Questions on the Reactor Oversight Process

In light of the fact that a number of companies are preparing applications to build new nuclear plants, NRC Chairman Nils Diaz thinks there are limits to the amount of work his agency can perform:

The number of companies that want to build nuclear reactors is increasing faster than expected, threatening to rise beyond regulators' capacity to process applications, the top U.S. nuclear regulator said.

"The number of applications, the number of players, keeps changing," Nils Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at a news conference in Washington on Friday. "There's a time in which we cannot do more. We are approaching that level."

The commission, known as NRC, is preparing to accept the first applications to build new nuclear reactors since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. Utilities including Dominion Resources Inc., Southern Co. and Duke Energy Corp. have told regulators they expect to begin submitting applications next year.

Diaz estimated the commission can handle 15 to 16 applications for new nuclear plants at one time. The applications will take about 30 months to review, he said. That time frame could drop to 24 months as the commission and the industry gain experience with the process.

This afternoon at 4:00 p.m. U.S. EDT, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on NRC's reactor oversight process. Follow that link 10 minutes prior for information on a Webcast of the meeting.

And later this week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on the regulatory process for new and existing nuclear plants.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Energy, Technology, Environment, Electricity, Nils Diaz, NRC

Comments

Matthew66 said…

With the NRC's announcement, I wouldn't mind betting that utilities drop the idea of applying for COLs for single units. I would expect that utilities will apply to licence as many reactors as they think a chosen site could handle, get the licence, and then decide how many to actually build.

June 19, 2006 at 1:36 PM

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog