World Nuclear Roundup #37

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Friday January 09, 2015 · 7:36 AM PST

2015/01/09 · 07:36

[From Neutron Bytes, the premier new nuclear news blog. Additional links added by this daryist-DW]

In case you were unplugged over the holiday season, here are some global nuclear news items that crossed the wires.

UAE to complete all four of its reactors by 2020

The United Arab Emirates will be getting 25% of its electricity from four new nuclear reactors starting in 2020, if all goes well. The units, being built by a South Korean consortium, are each rated to provide about 1400 MW of electrical power. The reactors are being built at Baraka, a remote coastal site on the Persian Gulf.

CEO of the Emirates Nuclear Corp.,Mohammed Al Hammadi, told UAE English language media on 12/22/14 that the first unit will be complete in 2017 and the other three will each complete in sequence a year apart.

The electrical power from the reactors will have three important uses. Desalinization plants will provide fresh water to the desert country. It will support the growth of a finished aluminum goods manufacturing industry exploiting the nation’s bauxite deposits, and it will power the country’s growing urban centers at Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Wednesday May 22, 2013 · 9:45 AM PDT

2013/05/22 · 09:45

[Continuing coverage of the world's nuclear renaissance. Here, the French designed EPR is coming on line, apparently on time and at budget. Go figure? This will be 2 reactors each 1700 MWs of non-carbon energy. More to come...David Walters]

The first Chinese-made steam generator for an EPR has been completed and is being transported to unit 2 of the Taishan plant in the country's Guangdong province.
Taishan 2 SG (CGNPC) 460
The first Chinese EPR steam generator starts its journey to Taishan (Image: CGNPC)

The four steam generators for Taishan 1 - measuring 25 meters long and weighing 550 tonnes each - were manufactured at Areva's plant at Chalon-St Marcel, France. However, those for subsequent Chinese EPR units are to be produced domestically.

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Monday May 20, 2013 · 11:01 AM PDT

2013/05/20 · 11:01

[I had a small hand in this letter but it was drafted and finally put together by Ben Heard and Geoff Russell.--David Walters]
Published at http://decarbonisesa.com/... and http://bravenewclimate.com and various other climate change activist sites including this one.

In their determination to attack nuclear power and those who support it, anti-nuclear activism has walked away from the scientific process. As a result, nearly the entire community of environmental organisations in Australia is currently standing behind figures that are completely mathematically incorrect. Will they correct these blatant errors and open their publications to expert external review? Or is correct maths and good science optional when you wear the colour green?

The great scientist Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. So how is it that Jim Green, an anti-nuclear campaigner with no scientific journal publications, can accuse James Hansen, one of the most extraordinary scientists of the last 50 years, of junk science?

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Thursday May 09, 2013 · 9:41 AM PDT

2013/05/09 · 09:41

Comment:

First, the pertinent data on Vietnam's energy development;

Vietnam has considered establishing nuclear power generation since 1995, and firm proposals surfaced in 2006.
Russia has agreed to finance and build 2000 MWe of nuclear capacity.
Japan has agreed similarly for another 2000 MWe.

Vietnam is the most significant of the three lower Mekong countries, with a population of 88 million. Vietnam produced 100.1 billion kWh gross in 2010 from 19.7 GWe of plant, giving per capita consumption of 1140 kWh/yr. In 2009, 33% of the country's capacity was hydro, 17% gas (CCGT), 12% coal, 6% oil - all under Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), and 33% was with IPP & BOT outside EVN.

Electricity supply in 2010 was 38% from hydro, 33.6% gas and 18.5% coal. GDP growth in 2010 was 6.8%. In 2012 demand is expected to be 10.9% up on 2011, total 120.8 billion kWh: 45.0 hydro, 24.8 coal, 45.7 gas, 0.5 oil, and 4.65 import from China. A total of 3.1 GWe capacity is due to be added in 2012.

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Friday May 03, 2013 · 11:14 AM PDT

2013/05/03 · 11:14

[OK, not "32" but I lost count of how many of these I did so there!]

A few news items, mostly garnered from World Nuclear News. Love 'em or hate 'em, they do report on new builds, advances and setbacks. I usually post their stop without commentary or introductions. Here I've entered my much loved personal commentary through out....

So...the world nuclear build up hasn't really slowed down, Fukushima or no Fukushima. But it does stand mired in controversy and portends hope from every conceivable angle. So here are few tid bits in the world of nuclear.

