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posted by janrinok on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the duke-nukem-forever dept.

Various news outlets report that Unit 2 of the Watts Bar nuclear power plant, owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), has begun operation. The reactor is rated at 1.15 GW and cost $4.7 billion ($4.09 per watt). Ground was broken on the project in 1973; construction work was suspended from 1985 to 2007.

Watts Bar Unit 1, which began operation in 1996, is one of three plants which manufacture tritium under contract to the U.S. government for use in hydrogen bombs.

Around the United States, 99 other commercial nuclear reactors are in operation and four others are under construction:

[...] Scana Corp./SCE&G's V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in South Carolina and Southern Co.'s Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia.

In related news, the TVA is taking bids for its unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station in fabulous Hollywood, Alabama. It has received a bid of $38 million.

coverage:

previously:
US Regulators Issue First Nuclear Plant Operating License Since 1996


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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 27 2016, @04:32AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday October 27 2016, @04:32AM (#419281) Journal

    You are talking to someone who claims to be almost 2400 years old. Fissile Nuclear reactors produce waste that will emit lethal levels of radiation for more than 20,000 years. One of the interesting problems for the nuke waste disposal programs is how to mark this stuff as dangerous for people 20,000 years in the future, when all written language we have now will certainly be as obsolete as cuniform. Hubris, Manhattan is thy name. We are become death, the destroyer of worlds. This does not end well. Could it? Maybe. Worth the risk, without the need for weapons more destructive than Russia and North Korea? Probably not. So let's get some perspective, OK?

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday October 27 2016, @06:04PM

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday October 27 2016, @06:04PM (#419505) Journal

    Yes, let's do get some perspective. The 20K years is a bunch of bunk designed to make the whole thing look infeasible.

    The more realistic outlook is that the waste will be hot enough to require isolation for 250-500 years (depending on your standards) if it is separated out from the actinides (aka useful nuclear fuel). Keep in mind, it was radioactive before we dug it out of the ground too.

    High school students generally manage to read 250-500 year old English well enough to get the gist of it.