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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:
- VOA News (U.S. government source)
- Fresno Bee
- Chattanooga Times Free Press
- Knoxville News Sentinel
- Bloomberg BNA
- The Hill
- Power Magazine
previously:
US Regulators Issue First Nuclear Plant Operating License Since 1996
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday October 26 2016, @09:16AM
I used the term "hydrogen bomb" but that's misleading, because most of the tritium that gives what we commonly call hydrogen bombs much of their explosive power is created at the time of the explosion from 6Li. Small amounts of tritium are used in various types of thermonuclear weapons, notably fusion-boosted fission designs and possibly the neutron bomb. In those, an initial fission explosion causes a fusion reaction, which produces neutrons that then cause additional fission. In those, the fusion makes the explosion much more powerful that it would otherwise be, but most of the energy of the explosion comes from fission.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-3.html [nuclearweaponarchive.org]
Some anti-nuclear activists wrote [wcpeace.org] that tritium "[...] is used in every warhead in the U.S. arsenal." Implying that the non-proliferation treaty's words about "preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices" [un.org] apply to what the TVA is doing at Watts Bar Unit 1, they advocate that instead of manufacturing tritium, the U.S. could reduce the number of nuclear weapons it keeps on hand, recycling the tritium it already has as that tritium decays.