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Can U.S. Nuclear Plants Operate For 80 Years?
Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
The nuclear industry in the United States has been at a standstill for several decades. After an extraordinary wave of construction in the 1960s and 1970s, the nuclear industry ground to a halt. A confluence of events killed off new construction, including high interest rates, cost overruns, delays, and the Three Mile Island incident that scared the public and turned it against nuclear power.
But despite the nuclear industry’s inability to build more than a handful of new nuclear power plants since the 1980s, nuclear power still accounts for about 19 percent of electricity generation in the United States, the third largest source of electricity behind coal and natural gas.
Yet the nation’s 99 reactors are mostly nearing their retirement age. Having originally been planned for 40-year lifespans, many of the reactors would have already been forced to shut down by now, with nearly all of the rest hitting their limits at some point within the next decade. Instead, more than three-quarters of them have already received a 20-year extension, putting off their retirements until the 2030s.
But in the nuclear sector, where everything takes a long time, the 2030s are rapidly approaching. With one-fifth of the country’s electricity fleet nearing retirement, and very few nuclear power plants under construction to replace what is expected to be lost, how will the U.S. cope with the lost capacity?
“Four reactors are being built, but there’s absolutely no money and no desire to finance more plants than that. So in 20 or 30 years we’re going to have very few nuclear power plants in this country—that’s just a fact,” the former Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, said in a 2013 interview.

To remedy the situation, power plant owners are simply proposing another 20-year extension, according to CNBC. If that were to happen, that would mean that many of the nation’s 99 reactors could operate for 80 years, 40 years longer than originally planned.
Discussions of an 80-year lifespan have been going on for years, but CNBC reports that utilities are going to publicly unveil a push as soon as this summer to formally request a second 20-year extension to 80 years. The first candidates to get pushed to 80 years could be “Dominion Resources' Surry Plant in Virginia; Exelon's Peach Bottom plant near the Pennsylvania-Maryland border and Duke Energy's Oconee plant in South Carolina,” CNBC reported on July 16.
The nuclear industry argues that achieving dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with President Obama’s climate plan would only be achievable with low-carbon nuclear power. Wind and solar are making significant progress, sure, but can the U.S. achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 without nuclear power? Nuclear offers large-scale baseload clean electricity, the industry argues, while the wind and sun are not always available.
The industry also argues that there is nothing inherently unsafe about operating plants to 80 years. According to a 2013 report from the American Physical Society, there are “no technical show stoppers to running some plants for 80 years.”
And there was nothing technically special about the original 40-year license. That timeframe was not chosen because plants were expected to become unsafe beyond that date, nuclear operators say. That timeframe was chosen more because of investment timeframes.
And when compared to carbon-spewing coal and natural gas plants, as well as the quickly approaching expiration of much of the nuclear fleet, APS concludes that looking at extending nuclear plants to 80 years is “both complex and urgent.”
Others are not so sure. “This is not a future technology. It’s an old technology, and it serves a useful purpose. But that purpose is running its course,” former NRC Chairman Jackzo said in 2013.
Operating nuclear reactors for 80 years may be feasible, but wear and tear cannot only raise safety questions, but constant maintenance can make them economically unviable. Cracks can form in plants as they age, forcing the plant offline. The cost of repairs have already forced some power plants offline for good. The San Onofre plant in California, for example, was shut down by Southern California Edison after the bill to repair leaks ballooned. Duke Energy closed a reactor at its Crystal River power plant in Florida as repair costs got out of hand.
Such incidents could be more frequent in the years ahead. But if the industry gets its way, some plants could operate well beyond their current 60-year licenses.
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THORIUM!
The ONLY reason we still run boiling water reactors is to produce weapons grade plutonium.
Duh!
Molten salt thorium reactors use up plutonium as an ignition source.
Nuclear is so regulated nothing will happen until the govy wants it to happen. Yet another industry on innovation lockdown.
