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from the watch-out-for-the-three-eyed-fish dept.
Late last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its first new operating license in nearly two decades. It was issued to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has finally completed the Watts Bar 2 reactor over 40 years after work was started on the site. The plant may begin generating electricity before the year is out.
Construction on the site was put on hiatus in 1985, but efforts to complete it were restarted in 2007. After work had restarted, the Fukushima disaster led to significant revisions of the safety regulations in the US; Watts Bar 2 becomes the first plant to meet all these requirements. Its license is good for 40 years.
According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the total cost for completion was $6 billion.
The NRC's announcement is here. [PDF]
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday October 27 2015, @05:17AM
Solar. Install once and never pay another dime.
Except:
-the solar panels that break
-the various electronics that fail
Then there are the completely trivial problems of managing the load when the sun is shining in the middle of the day, and when there is no sunlight at all.
Because solar energy and nuclear power have exactly the same power generation characteristics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @05:48AM
Agreed on the nighttime and load balancing details. Of course the cult of musk is going to change all of that with battery packs, etc,etc. I may believe more once they are actually installed and running.
Now solar panels themselves hardly ever break. 99% percent of the time the happily church out lower well beyond their rated lifespans... They do degrade over time, but not as much as you'd think. Inverters do break almost like clockwork around the 10 year mark, but they aren't too pricey and get cheaper/more efficient every day.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:32PM
Wait awhile after they first start installing them. If none of the batteries catch fire, then perhaps it's a well thought-out approach.
I'm not convinced by Musk's battery packs. I think they are optimized for cars, which means small and fairly light-weight and good crash resistance, but it not optimal for a fixed installation. Are they good enough? Who knows. I don't believe the PR materials they hand out. I've heard arguments that for a fixed installation lead-acid is better. (I've also heard other, more exotic proposals.) I don't think flow batteries are good for an installation as small as a house, but why not lead-acid? Well...they *do* take up a lot of room, and they have limited lifetime. (I've had a car battery die after almost 5 years...just before the warranty expired!) But they're unlikely to burn up your house.
OTOH, I'm also not sure that Musk's battery pack can rightfully be compared to the laptop batteries that catch fire. But I can't tell.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.