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Tuesday April 30, 2013 · 9:46 AM PDT

2013/04/30 · 09:46

Energy transitions

Ontario's approach is in stark contrast to that taken in Germany, which has a commitment to end the use of nuclear power and rely instead on renewable sources. This has seen significant coal capacity being constructed as a 'bridge technology' to a hoped-for renewable future. Japan too is struggling to replace the nuclear power kept offline since the 2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi. Imports of LNG have leapt and officials recently began fast-tracking planning permission for coal plants. Meanwhile, a report by the International Energy Agency noted unhappily that the UK was the only country that has committed to not build any more unabated coal.
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davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Friday April 26, 2013 · 10:06 AM PDT

2013/04/26 · 10:06

China is to reprocess used reactor fuel at a plant supplied by Areva, according to a letter of intent signed in Beijing yesterday.

The agreement sets out the technical specifications of the future plant, the project's organisation and the scope of work for the partners, Areva and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). Areva said it was a milestone that represented a signature on part of acontract for sale. Heads of those companies Luc Oursel and Sun Qin put pen to paper in the presence of French and Chinese Presidents Francois Hollande and Xi Jinping on 25 April during an official visit.

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Monday April 22, 2013 · 9:02 AM PDT

2013/04/22 · 09:02

Florida Power & Light (FPL) is celebrating the completion of a major five-year upgrade program that has added over 500 MWe of capacity to four reactors at its Turkey Point and St Lucie sites.

The uprates are the result of a 5-year major engineering project.

Turkey Point 4 was the last of the units to undergo an extended power uprate: work was completed at Turkey Point 3 and St Lucie 1 and 2 in 2012. The overall project was initially projected to add a total of 399 MWe, but according to FPL it surpassed that mark by end of 2012, and it is now estimated that the major engineering work at the plants will add around 30% more capacity than originally projected. The power increase has been achieved through significant upgrades to plant systems and components, including feedwater pumps and high-pressure turbines.

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Thursday April 18, 2013 · 9:42 AM PDT

2013/04/18 · 09:42

The world's governments are failing on almost every level to clean up their energy systems and must intervene to support nuclear power, said the IEA, noting that only renewables and electric vehicles are 'on track'.

A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) contains recommendations to reduce the carbon footprint of all aspects of energy generation. It was launched today at the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting taking place in New Delhi and is directed at the IEA's member governments, which are responsible for 75% of global energy use.

The stern message from IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven was that "the carbon intensity of the global energy supply has barely changed in 20 years, despite successful efforts in deploying renewable energy." She complained that progress towards clean energy "has stalled" and that "market failures are preventing the adoption of clean energy solutions."

davidwalters for Nuclear dkos

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Tuesday April 16, 2013 · 9:23 AM PDT

2013/04/16 · 09:23

From the World Nuclear News, reprinted here with permission:

A formal agreement with the US Department of Energy (DoE) means that Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) mPower can access the first $79 million of federal funding under a government program to accelerate commercialization of small modular reactors (SMRs).

The mPower America team of B&W, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and B&W subsidiary Generation mPower was selected in a competitive process to receive DoE funding to commercially demonstrate the mPower SMR by 2022. Now that the cooperation agreement has been signed, the $79 million allocated for the first year of the program will be available immediately to the B&W mPower program.

Keith Pickering

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Thursday April 04, 2013 · 4:52 PM PDT

2013/04/04 · 16:52

Emissions from burning fossil fuels are toxic. The effect from a single power plant is small, but if you build a lot of fossil plants, it adds up. Air pollution kills people.

Climatologist James E. Hansen, who just this week retired as head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science, has just co-authored a paper that has been accepted by the journal Environmental Science & Technology, in which he calculates that nuclear power has prevented 1.84 million deaths worldwide that would have occurred if nuclear power plants had been built as fossil-fueled power plants instead. That's actually a conservative figure, because it doesn't count a number of things, like the effects of CO₂ on climate change.

Although this number isn't terribly surprising to those who study energy issues, it does point up a hugely under-reported aspect of energy policy: nuclear power is the safest way ever devised to generate electricity. Safer than wind. Safer than solar. And far, far safer than fossil fuels.

Translator for SciTech

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Tuesday October 16, 2012 · 8:56 AM PDT

2012/10/16 · 08:56

Element 9, fluorine, is the first of the halogens, from the Greek halos, "salt", and gonos, "to bring forth". All of the members of this family tend to form salts with metals, but fluorine is unique amongst the halogens in that it forms compounds with EVERY element ever tried except for helium and neon.

Fluorine is by far the most reactive element, having everything just right for extreme chemical behavior. It is a small atom that forms a small ion. Its electrons are tightly bound in its ionic form, but oddly molecular fluorine has a remarkably weak bond for a halogen, only iodine having a weaker one.

The element has been known in the form of naturally occurring salts since the Middle Ages, when these minerals were used as fluxes in metal smelting. The purpose of a flux is to make the ore and reducing agent mixture easier to melt, thus speeding the reaction since liquid state reactions occur much faster than solid state ones. A secondary use of a flux is to protect the newly won metal from atmospheric oxygen by forming a protective layer that floats on the metal.

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