Regards,
Cooter
One thing we can plan on is that the powers that be will do everything possible to make the price of electricity eat up more of your disposable income. Get off the grid while you still have the ability to do so. Solar / Wind, look into long term storage solutions such as Nickle / Iron batteries, they don't die, still need to be charged but all the maintenance needed is being topped off with distilled water every other year.
I keep saying winding up giant rubber bands has got to be the best way to store energy.
But nooooo..
Or how bout gigantic epic huge pendulums on high rise buildings?
“The San Onofre plant in California, for example, was shut down by Southern California Edison after the bill to repair leaks ballooned.”
Keep in mind, Edison International destroyed the San Onofre plant by trying to increase its output without disclosing design changes to the NRC, and then held secret meeting with California’s regulators to try to get a deal that saddled the multi-billion-dollar cost on the consumers.
San Onofre isn’t just a story about old reactors. It’s a story about criminal greed.
Who’s going to get ‘Silkwood-ed’ next?
And engineering incompetence.
Engineers are rarely the true decision-makers anymore. I'd bet you the contents of my stock account that the engineers at San Onofre gave the accountants a bunch of options for the steam generator replacements, and they were strong-armed into going with the cheapest one, technical risks be damned.
Hmm 80 years ago.. radio broadcasts were 10 years old. RCA hadn't even built their first 50Kw transmitter ( serial # 001 , installed in Watrous Sask. in 1939 ) DC3 aircraft were 3 years old... Ford had flat head V8,s ( great engine, but about 4 MPG ). While there are apx. 400 DC-3s still airworthy, a testament to how few corners were cut in that design ( early stressed skin so no one really knew where they could skimp ), maintenance is a major cost. Rail roads used steam locomotives... How many of these would you trust your life to on even a 50/50 duty cycle? Neutron bombardment transmutes metals, granted the alloys were selected to minimize the effects, but 40 years was set as a limit so there was a safety factor. This whole gong show sounds like a committee of accountants making the call. Real example.. "Why are you taking so long shutting down that turbine? The longer this takes the more we lose. Shut it down now! " , the operator did as ordered, 5 blades went through the housing, 2 weeks extra to rebuild. The early BWR units are safe because no one in their right mind will let them lose cooling. I'm sure the plant operators in Japan were making heroic efforts to correct that issue too.
Duke Energy opted to repair the containment dome on their own, rather than hiring a contractor who specialized in that kind of work. It would have saved them $25M. During the repair, they cracked the dome, and costs to repair it expected to exceed $2B. During that time, the plant was off line, producing no revenue.
Citrus County Tax Assessor wanted their pound of flesh - to the tune of $34M in property taxes. Duke refuted that the property was worth that, and offered to pay only $17M. As Citrus County's largest source of income, Duke's tax payment was considered critical.
Shortly thereafter, the Sheriff of Citrus County called a press conference, declaring that he could hire no more officer (boo-fucking-hoo), and reponse times would suffer because mean elite Duke Energy wasn't paying 'their fair share'.
Duke had had enough, and refused to buckle to the public extortion/shakedown that the county was conducting. Shortly after the county began their public smear campaign, Duke called their bluff and said, "If you don't like $17M, how about ZERO" and officially mothballed the property.
Unfortunately, you don't hear the REAL cause of the closure all too often.
Ah yes, Crystal River FL...back when I was a young man we got the contract to change out all the Strobe lighting on top of the 600ft cooling towers... while the reactors were running full tilt, so now my teeth glow in the dark...never again.
The Federal Reserve and Nuclear Power Plants may become the 20th Century worst two ideas developed for mankind.
you forgot the IRS as part of the unholy trinity. None of the three could not exist without the other two. 100% fact so simple children understand.
