|
To E Mail me use this address Donlutz29@comcast.net |
|
Links to Pages |
First lets look at the national electric energy scene. These numbers are typical since the EIA is always several years old in these data. There are 3,953 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) generated in the U. S. each year. The breakdown of electric energy sources is the following:
What does the future hold? Coal is the dirtiest fuel and also exhausts the most CO2 green house gas per kWh generated. Natural gas is in short supply and also we need it to heat our homes. All hydro sites are used. Petroleum is reserve for transportation. Are renewables the answer? I don't think so even if the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra club, the California Energy Commission, the Presbyterians for the Restoration of Creation. and the San Jose Mercury News do think so. That leaves nuclear. New Nuclear Plant Status, 32 new plants planned Looks like the nuclear revolution is on the way. But not in California. New Nuclear Plant Status
Below is a chart of the California Energy Commission's estimate of the cost of electrical energy.
It is plain to see where the future sources are headed. There are no new hydro sites and very few new wind sites. California is not a windy state, Coal will no longer be permitted. Solar will always be too expensive. Natural gas plants are making up the new needed electrical additions. Both the cost of energy and the CO2 emissions will increase even though California has decreed that global warming measures are in place. They are not, and the governor is resorting to some silly cap and trade measures of CO2 as the new method of lowering it. Nuclear is always touted by the environmentalists as being too expensive. Not so from these numbers. Recent News Flash
More Than Half of Americans Feel U.S. Energy Problems Won't Be Solved In
Their Lifetime, Says RBC Capital Markets Survey Will we ever run out of uranium as the fuel for nuclear power plants? How much uranium is there in seawater? Seawater contains 3.3x10^(9) (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium, so the 1.4x10^18 tonne of seawater contains 4.6x10^9 tonne of uranium. All the world's electricity usage, 650 GWe could therefore be supplied by the uranium in seawater for 7 million years. Tell me what you think. What is the situation with the Commercial Nuclear Power plants? There are currently 104 commercial Nuclear Power Plants operating in the United States. The pertinent data of these plants are the following:
I don't think Combustion Engineering and Babcock & Wilcox are still in business. They probably have been bought by some other organization. Babcock & Wilcox originally had 9 plants, but two are shutdown permanently. These are the ill fated Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and Rancho Seco in California. More on these later. The term PWR means pressurized water type plants and BWR means boiling water type plants. The PWR plants operate with pressurized single phase water systems whereas the General Electric BWR plants boil water in the reactor and the steam goes directly to the turbine. Most of the commercial nuclear reactor plants are going on thirty years old. They have served us well and have operated safely during that time. Most of these plants are going through or have gone though a re-licensing function. But how long will they be around? They will have to be eventually replaced. What will we use for the additional electric energy due to population growth and the need for replacements? I submit that renewables will not be a significant contributor. Conservation and renewable energy systems, as the religious and environmentalists organizations suggest, will certainly not suffice. A Moody's Investor Service Report. Oct. 13, 2004 – As the cost of generating electricity from fossil-fueled power plants has risen in recent years due to climbing fuel costs, the competitive advantage of nuclear power plants has grown, a new report issued by Moody’s Investors Service concludes. “Nuclear plants have become extremely attractive due to their competitive cost structure … In fact, as nuclear plants continue to operate above 90% capacity, nuclear power should continue to compete well against almost any form of power with the exception of hydroelectric utilities, which have no fuel costs,” states the report released in late September. The report is entitled, “U.S. Nuclear Assets Remain Attractive Acquisition Targets; With Potentially Favorable Credit Implications for Efficient Operators.” It is the third report in a series of special comments by Moody’s on the U.S. nuclear energy industry. The average electricity production cost (fuel and operations and maintenance) at nuclear power plants in 2003 was 1.72 cents/kilowatt-hour (kWh), according to data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Electric Utility Cost Group. The average production cost at coal-fired power plants was 1.8 cents/kWh; at natural gas-fired power plants was 5.77 cents/kWh; and oil-fired plants was 5.33 cents/kWh, according to the FERC/EUCG data. While the pace of plant acquisitions has slowed the past few years, “owners of multiple nuclear plants continue