I'm going to try to make this a regular DK event so that politically progressive pro-nuclear advocates...and those that think they are progressive but take [TROLL ALERT!] decidely, IMHO, anti-progressive positions on energy questions can get a take on what is actually going on out there in the energy world.
I'm inspired to do this by Dan Yurman's Idaho Samizdat Nuclear Blog, where he writes a similiar 'round up' parsed into two seperate blog entries, one for nuclear energy in general and one for uranium mining in particular.
So...
Southern files to build 2 reactors:
"Southern Co., the biggest U.S. power producer, is seeking permission from the federal government to build two additional nuclear reactors and almost double output at its Vogtle site in Georgia.
"The company is proposing to add two 1,150-megawatt reactors to the two-unit site about 20 miles south of Augusta. Atlanta-based Southern's application was the first of two submitted Monday to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. South Carolina-based SCANA Corp. said it also filed an application."
I couldn't find any cost references from the article itself. These are, from the sizes mentioned, two AP1000s from Japanese owned Westinghouse Corp.
The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) plans to deploy the B&W mPowerTM reactor - a scalable, modular, passively safe, advanced light water reactor system.
Yes, this was the BIG news this week and represents a paradigm shift in manufacturing as B&W is the only US based vertically integrated nuclear builder now with this announcement. 125 MW modules, transportable and modularly built. From the announcment:
The B&W mPower reactor, with its scalable, modular design, has the capacity to provide 125 MWe to 750 MWe or more for a five-year operating cycle without refueling, and is designed to produce clean, near-zero emission operations.
A newly formed entity, B&W Modular Nuclear Energy, LLC, will lead the development, licensing and delivery of B&W mPower reactor projects.
Here is a new one:
Duke looks to build a nuclear power plant in Ohio
So...this makes...34 new new builds announced? It's a 1600 MW EPR proposal. The site, Piketown, Oh, is the site of the now defunct commercial nuclear enrichment and reprocessing plant owned by the Dept. of Energy. 4,000 high paying union jobs potentially.
A New Nuke for Lithuania?
Vilnius - A planned new nuclear reactor in Lithuania to serve all three Baltic states and Poland could be ready by 2018 Lithuania's prime minister said Thursday. "We expect that 2018, if work actually starts next year, is a probable date for completing the power plant," Andrius Kubilius told the Lithuanian parliament.
They already get about 70% of the power from fission. Clearly they seek to end all carbon spewing generation AND export into what is still a growing market for clean, non-carbon electrical generation. It should be noted that there is a form of organized chaos representing the Baltics and Poland concerning nuclear energy. All four of the countries involved, with Russia learing over all of them, want nuclear energy. No one country except for Poland can actually handle the large load of power from one such big plant, so mutual agreements between the regions nations are very important. So is the new HVAC line between the Baltic countries and Sweden.
More next week, maybe...
Oh, yeah, forgot: see my blog at left-atomics.blogspot.com on the issue of large vs small LFTR nuclear plants.
David