🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JMC.94Aug12115149@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>Alan Guthrie posts:
>
>
>  On July 13, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave Final Design
>  Approval to GE's Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR).  The Final
>  Design Approval concludes the NRC's review of all design and
>  safety issues pertaining to the ABWR.  Presently, Tokyo Electric
>  Power Company is building two ABWRs at its Kashiwazaki site.  The
>  units are rated at 1315 MWe each and are 66% and 43% completed.
>
>Two comments:
>
>1. Good for NRC. When NRC was formed, it was separated from the AEC,
>later DOE, so it would be independent and not so pro-nuclear.  Now it
>is not so anti-nuclear as the fashionable Hazel O'Leary.

    Huzzah for the NRC!

>
>2. Good for Tokyo Electric, the world's largest utility according to
>their publicity.  Although they are putting in American reactors,
>somehow I conjecture that this may eventually lead to America buying
>reactors from Japan.

    Banzai!

>
>3. I notice that 1315MWe is larger than almost all previous reactors.
>I had read that the fashion was to build smaller reactors.
>-- 
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>

  
   The reactor vendors are offering several models.  Both Westinghouse
   and GE offer advanced reactors (Advanced PWR and the Advanced BWR
   above) which are refinements on their offerings of the 70s.  The
   plants are rated at approximately 3900 MWth each.  ABB-CE offers
   a PWR called System 80+ which is a refinement of its Systems 80
   plants built at, for instance, Palo Verde, Arizona.  The System 
   80+ is rated at 3817 MWth (1300 MWe) and has also just received
   Final Design Approval, I believe.

   To better serve the USofA market and third-world markets, GE
   and Westinghouse are developing smaller systems.  The AP600
   from Westinghouse is rated at 1940 MWth (600 MWe) and the
   Simplified Boiling Water Reactor from GE is rated at 2000 MWth
   (600 MWe).  Both designs are intended to be simpler to 
   construct (cheaper) and operate (cheaper) than the current set 
   of reactors.  The designs are much more of an evolution than
   are the APWR and ABWR described above.

   The Japanese, on the other hand, having larger utilities, less
   risky construction schedules, and lower financing charges, 
   probably can better utilize the larger designs.  I suspect that
   a larger unit requires roughly the small area of land as a
   small unit, and siting is a problem in Japan.



-- 
B. Alan Guthrie, III              |   Faster horses, 
alan.guthrie@nmd.pgh.wec.com      |   Older whiskey,
                                  |   Younger women,  
                                  |   More money.