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Westinghouse Electric Company has filed for bankruptcy:
Westinghouse Electric Co, a unit of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, hit by billions of dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S. Southeast.
The bankruptcy casts doubt on the future of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in three decades, which were scheduled to begin producing power as soon as this week, but are now years behind schedule.
The four reactors are part of two projects known as V.C. Summer in South Carolina, which is majority owned by SCANA Corp, and Vogtle in Georgia, which is owned by a group of utilities led by Southern Co.
Costs for the projects have soared due to increased safety demands by U.S. regulators, and also due to significantly higher-than-anticipated costs for labor, equipment and components.
Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse said it hopes to use bankruptcy to isolate and reorganize around its "very profitable" nuclear fuel and power plant servicing businesses from its money-losing construction operation.
Also at Ars Technica and Business Insider.
Toshiba's Westinghouse problems have caused the company to sell off other assets:
Toshiba in Trouble
Toshiba Shares Plunge Ahead of Nuclear Investment Writedown
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs
Toshiba Nuked Half its Assets
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @02:01PM (6 children)
Different AC here.
Decentralization is the future of power generation. Solar is an obvious option here, and hopefully there may be many options to choose from. The more the merrier. Just get decentralized, generate your own power, stop being beholden to megacorps, plus environmental goodies, etc etc.
I've heard of some plans for miniaturized nuclear reactors. I think it would be fantastic to be able to plunk one of those down say as a neighborhood co-op. As you note, if something goes wrong, maybe it won't be an OMG disaster. (Of course, people need to get over OMG Nuclear! Chernobyl! Three Mile Island! Fukushima! China Syndrome!) They can put it in My Back Yard. Have you been following that sort of thing and can you add more?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday March 31 2017, @04:43PM (3 children)
Decentralization is the future of power generation. Solar is an obvious option here, and hopefully there may be many options to choose from. The more the merrier. Just get decentralized, generate your own power, stop being beholden to megacorps, plus environmental goodies, etc etc.
The primary reason centralization is a factor in the first place is that there are considerable economies of scale to power generation and transmission as well as dealing with the vagaries of nuclear power regulation. A humongous reactor on an ocean shore will have access to a massive heat sink, a relatively simple and cheap link to the grid for the power supplied, and be relatively simple to deal with the paperwork, inspections, and other costs of nuclear power regulation.
Solar power can outright ignore the safety aspect of course. It has some safety issues (including an overall higher death rate per power generated), but not the enormous tail problem that nuclear power is regulated to prevent. The distributed nature of the power means a traditional power generation system would require more infrastructure in order to link it to the grid. The saving grace however is that demand is distributed as well and much of the demand has available space to link to an adequate solar power system resulting in a very parsimonious linking of supply to demand.
I've heard of some plans for miniaturized nuclear reactors. I think it would be fantastic to be able to plunk one of those down say as a neighborhood co-op. As you note, if something goes wrong, maybe it won't be an OMG disaster. (Of course, people need to get over OMG Nuclear! Chernobyl! Three Mile Island! Fukushima! China Syndrome!) They can put it in My Back Yard. Have you been following that sort of thing and can you add more?
First, this is a real thing. We actually have reactors like this. The catch is that they're intended for use in space. Russia in particular has developed the TOPAZ [wikipedia.org] reactor. The first generation has actually been used in two satellites in the 1980s. The second generation weighs about a ton and can generate around 10kW indefinitely for up to five years, if I understand the technology claims correctly. Anyway, these reactors were self-contained and designed to operate without human intervention for their entire lifespan. So that's a technology demonstration.
The problem is that currently reactors are constantly monitored and in a highly secure environment. But these would be placed in the midst of neighborhoods with modest surveillance. I doubt they've figured out how to get around the risks of someone trying to break into one while simultaneously making the reactor easy to service.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 02 2017, @05:46AM (2 children)
TOPAZ reactors, according to your link, run on highly enriched uranium. HEU can be used to make bombs.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02 2017, @12:08PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 02 2017, @03:00PM
Fair enough. My points are that the small size was achievable because of the use of HEU, and that HEU presents a greater proliferation risk than low-enriched uranium or natural uranium: the fuel can be used directly in a nuclear explosive. For that reason, a reactor running on HEU warrants extra security.
Use of Uranium enriched to significantly less than 93% U-235 (medium-enriched uranium [MEU], defined as approximately 35% U-235, or low-enriched uranium [LEU], defined as <20% U-235), always results in a mass penalty for the reactor core for a given power.
-- http://fissilematerials.org/library/doe94a.pdf [fissilematerials.org]
Fission reactors have been used to power satellites orbiting earth. Weapons-grade HEU has been exclusively used for such reactors due to the extreme size constraints imposed by space launches.
-- http://www.nti.org/analysis/reports/civilian-heu-reduction-and-elimination/ [nti.org]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday March 31 2017, @11:10PM (1 child)
...Of course, people need to get over OMG Nuclear! Chernobyl! Three Mile Island! Fukushima! China Syndrome!...
As soon as you can show me operators I can trust...
...They can put it in My Back Yard
...but not before. It's a people problem, not a technology problem.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02 2017, @12:10PM
As soon as you can show me operators I can trust...
You still have to show that you would trust those who are trustworthy.
...but not before. It's a people problem, not a technology problem.
Indeed.