Permit sought for new reactor at Georgia nuclear plant

[skids]

Warning: :sarcasm: and E/E inside humor.

The Southern Co.'s nuclear subsidiary asked federal regulators Tuesday to approve a site for two new reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear plant in eastern Georgia.

The proposed project, which would nearly double Plant Vogtle's output of 2,430 megawatts, requires a permit by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Though the total cost is unknown, the purchase price of the reactors alone is estimated at up to $4 billion.

http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=79041

Of course, this dishonest and morally deplorable propaganda fails to say just how much ENERGY these reactors would produce, in exaJoules, because we all know that anyone who uses units other than exajoules is a sack of shit. They do tell us that it will power 3 million homes, but that's a totally stooopid way to rate these things.

And they don't take into account the amount of time the reactors will have to be shut down or run at reduced capacity for maintenance purposes. If it's like other plants it will only be up at effectively 90% of the time. That other 10%, or 7.6663248E-3 exajoules per year, we will be completely and utterly surprised when we find that it simply does not exist. Imagine us with our shorts down around our ankles when we come to plug into that magic fairy-dust 243MW and find that our 90 inch plasma TV just sits there doing nothing. NOTHING I tell you -- and all after we've already opened the bottle of vaseline and popped in the Carmen Electra Playboy Pet of the Week DVD. All because we believed those lying sack-of-shit technology journalists, who knew full well (they are degreed communications majors after all) that they were DECEIVING us.

Oh, and then there's the astounding amount of this electricity we won't be able to use during the day because the plant will be generating it at night. I hope you all like to do your food preparation at 2AM, because these deceiving lying sack-of-shit technology journalist communication majors will have TRICKED you into thinking there will be enough power to run your cuisinart during the day, when in fact, IT IS ONLY AVAILABLE AT NIGHT. I suppose the rich people can afford to invest in battery operated major appliances along with their margarita mix. The rest of us will have to sleep during the day and then wake up at 8pm the next night with a horrible hangover. Ever had a hangover when it's dark, man?

If they really wanted to be honest, they would use real units, like the number of trickster deceiving lying sack-of-shit technology journalist communiciations majors that could be electrocuted at midnight using this power.

Damn those trickster deceiving lying sack-of-shit technology journalist communiciations majors who ought to be electrocuted. Damn them all.

[bananas]

1. Read my sigline.

"Whoops!"
Negative uptime.
QED.

[acmejack]

2. Conversion Buddy

This utility, Conversion Buddy, converts anything into anything, free and a great tool. Off topic but useful for this kind of stuff. http://www.simtel.net/product.php?id=66509

It will cost $1500-$%4000 for a battery backup that can run your appliances all day according to a release I saw the other day here.

[NNadir]

3. Well the report is written by a "journalist". The plants iteself however,

reports units of energy power and capacity:

http://www.southerncompany.com/southernnuclear/vogtle.asp?mnuOpco=soco&mnuType=sub&mnuItem=sn

They use the simple approach in a few sentences:

Unit 1 began commercial operation in May 1987. Unit 2 began commercial operation in May 1989. Each unit is capable of generating 1,215 megawatts (Mw) for a total capacity of 2,430 Mw...

...News about the plant

* In 2000, Unit 2 established a new unit generation record of 10,337,818 mwh. The previous record for the unit was 10,310,828 established in 1997.
* Unit 2's year end capacity factor set a new record for the plant at 102.4%, surpassing the old record of 101.2% set in 1997. Capacity factor is a unit's actual output of electricity as a percentage of its maximum potential output.
* Plant Vogtle received the Westinghouse "American Beauty" award for the 7th consecutive year. The award is given by Westinghouse for those nuclear plants whose cost and performance set the standard of excellence.
* In 1999, Plant Vogtle achieved its highest ever generation for a two-refueling-outage year - 18,448,487 mwh, which marks the plant's fourth highest generation ever. It achieved its highest capacity factor ever for a two-outage year - 91.4 percent, which is the plant's third highest capacity factor ever.

The conversion factor between exajoules and MWh is relatively simple, multiply by 3,600,000,000,000 and divide by 10¹⁸. Thus, in 1999, Plant Vogtle produced 0.066 exajoules of electricity.

For comparison, the entire United States, five years later in 2004, produced 14,153,100 Megawatt-hours (aka as "thousand kilowatt-hours"): http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table11.html (For the record, this is 0.051 exajoues.)

So, we see that Plant Vogtle, using a few acres of land, was able to produce 130% as much energy as the entire rest of the United States was able to produce using wind power, with the exception that the nuclear power was available at all times, and the wind obviously wasn't.

This is why it is useful to discuss energy.

However, as I keep lecturing people - although some people are clearly too busy jerking off (or whatever) to hear me - wind and nuclear are unrelated to one another. Nuclear power provides baseload power and is suitable for displacing coal, and other fossil (gas and petroleum) fuels only where they are used for baseload.

Nevertheless, I often hear from people who want to tell me that wind is an alternative to nuclear energy. This, like much of what you hear about energy these days, is indeed, just masturbation.

