Nuclear power plant
Fuel is removed when the percentage of neutron absorbing atoms becomes so large that a chain reaction can no longer be sustained, typically three years.
While its radioactivity decreases exponentially, it must be isolated from the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years, though newer technologies (like fast reactors) have the potential to significantly reduce this.
Building a nuclear power plant often spans five to ten years, which can accrue significant financial costs, depending on how the initial investments are financed.
[13][14][15] The world's first full scale power station, Calder Hall in the United Kingdom, opened on October 17, 1956 and was also meant to produce plutonium.
A cooling system removes heat from the reactor core and transports it to another area of the station, where the thermal energy can be harnessed to produce electricity or to do other useful work.
[19][full citation needed] In the main condenser, the wet vapor turbine exhaust come into contact with thousands of tubes that have much colder water flowing through them on the other side.
[21][22] Over the last 15 years, the United States has seen a significant improvement in the operational performance of its nuclear power plants, enhancing their utilization and efficiency, adding the output equivalent to 19 new 1000 MWe reactors without actual construction.
While a previous goal aimed to reduce nuclear electricity generation share to lower than fifty percent by 2025, this target was postponed to 2035 in 2019 and ultimately discarded in 2023.
The main difference from the dismantling of other power stations is the presence of radioactive material that requires special precautions to remove and safely relocate to a waste repository.
After a facility has been completely decommissioned it is released from regulatory control, and the licensee of the station no longer has responsibility for its nuclear safety.
[30] One of the major limiting wear factors is the deterioration of the reactor's pressure vessel under the action of neutron bombardment,[28] however in 2018 Rosatom announced it had developed a thermal annealing technique for reactor pressure vessels which ameliorates radiation damage and extends service life by between 15 and 30 years.
[34] Russia has led in the practical development of floating nuclear power stations, which can be transported to the desired location and occasionally relocated or moved for easier decommissioning.
In 2022, the United States Department of Energy funded a three-year research study of offshore floating nuclear power generation.
[35] In October 2022, NuScale Power and Canadian company Prodigy announced a joint project to bring a North American small modular reactor based floating plant to market.
[36] The economics of nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, and multibillion-dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source.
[37] Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear stations.
However, up to now, there has not been any actual bulk recycling of waste from a NPP, and on-site temporary storage is still being used at almost all plant sites due to construction problems for deep geological repositories.
In Eastern Europe, a number of long-established projects are struggling to find financing, notably Belene in Bulgaria and the additional reactors at Cernavodă in Romania, and some potential backers have pulled out.
[43] However, some countries, especially in Europe, scaled back or cancelled planned nuclear power plants that were to be built by Rosatom.
Most reactors require continuous temperature control to prevent a core meltdown, which has occurred on a few occasions through accident or natural disaster, releasing radiation and making the surrounding area uninhabitable.
Professor of sociology Charles Perrow states that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society's complex and tightly coupled nuclear reactor systems.
[52][full citation needed] Proponents advance the notion that nuclear power produces virtually no air pollution, in contrast to the chief viable alternative of fossil fuel.
They emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power plants.
[60][61][62] Those countries that do not contain uranium mines cannot achieve energy independence through existing nuclear power technologies.
[64] Newer models, like HPR1000, produce even less carbon dioxide during the whole operating life, as little as 1/8 of power plants using gen II reactors for 1.31g/kWh.
Large-scale atomic power plants might emit waste heat into natural bodies of water, affecting waterborne organisms.
[68] Large-scale nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl or Fukushima, release large quantities of radioactive material into nature, harming creatures and people.
[71] As for March 2024, there are approximately 60 nuclear reactors for power plants being built worldwide, with a total capacity of 64GW,[72] with an additional 110 in the planning stages.
This collective, which includes founding members like Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, the UK, and the USA, along with newer members like Switzerland, China, Russia, Australia, and the European Union through Euratom, focuses on sharing research and development insights rather than constructing reactors, aiming to set multinational regulatory standards for these next-generation nuclear technologies.
Various designs and methodologies are being explored, including magnet-based machines like stellarators and tokamaks, as well as laser, linear device, and advanced fuel approaches; the timeline for the successful deployment of fusion energy hinges on global collaboration, the pace of industry development, and the establishment of the necessary nuclear infrastructure to support this future energy source.