No - for at least three reasons I can think of:
#1 Ukraine (with the most corrupt, inept, broke U.S. puppet government on earth) is in the process of recertifying their reactors for another forty years. Between Southern Ukraine NPP's three reactors with Westinghouse fuel, and Zaporizhia's six reactors that they are trying to run without Russian help, something is going to blow. You can't run a nuclear power program on IOUs, bribes and duct tape. Their epic meltdowns will make Chernobyl and Fukushima look like f'king test runs.
#2 and #3 are China and India's nuclear power generation programs. Things go bad in BIG ways in both of those places for similar reasons: cheapness, corruption or ineptness. That's not a slam on the people of either nation, that's a statment about their organizations that they would be the first to agree with. Picture that Chinese apartment building that tipped over. Now picture the U.S. Midwest covered with a quarter inch of golden-grey refractory radionuclides from a couple of open-air meltdowns because of siting problems, bad foundations and construction companies leaving a few reinforcing rods out of the supports to save money.
Yeah, the jet stream is a bitch: it doesn't block 'stupid' - it distributes it across the entire Northern Hemisphere irrespective of political boundaries.
We will be covered with tumors or dead from someone else's meltdown way before U.S. reactors ever see 80 years. U.S. reactors are the least of our worries.
no biggie, California will cover all it's energy needs with hydro-electric. Perhaps, a few new dams is all they will need. oh crap, I forgot about the requisite water. hurry, build a wind mill!!
That just might work. We don't have to kill two birds with one stone because: no water, no birds to bloody up the the propellers! Clean energy at last!
Had my eye on this guys project for a couple years. I really like the idea of a kinetic battery. http://www.velkess.com/
Exactly, which is why I use my nuclear engineering degree as a coaster.
omit
Depleted uranium bombs worked great on the terrorists.
Depleted uranium bombs worked great on the iraqi civilians.
(fixed that for you)
The Nuclear age is over, period. Finnish Nuclear Engineer explains>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSQdB3myW9M
Fukushima Unit 4 Fuel pool melt down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm4eREO_TZk
Bah. It'll be fine. You'll see.
Besides, what's the worst that can happen?
in a word, Fukushima
A bridge collapse is one thing. Meltdown is another.
Both of which are preferrable to emitting a single molecule of CO2 into our Faberge Egg-fragile ecosystem. Burning people to a crisp with radiation and polluting potentially hundreds of square miles with radioactive debris might seem bad, but compared to global warming it's a price we should all be willing to pay approximate once every 10 years as we melt down some reactor somewhere on the planet.
After reading that I just want to burn some plastic for some reason.
To be fair, only those in the immediate vicinity would die on the spot, if any. Cancer, however...
sarc still on/ Correct sir. There have been and still are open viens of coal buring on this planet before it was a planet (shoutout to pluto) There has been similar vents of natural gas and methane. Some of which, like forest fires, have burned for hundreds of years. We get 10-20 major volcanic erruptions every year. See also land and sea lava flows consume everything and exhaust. But these things are not the same as the internal combustion engine or an actual coal plant.
To save the planet we need to build executive air travel. Then a rocketry industry, to send nuclear waste into the sun. Why? not because radioactive waste is harmful, but because we need to see what happens when we put these isotopes that do not exist naturally anywhere in the universe into the sun, and see what happens. See if likes it or not. Maybe set up a tax system to accomplish this goal without making corporations or the elite pay ...
hopefully they will all be taken out of commission before a Fukushima-level accident occurs in the U.S. In many cases, the spent fuel ponds are just as full and just as dangerous as those of the Fukushima reactors.
With over 450 NPP's operating on the planet, the issue of how to safely store millions of tons of spent nuclear fuel is perhaps the most pressing issue facing humanity.
Documentary : Into Eternity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sqFyCHcbg
I'm sure that since construction half of the savings in utility costs has been going towards a decommissioning fund. Right?
I hate the fucking FED and every other pile of shit that benifits from taxing me. Off topic you say? Any place is a good place to call these motherfuckers out.
Whatever we do, for God sakes, let's never use coal. Something we have in abundance within our own borders. Because of fake global warming claims that CO2 is going to kill all the Polar Bears.
