LOS ANGELES CA – The increased practice of uprating nuclear power generators in the United States, such as the uprate approved earlier this month for Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station in Limerick PA, has expanded the nation’s nuclear capacity without financial risks, public anxiety and political obstacles, The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported Sunday (April 17, 2011). It has, however, spurred debate over the safety of pushing aging equipment beyond original specifications.
Limerick Generating Station
“The power boosts come from more potent fuel rods in the reactor core and, sometimes, more highly enriched uranium. As a result, the nuclear reactions generate more heat, which boils more water into steam to drive the turbines that make electricity,” The Times said.
The Limerick facility won approval last Monday (April 11, 2011) from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a 1.65-percent uprate from both of its two reactors. Such “tiny uprates have long been common,” according to The Times. But nuclear watchdogs and the commission’s own safety advisory panel “have expressed concern over larger boosts — some by up to 20 percent — that the NRC began approving in 1998. Twenty of the nation’s 104 reactors have undergone these “extended power uprates,” it reported.
- Read a story by reporters Alan Zarembo and Ben Welsh, titled “U.S. is increasing nuclear power through uprating” and published Sunday in The Los Angeles Times, here.
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All that hot water…
How about we tap into the cooling ponds and distribute hot water via piping to nearby neighborhoods as a ready source of heating water?
That water of course is not radioactive and is actually recirculated and evaporated. Now if a contractor could build an insulated storage tank and piping system and tap off that water he could in essence heat homes and buildings with it for little cost. Right now it’s just allowed to evaporate away, all that wasted heat could be used in nearby neighborhoods for heating.
Now that would be really using all of the energy being generated.
Might be a practical idea, Ed, but I’m not certain how salable it would be to the public or potential home owners. Particularly given recent events in Japan, I’d guess there could be some reluctance to use water heated by a nuclear generator as a home heat source.
Remember that the water you see rising in the form of steam goes nowhere near the reactor. The water in the boiling water reactor is on a closed internal loop. It simply get’s heated by the reaction and then flashes to steam, turns the turbine and then is re-condensed and cooled back to water again. The heat from the steam is extracted by heat exchangers using clean, non-radioactive water that is in the cooling ponds and running through the evaporators at the base of towers. That water is not radioactive and is not in anyway dangerous. That water is the source of hot water that could be tapped for home heating easily, with only piping and insulated storage needed to store it at considerable temperature.
Really might be a good way to heat a lot of spaces cheaply.
People should understand that the Japanese reactors are designed differently and that Limerick’s cooling water and emergency water supplies are all above the reactor levels and can be gravity fed even with power loss. The Japanese plants were fundamentally flawed in their design with total dependency on electrical circulation pumps for exchanging their cooling water.
Anyways it’s an idea that may have merit.