to be interested in acquiring nuclear facilities because well-operated plants are low-cost, competitive, and reliable sources of generating capacity that can be counted on well into the future,” the report states. Of the 103 reactors operating in 31 states, owner Capacity Factors It is significant to note that the capacity factors of the nuclear plants are between 89 an 91 percent if we exclude the B & W plants. Recall that the capacity factors of wind and solar system values range between 15 to 22 percent. This means that the nuclear plants generate approximately 89/20 = 4.5 times more electric energy per installed kWe capacity. This fact alone demonstrates that nuclear has an enormous economic advantage over the renewable energy systems. The cost of electrical energy is inversely proportional to the capacity factor. In other words the energy system gets paid in proportion to the amount of electrical energy it produces. Babcock & Wilcox What went wrong with Three Mile Island? The accident at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979, was the most serious in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history, even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community. But it brought about sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations. It also caused the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to tighten and heighten its regulatory oversight. Resultant changes in the nuclear power industry and at the NRC had the effect of enhancing safety. The nine B & W plants deserve an explanation because one of them, the Three Mile Island plant had the worst ever accident that ruined the plant. The other plant, Rancho Seco, experienced temperature transients that scared the owners and it was abandoned. My understanding of the Three Mile Island accident is the following: All of the B&W plants were fitted with once-through steam generators. This type of unit does not have a large reserve of water as the recirculation boilers do. This was part of the problem. The accident started when a condensate pump tripped and stopped the feedwater flow to the steam generators. The low feedwater flow caused the reactor primary water side to heat up immediately. This caused the primary system pressure to rise. The pressure relief valve on the pressurizer open as it should have and relieve the over pressure by venting the steam to a holding tank located in another building. The accident really was initiated because the relief valve stuck open and allowed the primary system to depressurize. But the reactor emergency core sprays operated and sprayed water into the reactor vessel to prevent the fuel elements from over heating . The reactor shutdown as it was supposes to do. Now the gross operator error occurred. When the holding tank in the other building over flowed the operators thought there was too much water flow and they shut off the emergency reactor core sprays. The reactor core went partially dry and some of the fuel elements melted. Thus it was a mess, but it did become under control without radioactive fission products exhausted to the atmosphere. No one was over exposed to radiation. But the plant was a mess and could not be recovered. An important lesson was learned. The control and operating functions of the safety grade systems should be isolated in a compartment where the operators cannot shutdown or compromise the safety system operations in any manner. Safety grade systems for a nuclear reactor plant have always been designed to be very reliable and redundancy is provided. They are tested and the reliability is verified statistically. In fact the Russian Chernobyl plant failure was initiated because the operators were in a hurry to get some routine testing done and they shutoff the safety control systems. Also the Russians do not use a containment vessel around their primary reactor systems. This would have tremendously mitigated their accident. After the event of Three Mile Island and the thermal temperature transients of Rancho Seco, the B&W units have been operated safely.
Rancho Seco Rancho Seco was another Babcock Wilcox plant identical to Three Mile Island. It was owned and operated by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). The plant was located just South of Sacramento. The problem was also due to the once through steam generators. A small unbalance between the feed water and primary system flow resulted it thermal transients that scared the SMUD operating crews. The utility district just decided to give up and walk way from the plant. They did not have the technical acumen as Duke Power did. The latter simply improved the control systems and startup power level so that the thermal transients did not occur. SMUD was supposed to have a highly qualified nuclear engineer in charge of the project. It was reported in the newspapers that manger's last job was with a transit district in Philadelphia. The remaining five Babcock Wilcox plants have operated very well after the thermal transients were mitigated by making some design changes, Epilogue Before nuclear power can re-emerge in the US, three actions must be undertaken:
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|