No, let's risk a nuclear catastrophe running antique plants in break/fix mode instead of <gasp!> burning coal.
This is one of my pet peeves right now ... if one looks at total electricity generation (pretty much the basis for a modern household - think about a home without electricity) ... coal is a huge piece of the pie. Coal is being pushed off the stage on purpose via regs, they will BK the companies, purge the liabilities, and grab the assets on the cheap and sit on them.
In 10 or 15 or 20 years, folks will figure out they want to keep the lights on ... TADA ... assets worth bank. This is a long term, deep pocket strategy.
Combine this with all the frak gas that ain't gonna be there in 10 or 15 or 20 years.
Regards,
Cooter
I sleep well at night knowing that the smart people are running things in the USA.
U S A ! ! ! U S A ! ! !
The new nuclear reactors were green-lighted by Obama right after Fukushima, as I recall all 9 are to be built in the Southern states of the USSA.
The fact that ILLEGAL ALIENS are working at nuclear power plants in the USSA should be NATIONAL News, but no it was only LOCAL News.
Arpaio Deputy Nabs Illegal Alien Worker at Nuclear Plant
Undocumented immigrant with fake ID arrested at AZ nuclear plant
Sep 26, 2012
By Breann Bierman
By Lindsey Reiser
By Steve Stout
MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ (CBS5) -
Officials at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant are taking a closer look at their security measures after a suspected undocumented immigrant was caught at a checkpoint Wednesday.
Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies said Nestor Martinez-Ochoa, 40, tried to report to work at a construction site at the plant, but they stopped him because they said his driver's license looked suspicious.
Illegal immigrant working inside nuke plant arrested
KVOA Channel 4 NBC Tucson, Arizona
Jul 14, 2011
PHOENIX - Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies arrested an illegal immigrant working inside the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, the nation's largest nuclear plant and one of the most closely monitored in the country.
Cruz Loya Alvares was taken into custody by Sheriff Deputies Wednesday and interrogated by the Sheriff's Human Smuggling detectives.
Deputies determined that the worker is, in fact, here illegally. Cruz admitted he has been in the U.S. illegally for most of the past 15 years. He was detained and deported in 2000 but paid a coyote for re-entry into the U.S. And last month, Cruz admitted that in June 2011, Mesa Police cited him for driving with a suspended license.
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Our lecturers want to have it both ways. They will tell us that we are impure in heart and mind because sophisticated, whereas savages are pure in mind because simple and natural. They will then chide us for having left the savages to their backwardness instead of having provided them with a modern education. They will scold us both for neglecting them and for interfering with them. They will, on the one hand, deny that Stone-Age savages are inferior to us, but will assert that Asians are superior to us because of their ancient erstwhile civilisations. Having said that prehistoric cave-men were as intelligent as ourselves, they now say that Africans are exceptionally gifted to show a fraction of our ability. In short their task is to reduce, by hook and by crook, our obvious superiority to inferiority or at least to sameness. Thus they will airily dismiss the unparalleled inventive achievements of our own race, will brush aside as irrelevant the fact that we achieved greatness in the face of every conceivable obstacle, and will simply refuse to discuss why it was that poverty never turned us into a race of criminals and bandits, good-for-nothings and morons. It is their task to convey the impression that our race had everything easy, and that every white person was thoughtfully provided with an Aladdin's lamp at birth.
WHITE MAN, THINK AGAIN! by Anthony Jacob, Johannesburg 1965
"We have solved the problem. ... Scientists are now saying leave the nuclear waste where it is."
-Harry Reid
After he worked with Obama to shut down the nuclear waste repository- where?
thats right, Nevada.
Yeah watch the price of decommissioning a nuke plant be revealed.
Ask Japan what the cost is.
That is after they abandon the island.
They closed the plant... But where is the spent fuel?
In cooling ponds on property just waiting, waiting.....
"What happened?"
"We had a problem."
