From my Readers

It appears China may have more nuclear power than the U.S. by sometime in the 2020s.

The AP1000 features modular construction and China has quickly set up specialised nuclear facilities to produce the very large modules - effectively creating a production line for nuclear power plants.

Preparations for six AP1000s

11 November 2009

Chinese planners are moving ahead with three new nuclear power plants based on AP1000 reactors - the first to be developed after technology transfer from Westinghouse.

The US-based reactor vendor is already constructing pairs of AP1000 reactors in China with its partner Shaw at Sanmen and Haiyang, but these new units are to be the first built independently after the technology transfer that was part of Westinghouse's contract. They are also China's first nuclear power plants not located on the coast.

The sites are Xian'ning, Hubei province, Tauhuajing in Hunan, and Pengze in Jiangxi. All have been given the go-ahead for final design and initial construction work, such as site clearance, for the first two reactors at each site. Main construction is set to start on all three sites around this time next year, with commercial operation following around 2015.

A further wave of AP1000 build will include at least one other pair of units at each of the above sites, while up to six new locations are already pencilled in for AP1000 development.

Each of the latest sites is to be led by a different Chinese firm: Xian'ning by China Guangdong Nuclear Company; Taohuajing by China National Nuclear Company; and Pengze by China Power Investment Corporation. Transferral of the AP1000 technology is being carried out by State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation, which will now take the engineering lead on new AP1000s.

Nuclear production line

Having developed its own reactors and imported a wide range of units from international vendors, China is now focused on two designs for mass deployment: the CPR-1000, developed from French 900 MWe-class units imported in the late 1980s, and the AP1000.

According to plans, fleets of these reactors will be constructed with exponential speed for China to achieve a nuclear capacity of over 60 GWe by 2020 - and as much as 120-160 GWe by 2030. Such an achievement would make China by far the biggest generator of nuclear power in the world.

Successive CPR-1000 projects have featured increasing amounts of local engineering and now around 90% of plant components are sourced from Chinese firms. The AP1000 features modular construction and China has quickly set up specialised nuclear facilities to produce the very large modules - effectively creating a production line for nuclear power plants.

 How a 24-year-old technology can save the planet

By Steve Kirsch

Posted: 12/06/2008 08:00:00 PM PST

We are running out of time. Scientists tell us that if we are to avoid irreversible damage to our planet due to climate change, we need a prompt worldwide moratorium on constructing new coal plants and a gradual phase out of all existing coal plants by 2030.

That isn't happening. Our best known climate scientist, James Hansen, has been traveling the globe, explaining the urgency, and exhorting world leaders to phase out coal completely. Leaders in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan politely listen and then ignore him. Germany, often held up as a model of government commitment to renewables, is planning to build more than 20 new coal plants.

Not a single world leader has heeded Hansen's advice. Not in the United States. Not anywhere.

So now what? If the world leaders who are doing the most to combat climate change aren't listening to our top climate scientists, what chance do we have to persuade countries with large greenhouse gas emissions, such as China and India, to change their behavior?

As the founder of five startup companies, I've faced similar problems many times where customers don't buy my product despite all the logical arguments that they should. The solution is the same: I change the product or the pitch until I get a product and pitch that resonates with the buyer.

Now, suppose Hansen skipped the climate science lecture and simply told world leaders that there's now a new technology available for generating electric power. It's cheaper and cleaner than coal, produces minimal waste and generates power 24/7. The fuel supply is virtually inexhaustible and is safer than coal. The technology uses as fuel the long-lived "waste" from today's reactors, and you can build a plant anywhere you can locate a coal plant.

What world leader could resist such a pitch?

Believe it or not, such a power source actually exists. I lied about only one thing. It's not a new technology. It was invented 24 years ago by our country's top energy scientists at our most prestigious national energy laboratory. The project, a new, fourth generation advanced nuclear design known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) was led by Dr. Charles Till, then associate lab director at Argonne National Laboratory.

"No, that cannot be," you are thinking. "If that were true, then surely we would have heard about it and we'd be using it today."

Well, we probably would have heard about it if President Bill Clinton hadn't killed the project in 1994 because, as he said in his State of the Union speech in February 1993, the unlimited cheap clean power from this project was now "unneeded."

Hansen, an expert on all things global warming, accidentally stumbled upon the IFR technology a few months ago and, now, after a lot of research, he's urging Obama to restart the project immediately.

