Vogtle Unit 3 Goes Critical! - March 2023 | NUCLEAR NEWS
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- Опубліковано 25 чер 2024
- Welcome to this first episode of Nuclear News! Each month, I'm going to spend 5-10 minutes highlighting some of the goings-on in the nuclear industry.
This month, we have Centrus completing their demonstration HALEU enrichment cascade, Vogtle Unit 3 reaches first criticality - the first US reactor to do so in three decades, and the reactor pressure vessel for Hinkley Point C was delivered.
Sources:
world-nuclear-news.org/Articl...
www.georgiapower.com/company/...
world-nuclear-news.org/Articl...
I didn't know the nuclear scene had been so moribund in the U.S. before now, and hadn't imagined there would be no local uranium enrichment going on! Am glad to hear that "going critical" is a good thing- must confess I clicked on this because it sounded like an accident had happened. Here in Australia nuclear subs are in the news due to the new(ish) AUKUS agreement so we will finally start getting a bit of nuclear infrastructure of our own.
I had no idea but we apparently do have a centrifuge plant operating. For some reason I thought we were still only had ancient gaseous diffusion plants.
Wow this one came out early in the morning. Good on them for bringing the plant online.
I’m late to this video but I love this! Please post more of these whenever new news comes out!
This is great news! As Gordon Ramsay would say, "Finally, some clean fucking energy." You love to see it, and I hope this is indeed the first of many to come!
When I heard you talking, about "reactor going critical" on your stream, my first thaught was "what blew up?" Now it turns out it just went on. Nomencalture threw me off there a bit.
@@jjohn662 I was rather wondering if it's normal naming for reactor starting up, and my "what blew up?" reacion was derivative of popculture and it's portrayal of nuclear energy.
Oops, yeah in hind sight perhaps I should have said "initial criticality", but yes, "critical" is the correct terminology for what a reactor does
The future is nucular
lol "nucular"
I love it. Excellent news!!
Fantastic! Those transportation photos really help put the scale into perspective.
yes! it's massive
Thank you Charlie.
I’d love a pro-nuclear analysis on nuclear power potential in Australia. We have excellent u238 reserves and a stable continent.
Last I heard your electricity cost 28 cents per kWh. Nuclear is almost certainly viable there. At those prices you could probably make money burning Faberge eggs to generate electricity.
Thanks for the news, Charlie! I’ve lived in Georgia pretty much my whole life and it’s nice to hear that such progress is being made in my home state.
Climate change is a big stressor for me, as I’m sure it is for many others my age. It really is wonderful to hear that things are actually happening. This brought a smile to my face.
If you care about Climate change then only nuke power will do. Most carbon negative energy possible.
The US should seriously launch an independent inquiry into what went wrong during construction. Originally planned to be commissioned in 2016, but unit 3 was only commissioned last year. The budget also massively inflated to 30+ billion from the original 14. Back in 2017, VC Summer unit 2 & 3 were simply abandoned du e to inflating costs and construction difficulties, even though I think that they should continue only with unit 2 because unit 2 was possibly 65-70% completed. What a pity……
Knowing nothing about nuclear power, the word "critical" sounded like very bad news... I'm happy that this is a good thing.
"Going critical" must be one of the most misunderstood phrases ever. Thanks to certain TV shows we all used to watch. A reactor can be in three states:
Subcritical - this means the chain reaction is slowing down. There are less and less neutrons to do the atom splitting, and the chain reaction will eventually stop. The reactor will shut down at that point. This can happen slowly through inserting the control rods a bit more (and/or putting some extra boron in your water if you're running a PWR) when you want less power, or fast when the control rods are inserted all at once through a scram (a scram is like an emergency brake on the reactor).
Critical - This means the chain reaction isn't going up, it isn't going down, everything is stable. Only one neutron out of the three being born from each splitting atom will continue the chain reaction. Power reactors will be in this critical state most of the time, it is the state where useful work gets done.
Supercritical - This is the state to watch out for. This is the state where things are speeding up. More and more neutrons will be available for the chain reaction, making it go faster and faster. If not very closely controlled, it can get wildly out of control very quick due to the neutron growth being exponential, rather than linear. But you will need a little of the supercritical state, or else you would never get your reactor to full power.
Hope this very simplified explanation clarifies it a little😄
Thank you for this very promising news update! Like you say, things are finally starting to move. And Vogtle 3 reaching First Criticality is awesome news. It is now officially a working reactor. To me, reaching First Criticality is a bit like a reactor being "born". Up until then, it may look like a reactor, have all its parts in their proper places, but it still isn't a reactor because it hasn't done the one thing it is supposed to do; split the atom.