"What kind of problem?"
"A pollution problem."
"A pollution problem?"
"Yeah. But it's OK now."
"What do you mean it's OK now?"
"I mean we HAD a pollution problem. Now we don't. OK?"
Building a newer and safer nuclear facility is nearly impossible. Thanks, liberals, you fucks.
'Building a newer and safer nuclear facility is nearly impossible. Thanks, liberals, you fucks."
It's a mystery to me why people listen to these media whores and special interest scammers.
Tritium cannot be stopped or contained, ALL NPP leak Tritium continuously.
Vogtle 3 & 4 and Summer 2 & 3 still won't be on line for at least another 5 years. Meanwhile, CB&I and Westinghouse will continue to have serious cash-flow problems and likely will incurr late penalties. From what I understand, most people involved with these projects were born after the last US nuke plant was commissioned--talk about learning curves, ffs.
The old profs taught us the basics of how to design them. It was up to the student to realize their designs would never see the light of day.
With all of the spent nuclear fuel stored around eathquake and hurricane zones one can hope that we will get lucky and get hit with an asteroid.
Prez O doesn't have a climate plan, it's a climate goal which in reality is just for appeasment of the environmentalists and once it's not reached, well politics is to blame. A plan has details and steps to results.
We know how to build fail-safe uranium plants, and it seems likely there are ways to build even safer thorium plants. But, we don't. WTF. Instead we dick around with windmills and solar cells, which are fun but are never going to be base-load sources.
Not to mention we can't get organized enough to vitrify nuclear waste and store it in a cave, but then they say some of the thorium designs may even be able to "burn" it and transmute it to safety. Even better. Instead we get Solyndra.
The businessmen types who have taken over the nuclear power plants from the qualified and trained engineers are fully willing to take us into nuclear disaster instead of doing the right and prudent thing of retiring the plants at their engineer-specified design lives.
People in the engineering profession, what's left of it (ie: what hasn't been given to foreigners or H-1B's), need to grow some balls.
After next year's New Madrid Fault Zone earthquake there will be about 35 of them melting down simultaneously so I think you can cut that 80 year number down to 1 and get the same result.
IF there were any actual MSM coverage of Fukushima, this 80 year extension to the Nuke plants wouldn't even be a point of discussion. Instead we would have pitchfork and torch marches to shut the fuckers down before a Fukushima happens here. And many of these 90 some-odd plants are of the GE Mark I variety just as in F-shima.
http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-be-very-worried-about-ongoing-catastro...
Fine, then quit wasting money/subsidies on renewables that will never meet our needs and build new Gen 3 nuke plants.
Except money printing and some weaponery, there is no industry left on the US soil.
What for should be the new PPs be planned and built?
In the 60-ties and 70-ties, there was still a robust industry everywhere.
everything had a label Made in USA.
today the goods ahve label from Asia somewhere, Phillipines, VIetnam China, and who knows what.
All call centers sit in India... the smae for the IT companies, who dilligently outsource the jobs to aliens and abroad.
Maybe, but let's listen to the socipathic nihilists at a "financial" blog. //////
SONGS and Peachbottom are both BWRs. The rest are PWRs and considered safer. With proper upkeep, anything can last a long time. Peachbottom & Limerick Plants been using my company's ultrapure water quality analyzers since 1988. I've been to most of the nuclear plants in the U.S. and most are operating just fine. As with everything else American, it's a matter of ROI. They either earn enough to operate are they don't. The only plants not affected by the laws of economics are TVA which are government-owned. As such, they NEVER run out of money.
SONGS was a PWR. Hence, the steam generators which failed.
At the bottom, drop a comment please.
Well there are literally hundreds of reasons not to trust the nuclear industry. But I jotted out a few of the most egrarious real life examples of the last few years.
"The Hill" an unabashed mouthpiece for the Nuclear Cartel posted an article on 'Energy and the Environment':
http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-we-should-never-trust-n...