Skip to main content

Gifts for the Winter Solstice

By

AP1000-cutaway2012 promises to be an extremely consequential year for American nuclear energy. In the grand tradition of sneak previews, the first news to hit made 2011:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved the amended design for the Westinghouse AP1000, a reactor that several power companies intend to use for building the first new U.S. nuclear plants in decades.

“The design provides enhanced safety margins through use of simplified, inherent, passive, or other innovative safety and security functions, and also has been assessed to ensure it could withstand damage from an aircraft impact without significant release of radioactive materials,” NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement.

And that means this in – we hope – the early part of next year:

The certification brings Southern Company subsidiary Southern Nuclear one step closer to receiving the first Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) for a U.S. nuclear plant.

"This is another key milestone for the Vogtle project and the nation's nuclear renaissance," said Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. "The NRC's action confirms the AP1000 design is safe and meets all regulatory requirements. The commission now has all of the technical information needed to issue the Vogtle COL.

Rapidly followed by this:

Once the AP1000 certification is complete, we expect the COL to be issued in short order for the … Summer project [in South Carolina]. Once the COL are issued, we'll begin a significant ramp-up in work ….

This is from the Shaw Group’s earnings call on December 21, so they were a day early. I captured the Summer part, but Shaw is working on Vogtle, too.

It’s like a gift, isn’t it?

---

And now a completely different kind of gift, from our friends at Russia’s Rosatom (click for larger):

Куц-Посейдон

Yes, they’ve taken some of their more athletic and beauteous workers – from the Siberian Chemical Combine, a used fuel reprocessing plant - and posed them after statues of Greek gods and goddesses for a calendar – at least, I think they’re workers. World Nuclear News doesn’t make this clear and neither does the Rosatom blog.

But – it’s fun to imagine that’s who they are – and why not? Russian nuclear facilities often tout the athletic achievements of their workers and this tilts that interest in another direction – toward beef- and cheesecake, true, but Rosatom also does a beauty pageant. It’s a cultural thing.

The statues – in the lower left of the photos - are mostly naked but the workers are at least as clothed as Poseidon there, so decide for yourself how safe-for-work this is before clicking through.

I wonder if this sort of thing is common throughout Russian industrial spheres.

The AP1000.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
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...
23 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
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...
6 comments
Read more

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

By
Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...
4 comments
Read more