Vogtle 3 Reaches Criticality.

[NNadir]

Vogtle 3 reaches first criticality

Georgia Power has announced that the AP1000 - the first new nuclear unit to be built in the USA in more than three decades - has safely reached initial criticality.

Initial criticality means that the nuclear fission reaction in the reactor is now self-sustaining, meaning the reactor can begin producing heat that will be used to make steam to produce electricity.

The reactor's power output will now be raised to prepare it for synchronisation to the electric grid, and the start of electricity generation. Operators will then take the unit through a gradual power increase until it reaches its full power output. Tests to ensure all systems are operating together and to validate operating procedures will be carried out throughout the start-up process before the unit is declared to be in commercial operation. Georgia Power currently projects an in-service date for Vogtle 3 in May or June...

"...When you consider the history of safe and reliable operations at Vogtle Units 1 and 2 for decades now, it puts today’s milestone in perspective that Plant Vogtle will be a four-unit site making it the largest of its kind in the US. This is a truly exciting time as we prepare to bring online a new nuclear unit that will serve our state with clean and emission-free energy for the next 60 to 80 years," he said.

The last reactor to start up in the USA before Vogtle 3 was Watts Bar unit 2, in 2016. Construction of that reactor began in 1973 and was suspended in 1985 before work resumed in 2007...

The bold is mine. The reactor is likely to be in operation as future generations, the generations we so enthusiastically screwed over, enter the 22nd century. For all the screwing we did, this at least is some small gift to them.

We should have done more.

[TexasTowelie]

1. Good news to read that the reactor has started.

Unfortunately the $30 billion price tag for this and the companion reactor will likely be the last of this generation of nuclear reactors in this country. The eyes will be on the small experimental nuclear reactor being developed in Idaho.

[NNadir]

3. In a rational and decent world, not the one in which we live, the price tag would be trivial.

The antinuke "renewables will save us" nonsense vendors never remark on the fact that they have spent over three trillion dollars between 2004 and 2018 and destroyed vast areas of the Earth's surface to produce just 12 Exajoules of energy out of 624 EJ consumed in 2021. All of this so called "renewable energy" infrastructure will need to be replaced every 20 to 25 years.

Nuclear energy has been providing around 30 Exajoules since the 1990's using stuff built on 20th century technology.

In this country, these immoral, uneducated, radiation paranoids who are in general unfamiliar with the contents of science books, have worked tirelessly to destroy nuclear manufacturing infrastructure, close university nuclear engineering programs, and fetishize so called "nuclear waste" without ever bothering to look either at whether used nuclear fuel ever killed anyone or to give a rat's ass about how many people die from fossil fuel waste.

In the year 2080, those people who will be powered by the Vogtle reactors will not give a rat's ass about the cheapskate bourgeois whiners who left them greasy fields with rotting wind turbines, hundreds upon hundreds of millions of tons of discarded solar toxic solar cells all because they never took a class in radiobiology and all because they kept chanting crap about a reactionary return to dependence on the weather.

They'll ask why we didn't build thousands of reactors.

I've had to listen to lots of idiocy about the thirty billion dollars, mostly from people who have nothing to say at all about climate change, who never complain about what it costs. It disgusts me.

The United States built more than 100 nuclear reactors in 25 years while providing the lowest priced electricity in the OECD. We had the infrastructure to do so. It was deliberately destroyed by hostile morons.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[John1956PA]

2. News March 7, 2023: Western PA Nuclear Power Plant Sold to Texas Company Owned By Asian Company.

The news this Tuesday, March 7, 2023, contains a report that the parent company of the Beaver County, Pennsylvania, nuclear power plant is being sold to Vistra, a Texas company which, in turn, has been owned since 2015 by Baring Private Equity Asia, which is headquartered in Hong Kong.

[Finishline42]

4. Interesting news...

Are those plants closed?

Amid a federal corruption case, a company that owns nuclear plants in Pennsylvania and northern Ohio will be sold for more than $3.4 billion to an Irving, Texas-based company.

Under the deal announced Monday, Ohio-based Energy Harbor will become part of a newly formed Vistra subsidiary called Vistra Vision. Both companies’ boards of directors have approved the deal and a majority of Energy Harbor stockholders support the move, according to the statement announcing the deal.

Vistra will not be buying Energy Harbor’s two coal plants along the Ohio River, according to the release.

Energy Harbor is at the center of an alleged $60 million bribery scheme that federal prosecutors call the largest corruption case in Ohio history. They allege ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and others orchestrated a scheme funded by Energy Harbor's parent company, Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., to secure the speakership, elect legislative allies, then pass and defend a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout benefiting FirstEnergy, an electric utility. Householder has maintained his innocence and closing arguments in his ongoing trial were scheduled for Tuesday.

The companies anticipate closing the deal sometime in the second half of this year, according to the release. Several federal regulators must still sign off on the purchase.

https://www.wtae.com/article/energy-harbor-vistra-beaver-valley-nuclear-power-plant/43223297#

[NNadir]

5. Actually, the most corrupt thing of which I know, is not giving a rat's ass about climate change.

I see it all the time. For example, I would call it extreme corruption to screw future generations with the idea that it's OK to spend 3 trillion dollars on solar and wind junk that will be landfill in 25 years to produce trivial energy.

The victims are all future generations, not that the anti-nuke community, it's obsession with nickels and dimes, gives a rat's ass about the future or the cost of climate change.

There is certainly moral corruption involved.