enormously strong). Although clever people continue to do abstractly interesting experiments, nobody's got anything that looks remotely practical

[FogerRox]

15. The analogy of the virtual cathode vs garvity well of star

is similar.

[Zachstar]

5. It will take them time to get to Pb11

However even the fusion they do in early reactors will be enough to take several LARGE coal fired facilities and convert them into productive fusion plants.

[FogerRox]

11. Maybe not, there are 2 major issues, PB11, and the scaling laws

And a minor issue, the carburetor.

If the current device WB-7 works well, then a truncated dodec might be built, then a LN2 cooled version of WB-7, using grid power not capacitor banks, capable of test runs in the 100's of seconds.

The Dodec may prove to be slightly better than the truncated cube.

An 30cm LN2 cooled polywell that can run at hi drive levels for 10 minutes, would make a good platform to test/tweak the carburetor. And after running some DD tests, then switch to PB-11. Theory says there is a p-B11 resonance peak at 50 KV acceleration, fully within the range of such a device.

Then the next device should be twice the size, not 30cm sq, but 60 cm sq, the purpose is too prove the scaling laws. Double the size of the magnets you should get 128x more fusion

Then you build a 3 meter Pb-11 test bed to prove not just Q=1+ but electrical power generation with electrostatic grids.

[enough]

3. Seems like a pretty "optimistic" time-projection, given that the permit phase

has apparently not been completed (or even begun) for any of these projects. I think we are suffering from some amnesia here about how long these projects take to build.

[kristopher]

6. Permitting is a matter of political will, not physics.

In other words, we can change that easily if we see the need.

[bananas]

8. They did change the permitting process, as the nuclear industry desired. nt

[NNadir]

13. Good. Because if they build one reactor, they will outstrip the US supply of solar toys.

Maybe it will take two reactors by then.

Nuclear energy is not only the world's largest form of climate change gas free energy, but for more than two decades it was the fastest growing form of energy.

There are zero fundie anti-nukes who understand numbers, but they are, none the less here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table17.xls

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

It's very clear, except for people who may have failed the part of 3rd grade math that describes "less than" and "more than" concepts, that the increase in nuclear production from 1995-2005 was greater than the total supply of renewable electricity.

Fundies are fun.

Of course, I expect to hear a dumb fundie cry of "bullshit!" like the time a dumb fundie on this website made the claim that 616 is greater than 860 when I pointed out that solar electricity production in California has been falling, not rising.

It was a classic. I enjoyed it very much. 860 < 616. Again, it was classic.

[enough]

9. Yes, I understand that.

I mention the lack of permitting only to say that I think the timeline is optimistic. Meaning that even AFTER the intitial permitting, it's going to take longer than they suggest here, and the permitting hasn't even begun yet.

[NickB79]

10. We'll be well over 400 ppm CO2 by then, and the Arctic will be ice-free

Hooray???