Power Producers Seek Latest Models of Nuclear Reactors - NYTimes - 3/15/05

[Coastie for Truth]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/science/15nucl.html?

March 15, 2005, Power Producers Seek Latest Models of Nuclear Reactors By MATTHEW L. WALD

"WASHINGTON, March 14 - Like the taxis in Havana, American nuclear power reactors are in heavy use, important to the economy and really, really old. The most modern was ordered in 1973. Now after decades, four huge electric companies are expressing strong interest in new reactors, and they would like a new plant to reflect some of what has been learned of the operation.

Entergy, Exelon and Dominion have each applied for advance approval on sites where they might build reactors, although they have not committed to actually ordering one. The fourth, Duke Power, met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday to describe how it was in the early stages of preparing an application for a reactor license, although it did not say what type it wanted to build, or where it would go.

On the drawing boards are all kinds of exotic designs, using graphite and helium, or plutonium and molten sodium, and making hydrogen rather than electricity. But the experts generally agree that if a reactor is ordered soon, its design changes will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.

The utilities are not ready for a giant technology leap; they want a plant that does what the existing ones do, but slightly better. So if new orders materialize in the next five years, it will be the mechanics and engineers who will get to show what they have learned. The physicists will have to wait.

"The pitfall is too much innovation," said Jeffrey S. Merrifield, one of the five members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, addressing 1,400 industry professionals at a meeting last Tuesday at the commission's headquarters. He compared new designs with the "concept vehicles" that car companies display at auto shows; buyers are drawn to them, but when it is time to buy, they pick a Ford F-150 or a Toyota Camry instead, he said."
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1. Sounds familiar.

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Most nuclear advocates are expecting federal help, perhaps in the form of a production tax credit, like the one given for windmills, for the first four or five reactors, on the theory that once the first few plants are built, costs will fall and other reactors will follow, unsubsidized, with a benefit to clean air and the national economy.

Cost and construction time are only projections.

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Sounds like the industry is starting up all over again in its old ways. Get them good ol' government subsidies for "the first four or five" plants. And that will make the next ones nice and cheap.

We live in the neighborhood of what I think was the last nuke to go on line in the US (Limerick). By the time that thing was finished it cost many times the original estimate, and the electricity costs a lot more than estimated also.