Keep up the good work with your videos!
yes, that is a good point. Until first criticality, it's just a bunch of structure with fuel sitting in water
Yay!! Westinghouse AP1000 for the Win!!
I'm going to Vogtle Unit 1 in September to do FAC inspections for Westinghouse it'll be nice to see the new plant running.
that's awesome! I'm jealous
So happy to hear a new reactor is coming online in the States. All I ever hear about is decomissioning of old nuclear plants, which is not the way to counter climate change.
Regarding the prospects and how things have changed in your time in the industry, it's honestly super encouraging to me. I've been reading up on stuff and listening to a lot of talks regarding the gargantuan need for increased minerals extraction if we're going to actually electrify and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cause me to worry. ITER, Wendelstein 7-X, and Helion Energy are all well and good but I think it would be best to also invest far more into fission to meet our crazy energy hungry civilization, at least in the relatively near term. The older generations of reactors that take 20+ years to come on line are a big bummer so smaller more widely distributed generation is kinda making my day haha.
So thanks dude, I'll be sure to pay more attention to this type of news. Awesome topic to cover, I'm really looking forward to more of this.
Yes! More nuclear for a hopefully atomic future. The containment shape looks like a milk can, the top is a water reservoir for a gravity coolant system?
Fuel reprocessing is something I'd like to see made legal in the US, it would solve alot of the high level waste issues by turning it into enriched reactor fuel.
you got it! a water tank for cooling. Reprocessing has actually been legal in the US since the 80s but it's just more expensive than mining uranium, so that's the main reason it's not done
@@TheAtomicAgeCM I see. For quite some time I've only heard the argument it was banned and that was it. I decided to do a deep dive and you're right, the ban was lifted by Raegan in 1981.
How about the Brest-300 reactor? Lead cooled fast breeder. Uranium in, power and fission products out.
I read that back in December a lab in California managed to produce a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to create. I’ve always heard we’ll perpetually be 10 more years out from fusion but I was wondering what your thoughts/perspective are on that were
Ah yes, fusion is always some years away haha I have no doubt humanity will one day harness fusion for electricity but I think it will be some time more - probably after the climate change crisis has been solved (managed is a better word?). So, yes, they finally got some net energy out of a fusion reaction in the lab. The fusion they do in this lab is shooting amazingly powerful lasers at a fuel target to super-compress and super-heat it to start fusion. The experiments are mainly for nuclear weapons research. I'm not sure how feasible their setup would be for electricity production. For that, look to the Tokamak reactor at ITER in France. That design is the leading candidate for energy production from fusion. The problem with fusion is that you need these horrifically high pressures and temperatures to do it - fission (current nuclear plants) is much easier and happens at much more reasonable temperatures and pressures. But the experiment shows that fusion can be done (it is already done in the sun and in thermonuclear weapons, but we don't want to blow up the reactor). This video has some great details: ua-cam.com/video/JurplDfPi3U/v-deo.html
Fusion power was demonstrated in Greenhouse George in 1951. The concept was nailed down with Ivy Mike in 1954, 10 megaton yield.
Fusion works. The problem is one of scaling.
We would not have all of these idiotic wars over oil if we have sufficient fusion and fission power plants.
Thank you for the video. What wattage is that facility expected to put out and how big a region/city can that wattage supply?
Thanks so much, Ramirez! These reactors are each in the 1.1 gigawatts of electricity range. There's Vogtle Unit 3 and also Unit 4 that will come online sometime next year, I believe, and together can power 1.5+ million homes
@@TheAtomicAgeCM
Wow, these are big. That's a ridiculous amount of clean energy. It reminds me of the twin RBMK-1500s at the Ignalina station. Those two reactors basically powered the entire country of Lithuania, with room to spare. Pretty amazing when you stop to think about it. If only people weren't so afraid of nuclear power. It really is the way to go if we want to drastically cut back our emissions. Thanks for all the good info!
Hi Charlie! Really dig your channel. Have you thought of filming an analysis of delightful trash-TV disaster movie _Atomic Twister_ and/or the Meryl Streep classic, _Silkwood_ ?
Hi, Jake. Thank you! Yes, they are on the list. Not sure when I'll get to them, though.
"There's some cool reasons as to why it looks different"
it took me a splitsecond, but when it critically hit me it started a presynaptic chain reaction decaying into a fallout of laughter
So, using a car analogy, when a reactor goes super critical, does it blow a gasket? ; )
that's a good one, I like that. My mind has been thinking a lot in the past few days about apt car analogies. So, yeah, uncontrolled supercriticality in a reacto is like saying it blew a headgasket or a cylinder ring, maybe even snapped a rod
I was thinking it'd be good if you did a video on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant crisis event, and the potential hazards it may pose in the future.