Therefore the fact that wind doesn't produce as much as two nuclear reactors is not a comparitive statement. Nuclear and wind do different things. Thus, if one is playing with one's self and is thus not thinking all that clearly, one might construe my remarks as "Wind bad! Nuclear Good!" In fact, both forms of energy, having exceptionally low external costs for their different functions, are "good." I support wind to the extent it replaces fossil fuels.

It would be useful however to compare wind and natural gas. I believe I've demonstrated how to make this comparison many times. If someone insists I will do it - and it's not pretty - but I invite others to do this at home for themselves. Solving such problems for one's self brings home the nature of the situation more clearly than any other approach.

Nuclear could, in some circumstances, displace some natural gas. In Maine and California, for instance, there seems to be a game of pretend in which natural gas is unilaterally declared to have no effect on climate change - as these states use natural gas for both peak power and base load power. We have seen, in another thread, that Maine displaced nuclear power with natural gas. The process is therefore reversible. Maine could build another nuclear power plant and eliminate some natural gas.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=65437&mesg_id=65437

If one completes this exercise for one's self - turning the TV off to do so - one can easily determine that nuclear energy has displaced far more coal than wind power has displaced natural gas. We all, of course, hope wind will do better, but I certainly don't think complacency about the matter - hailing every new windmill installed anywhere on the earth - is necessary an exercise is particularly wise. If I were in charge of promoting wind energy I would write sentences that read like this: "In order to reduce the use of natural gas in - insert country, plant, or planet - we will need x number of wind turbines of type y. Let's fight to get them!" We could have wind advocates pointing out to "gas saved," etc, with accompanying calculations and explication. That would be useful and compares favorably with puerile remarks about how "so and so said something just as dumb as I said."

Whatever. I am always glad to encourage our weak minded journalists to move away from confusing power and energy, just as I encourage all people not to confuse these issues. (I'm a big fan of scientific literacy.) Such an approach, I think, would help us, as we need to think clearly in the urgent moment in which our atmosphere is clearly collapsing. Magical thinking just won't do.

[jpak]

4. Nuclear New Jersey's grandfathered coal-fired plants just get dirtier

http://njpirg.org/NJ.asp?id2=15559&id3=NJ&

75 Percent of New Jersey’s Dirtiest Power Plants Have Increased Soot Pollution in Past Decade

TRENTON—As a key U.S. Senate committee considers the Bush administration’s bill to delay and weaken clean air safeguards, a new Clear the Air report released today by the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) finds that 75 percent of New Jersey’s oldest and dirtiest power plants are getting dirtier, not cleaner.

“When it comes to power plant pollution, many of New Jersey’s dirtiest power plants just keep getting dirtier,” said Emily Rusch from NJPIRG. “Pollution from power plants fuels global warming and causes serious health problems, including asthma attacks, heart and lung disease, and even premature deaths.”

New Jersey routinely tops national lists for unhealthy soot and smog pollution from power plants and transportation. Most recently, in December 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that 13 New Jersey counties have unhealthy levels of fine particle soot.

According to the new report, annual soot-forming sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions increased at many of New Jersey’s oldest and dirtiest power plants and 24 percent on average statewide from 1995 to 2003. Smog-forming nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions decreased statewide, but increased at PSEG’s Hudson plant. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the largest contributor to global warming, increased at most power plants and 25 percent on average statewide. There are no limits on carbon dioxide pollution.

<more>

and another one...

www.net.org/air/local/nj.pdf

And nuclear New Jersey is buying increasing amounts of out-of-state electricity generated by coal...

http://www.dailymail.com/story/Opinion/+/200602013/Making+power+more+reliable+/

AMERICAN Electric Power plans to build a 550-mile transmission line from the John Amos plant to New Jersey. This would take eight years and cost $3 billion.

A 765-kilovolt line from Poca to Pohatcong, N.J., makes sense. West Virginia has the coal that generates the electricity; New Jersey needs the ability to import reliable -- and low-cost-- power.

This would make the Northeast a more viable and more constant customer of West Virginia coal. The company pointed out that consumers paid $1.8 billion in extra costs over the last two years because of the lack of transmission line capacity.

Instead of cheap coal, the more expensive natural gas and oil were used to generate electricity.

<more>

This is what nuclear New Jersey is selling us...

Coal

Coal

Coal

:evilgrin:

And does the Southern Company give a shit about global warming???

(nope: the Southern Co. was a charter member of the Climate Coalition - a greenwash outfit that spread monstrous lies about the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global change)

Will the Southern Company shut down its dirtiest-in-the-nation grandfathered coal-fired units after they build these shiny new nukes???

(nope: they won't)

Will the Southern Co. be lavished with billions of taxpayer dollars so they can sell their electricity back to the taxpayers at the highest price allowed??

(Ohhh yes they will)

Will the Southern Co. pay for the full cost of spent fuel disposal from this shiny new nuke???

(nope: taxpayers pay for that too)

This is a Red Letter Day for the Southern Co. indeed.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. lol

Thanks Skids, I needed that. :)