Our government spent $1 billion over 10 years on this project. Our top scientists met every milestone. Why shouldn't we trust them to finish the job? Or shall we allow ignorance, misinformation, ideology and fear to once again triumph over science and facts?

The benefits are huge. The IFR technology could do wonders to re-energize our economy, improve our balance of trade, and fight global warming.

It's ready to be built. General Electric has a commercial design called the S-PRISM. It will cost about $1 billion to restart the project and prove to the world that the claims are true.

If we are to avoid a climate crisis, we will need to show the world that there is a way to generate electric power that is more attractive than coal. The IFR does that. If there is not a better alternative, then what are we waiting for?

Below is  column I thought sums up the nuclear power systems.

By William D. Walker

GUEST COLUMNIST

Published: March 21, 2009

We currently have 104 nuclear-power plants in the United States that run more than 90 percent of the time, day after day, month after month.

As improbable as it might seem, given the continuing political debate over nuclear power, the performance of U.S. nuclear plants, including the Shearon-Harris, McGuire and Brunswick units in North Carolina, is outstanding.

Nuclear plants operate nearly all the time at rated power, producing the maximum amount of electricity that could be produced during a given time period. Coal plants run about 70 percent of the time, wind and hydro 30 percent and solar 20 percent. This is known as capacity factor. U.S. nuclear plants achieved a capacity factor of 91 percent in 2008, and the plants have been operating near this level on a sustained basis for the last 10 years.

All this reflects an enormous improvement in plant management and maintenance compared to the performance of nuclear plants back in the 1970s. The average capacity factor for nuclear plants in 1979 was 56 percent.

Because so many nuclear plants were operating at full capacity year-round in 2008, total electricity generated by the U.S. nuclear power plant fleet was 805.7 billion kilowatt-hours. That's more than three times the amount of electricity generated by nuclear plants 30 years ago.

In other words, without spending a penny on the construction of new nuclear plants, Americans were benefiting from the improved operation of existing plants that produced substantially more power with no air pollution or greenhouse-gas emissions. Much of the credit for this goes to improved efficiency in plant refueling and maintenance. Instead of taking months to complete, refueling and maintenance are now done in a few weeks.

With the increase in nuclear plant-capacity factors, the cost of producing nuclear-generated electricity has dropped. Nationally, in 2007, it was 1.76 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is cheaper than coal, which costs 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, and one-quarter the cost of natural gas-fired generation. It's considered likely that nuclear power's cost advantage over fossil fuels increased in 2008, a year that saw sharp increases in the cost of coal and natural gas.

But what about the future? By any measure, the nuclear industry has made remarkable progress in starting down the path toward new nuclear plants. The current hope is for a number of nuclear-plant orders in the next few years. In 2008, companies submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 13 new-plant license applications for 19 reactors totaling almost 27,000 megawatts of potential new capacity. Next-generation plants can be built to standardized designs, four of which have been certified for licensing by the NRC.

If the United States is to have a secure and affordable supply of electricity, more nuclear-power plants need to be built. That would help solve several problems at once.

First, with less dependence on fossil fuels, there would be less air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. Moreover, by building nuclear plants, the United States moves closer to energy independence, reducing the trade deficit and creating thousands of new jobs.

Nuclear power is clean, safe and affordable. The waste produced is very small in volume and can easily be stored. It is also possible to build different types of reactors that can use some of this material as fuel for a further source of nuclear power. The amount of radioactive waste is thus decreased, and, after a few years of storage, the long-lived material which is non-fissionable can be separated out chemically and stored safely.

In short, nuclear power is not a problem but is part of the solution.

■ William D. Walker is the James B. Duke professor of physics, emeritus, at Duke University.

 The Journal welcomes original submissions for North Carolina Voices on local, regional and statewide topics. Our e-mail address is: letterswsjournal.com

Clean the Cat Box

by Susan von Borstel

 What if there was a cat box that was not only self-cleaning, but it recycled the waste into quality cat food? On a much larger scale a technology is now available to solve our energy crisis. It recycles the dangerous spent fuel we have created in our nuclear power plants into new fuel to make electric power. We have enough waste to power the world for several centuries.

 If it’s true, I would have thought everyone, especially the politicians, would have heard of this clean, safe, economical solution. Such an invention would, quite literally, save the planet from decay. It would solve the man-made part of global warming. It might be the most important invention in history.

