Nuclear Power Plant question

It is my understanding that the Bush Administration is looking at building more nuclear power plants. It is also my understanding that Reagan shut down 4 such projects in the State of Washington. Several of these nuclear power plant jobs were 85 per cent complete. One at Hanford had all the equipment removed and shipped to China. My question is: Will Bush seek to continue to build these plants?

Reply to
Gerald Newton3
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You seem to be mixing two different technologies just because they both contain the word 'nuclear'. Hanford was a specially designed nuclear reactor used to make nuclear weapons grade plutonium. It was run by the government as part of their weapons program and did not generate any significant electricity for general use. I don't believe we would send any weapons manufacturing technology to China.

On the other hand, there are a couple of commercial nuclear plants that were owned by private utilities that did not get completed. The projects were shutdown for economic reasons and/or political objections at the local/state level. Reagan admistration had little to do with shutting them down.

Bush seems to have gone on record as wanting to help the nuclear industry build new plants. But since Bush doesn't 'own' them, his help may be in the form of tax breaks, grants, or other economic incentives. Only time can tell.

As for what the DOD does for nuclear weapons material..... That's an entirely different topic.

daestrom

Reply to
daestrom

Here's a a short artical on all of the WPPSS units (5 total). WPPSS overextended financially and defaulted on theri bonds. IF you google up WPPSS nuclear plants you't get more information that you can read in a lifetime. Only on is running at present WPPSS 2 at Hanford. It's a GE BWR just like dozens of others around the country. There were two PWRs planned at Boardman Oregon and two at Skagit. All four of those had equipment purchased andin storage prior to construction ( which never started ). WPPPS still has a site with surplus equipment for sale. The stuff for Skagit ( there is a rigging and crane contractor in Burlington or MT Vernon WA that has a heat exchanger hanging from an old boom. They use it as part of their sign and it the last piece of the Skagit nukes left in the state. ) and Boardman is all gone. Turbines for nukes are useless for anything but nukes - the steam pressure and temperature are two low for high pressure high pressure steam generated by coal fired boilers. Nuke turbines are practically water wheels in comparison. Some or all of these turbines went to China and maby Korea. Bush won't do anything to build any nukes. There is nothing in it for his gang of thieves in Houston. You will probably see the ANWR fields developed and the gas pipeline but only because they make money for hsi buddies in Texas. Any new nukes and windpower are going to have an uphill fight.

WPPSS

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"Gerald Newton3" wrote in message news:41970719$ snipped-for-privacy@news.acsalaska.net...

Reply to
B J Conner

It is true that there are number of breeder reactors at the Hanford site. However, there is also one nuclear power plant Unit 2 that is online. There was a second job, Unit 1, started and finished to about 65 per cent that was shut down and the equipment was removed and shipped to China according to the yard foreman that I talked to there at Unit 2 in 2001.

According to the people I interviewed at Elma and at Hanford, they blame the shut downs on Reagan although the builders defaulted.

Reply to
Gerald Newton3

All fine and dandy, but as I said before, Hanford is *not* a commercial power generating station. It is a DOD operation. It *was* shutdown by Reagan, but that simply means a DOD site was shutdown by a federal executive. Reagan's administration did *not* shutdown any commercial nuclear power plants. "The Builders" were just private contractors building under a federal government contract. Their overruns and a lack of increases in budget money are at the root of the construction halts.

Both Hanford and Savana River operated reactors for the production of weapons material. Since they have to operate at significant power to do this, the thermal output was 'dumped' into generators and put on the grid. Not because they were designed/built to generate electricity, just because they had to do *something* with the power and putting their output onto the local grid just 'seemed like a good idea'. Their goal was never about providing energy to the public (to replace fossil fuels or anything), it was always about making plutonium.

Of the 103 operating commercial reactors in the US, only those belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority have any direct ties to any federal government agency (you may have heard of TVA as part of Roosevelt's "new deal", well it still exists today).

daestrom

Reply to
daestrom

Please! Stop mixing the words Bush and Nuclear, you are scaring Canadians! Just Joking sorry Ron MTL Québec! "Gerald Newton3" a écrit dans le message de news:41970719$ snipped-for-privacy@news.acsalaska.net...

Reply to
<ronald.cajelais

Hanford unit two is a GE mark 5 BWR, 1,100 MWE. It is operated by the succesor to WPPSS. It is now called the Columbia Plant. It is located on the Hanford Reservation. Been there, been in it, seen it run. WPPS units 1 and 4, also commercial units were to be on the Hanford Reservation, still parts of them there.

Reply to
B J Conner

It is not the job of the president to build power plants of any type. I'd love to see more commercial nuke plants, though. geotek

Reply to
geotek

Those plants aren't named 'Hanford', that isn't the same 'Hanford' as I'm talking about. I'm talking about the DOD site shrouded in 'national security' that dumped a lot of waste into the local watershed in the 50's &

60's.

WHoops (I know they hated to be called that) was always intended to generate commercial amounts of electric, and had *nothing* to do with the federal government. It started out as 'WPPSS Unit 1 and 2' and yes, it has been renamed 'Columbia'. But it was never called 'Hanford', any more than Indian Point was ever called 'Buchanan', or Millstone called 'New London' or any of the other plants called by a nearby city instead of their 'Name'.

daestrom

Reply to
daestrom

The plants are on the Handford Reservation. You had to go through a secutiy gate on highway 240 to get there. ( I don't kow if you still do, I haven't been there in 5 or 6 years ) there were signs on the fences along the road that said deadly force could be used against tresspassers. IF you look at a map of Washington you will see a large area northwest of Richland that says " Handford Site ( US Goverment ). All three of the sites are on that site. Along with the N -reactors, The Fast Flux Test Facility , numerous tanks of radwaste, old submarine reactors, radwaste from commercial plants ( things like anti-Cs, rubber gloves, crapped up tools etc.)

Here's a map of the Handford site.

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three of the WPPSS plants are on the site. WPPSS leased the plant site from the Feds.

Reply to
B J Conner

Oh yes they did: the federal gov't leased the site to WPSS.

Reply to
Paul

Only the Hanford "N" reactor generated electricity at Hanford; the other eight dumped their heat output directly to the Columbia river. These were all once-through designs with treated river water passing directly through the fuel pressure tubes and back to the Columbia after a sojourn through holding ponds.

None of the heavy water pressure tube reactors at Savanna River Site were used to generate any electricity either. They dumped there heat via heat exhangers to the environment.

Yeah, and Watts Bar1 is currently being used to produce Tritium for the DOE as well as power - since all of the Savanna River plants are shut down.

Reply to
Paul

I stand corrected.

So what we have here is a couple of commercial nuclear power plants, owned and operated by Washington Public Power Supply System (now Energy Northwest), that just happen to sit on federal lands. A federal site that encompasses 560 square miles and is litterd with all sorts of cold-war and DOE/DOD facilities.So I guess if the feds got a 'bee in their bonnet' they could revoke the lease and ask Washington state to shut them down.

But as I have said repeatedly, President Reagan had nothing to do with shutting down the construction. To quote one article about 'WHOOPS'....

"In 1983, due to extremely poor project management, construction on a couple of plants was canceled, and the completion of construction on the remaining plants seemed unlikely. Consequently, the take-or-pay arrangements that had been backing the municipal bonds were ruled void by the Washington Supreme Court. As a result, the WPPSS had the largest municipal debt default in history.... Whoops! "

It happened on President Reagan's "watch", but the federal government was not the 'extremely poor project management' responsible for 'WHOOPS'.

daestrom

Reply to
daestrom

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