Siemens and Areva sign a contract for the control systems on two Slovak reactors to be completed.

[NNadir]

An Areva-Siemens consortium has been awarded a contract to supply the digital safety and instrumentation and control (I&C) systems for two new VVER units at the Mochovce nuclear power plant in Slovakia.

Under the contract, Areva will equip Mochovce units 3 and 4 with its Teleperm XS safety I&C system, while Siemens will provide the reactors with its SPPA-T2000 operational I&C system. The systems are the same as those used in Areva EPR units currently under construction in China, Finland and France.

In 1981, construction of the four-unit Mochovce nuclear power plant was commenced by Skoda, using Russian-design VVER 440/213 pressurized water reactor units. Work on units 3 and 4 was started in 1986 and halted in 1992. The first two were completed in 1998 and 2000, respectively, to supply 440 MWe each. Units 1 and 2 have been significantly upgraded and the instrument and control systems replaced with assistance from western companies. Units 3 and 4 - also VVER-440 units - remained partly built.

Slovenské Electrárne, which is 66% owned by Italian utility Enel, officially started the €2.8 billion ($3.6 billion) project to complete the two new units at Mochovce in early November 2008. Units 3 and 4 are scheduled to be commissioned in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Systems_contract_for_new_Slovak_reactors-2704104.html">Systems contract for new Slovak reactors.

When completed the two units will have a capacity of 880 MWe (combined). As I never tire of pointing out, the nation of Denmark, as a fig leaf for its massive offshore drilling program, also produces some wind energy, about 22 Petajoules per year. By use of something called "math" we can calculate the average continuous power output of all the wind turbines in Denmark and find that they produce the equivalent of a 700 MWe dangerous natural gas plant operated continuously. (In contrast to the wind turbines, the dangerous natural gas plant can be reliable and produce energy on demand, at least until the dangerous natural gas runs out and gas salespeople like Amory Lovins run off with their money.)

Thus to produce as much energy as the entire nation of Denmark produces from a whole country full of whirling metal in two relatively small buildings, the overall capacity utilization of the two new Slovak reactors needs to be (100)*700/880 = 79.5%, something that is relatively easy to do, since many nuclear reactors around the world operate at greater than 90% capacity utilization.

Have a nice "nuclear is dead" evening.

[kristopher]

1. MIT nuclear study – findings

MIT nuclear study – findings

Over the next 50 years, unless patterns change dramatically, energy production and use will contribute to global warming through large-scale greenhouse gas emissions — hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Nuclear power could be one option for reducing carbon emissions. At present, however, this is unlikely: nuclear power faces stagnation and decline.

This study analyzes what would be required to retain nuclear power as a significant option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting growing needs for electricity supply. Our analysis is guided by a global growth scenario that would expand current worldwide nuclear generating capacity almost threefold, to 1000 billion watts,by the year 2050.Such a deployment would avoid 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually from coal plants, about 25% of the increment in carbon emissions otherwise expected in a business-as-usual scenario. This study also recommends changes in government policy and industrial practice needed in the relatively near term to retain an option for such an outcome. (Want to guess what these are? - K)

We did not analyze other options for reducing carbon emissions — renewable energy sources, carbon sequestration,and increased energy efficiency — and therefore reach no conclusions about priorities among these efforts and nuclear power. In our judgment, it would be a mistake to exclude any of these four options at this time.

STUDY FINDINGS
For a large expansion of nuclear power to succeed,four critical problems must be overcome:

Cost. In deregulated markets, nuclear power is not now cost competitive with coal and natural gas.However,plausible reductions by industry in capital cost,operation and maintenance costs, and construction time could reduce the gap. Carbon emission credits, if enacted by government, can give nuclear power a cost advantage.

Safety.
Modern reactor designs can achieve a very low risk of serious accidents, but “best practices”in construction and operation are essential.We know little about the safety of the overall fuel cycle,beyond reactor operation.

Waste.
Geological disposal is technically feasible but execution is yet to be demonstrated or certain. A convincing case has not been made that the long-term waste management benefits of advanced, closed fuel cycles involving reprocessing of spent fuel are outweighed by the short-term risks and costs. Improvement in the open,once through fuel cycle may offer waste management benefits as large as those claimed for the more expensive closed fuel cycles.

Proliferation.
The current international safeguards regime is inadequate to meet the security challenges of the expanded nuclear deployment contemplated in the global growth scenario. The reprocessing system now used in Europe, Japan, and Russia that involves separation and recycling of plutonium presents unwarranted proliferation risks.

2009 Update:

while there has been some progress since 2003, increased deployment of nuclear power has been slow both in the United States and globally, in relation to the illustrative scenario examined in the 2003 report. While the intent to build new plants has been made public in several countries, there are only few firm commitments outside of Asia, in particular China, India, and Korea, to construction projects at this time. Even if all the announced plans for new nuclear power plant construction are realized, the total will be well behind that needed for reaching a thousand gigawatts of new capacity worldwide by 2050. In the U.S., only one shutdown reactor has been refurbished and restarted and one previously ordered, but never completed reactor, is now being completed. No new nuclear units have started construction.

In sum, compared to 2003, the motivation to make more use of nuclear power is greater, and more rapid progress is needed in enabling the option of nuclear power expansion to play a role in meeting the global warming challenge. The sober warning is that if more is not done, nuclear power will diminish as a practical and timely option for deployment at a scale that would constitute a material contribution to climate change risk mitigation.

[Codeine]

2. Control-V for Victory! nt

[NNadir]

3. I couldn't care less how many times you cut and paste stuff you're not competent to read.

Obviously the Slovaks don't give a rat's ass about the mutterings of illiterate anti-science anti-nukes.

If they did, they wouldn't build the plant.

But they're um, educated. Slovakia runs nuclear power plants. I don't think we should spend a lot of time worrying about a nuclear war between Slovakia and Switzerland, no matter what paranoid twirps with no education think.