 There is a good reason why we haven’t heard of it. Our best nuclear scientists invented the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) over a 30-year period ending in 1994 at Argonne National Lab in Idaho. They were assigned by congress to solve the problems of proliferation, spent fuel storage, fuel supply, and safety. Talk about visionary, long-term thinking!

 Just as the resulting technology was ready to show to the public the Clinton administration, under pressure from anti-nuclear activists, canceled it.  The scientists in Idaho were ordered by the Dept. of Energy to not publicize their accomplishments. Canceling the IFR was a huge mistake. At the time Senator Kempthorne said, "I assure my colleagues someday our nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision. But complete or not, the concept and the work done to prove it remain genius and a great contribution to the world."

 The IFR is a fourth generation breeder reactor that provides a safe, inexhaustible source of power. It's economical, with virtually no waste. It's inherently safe (if the cooling system shuts down for any reason, the reactor shuts down naturally rather than melting down). Best of all the dangerous spent fuel from our current nukes is recycled. The world now stockpiles approximately $71 trillion of fuel in the form of nuclear “waste”.

 Everything about fourth generation power is different.  We have to open our minds to new ideas to overcome aversions to all things “nuclear.” A growing number of people, like Bill Gates, are now supporting 4th generation research. (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

 General Electric has created a modular commercial fourth generation IFR plant design called the S-PRISM. GE is ready and willing to build a plant to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a commercial-scale operation. Are there any other promising technologies that have no emissions and the potential to displace coal plants (whose emissions kill around 25,000 people a year) that are ready to build and scale to the world’s needs?  Wind, solar and other renewables will help but they can’t solve the whole problem.

 We made a big investment to successfully develop safe, clean, economical, electric power generation in the Eighties and Nineties, and the technology is available today when we need it. That seems like a miracle to me.

 Now we need another miracle: We need our government to get on board. We need the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to accelerate the approval of the plant design, and we need to allow utilities to start building this clean, safe kind of power plant. They can even be retrofit into existing nuclear and coal plants.

 For around $50 million we could install an S-PRISM mockup reactor vessel to expedite certification and licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That's a small price to pay to prove we have a silver bullet to solve the global warming problem. This is too good an opportunity to pass up.

 I highly recommend Prescription for the Planet by Tom Blees (available at amazon.com). For ten years Tom consulted with the scientists who developed the IFR, and created a very readable, informative and even funny book that will change the way you see the world (and the news). It turns old fears into rational hope. The IFR is arguably the single most important thing we can do to stop global warming. I believe it’s time to bring it out of the closet. More information is available at thesciencecouncil.com. 

Well Michigan will have to learn the hard way about renewables. Wind and Solar will not do the job especially  in Michigan, there is no space for large solar electric-plants and also the solar panels would be under snow most of the winter time.

By Gretchen Randall

Date:  February 4, 2009

Issue: In her Sate of the State speech yesterday, Governor Granholm (D) said the state of Michigan would reduce its use of fossil fuels to generate electricity 45% by 2020 by reducing coal and natural gas usage for electric power in favor of wind and solar. She has directed the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to evaluate the need for additional new power plants.

Four new proposed coal plants already have plans before the DEQ and will be instructed to resubmit plans explaining why “feasible and prudent alternatives” weren’t chosen.  Michigan currently has 19 coal-fired plants which supply about 60% of the state’s electricity.

Dan Bishop, a spokesman for Consumers Energy, said, "Wind and coal are truly apples and oranges. Wind plants operate somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of the time. Coal plants operate 95 percent of the time." Others point to the number of jobs the construction of the new coal plants would bring to a struggling Michigan economy.  However, environmental groups are happy Michigan has joined Wisconsin and Kansas in delaying or rejecting new coal plants.

In addition, Greenpeace is organizing a huge protest March 2 in Washington D.C. against the Capital Power Plant  (coal-fired) calling it “the largest mass civil disobedience against global warming in American history.” As usual, Greenpeace is organizing attendees, giving them props to use during the march against so-called “dirty coal” and demanding “serious action” against global warming from Congress and the Obama administration.

Comment 1:  Liberal groups will be using the new Democrat majority in Congress and the new president to demand that their plans be put in place as payback for their support in the election.  Look for more demands to come from the unions who also supported Obama.

Comment 2: Hey,  Jennie, what happens when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine?   Hmmmmm? And it snows on the solar panels