Nuclear power in the United States

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There are 96 large, electricity-producing nuclear reactors (64 pressurized water reactors and 32 boiling water reactors ) in operation in the United States . These are more nuclear reactors than any other country on earth . The nuclear reactors are located at 55 locations and supplied around 19 percent (849.6 TWh) of electricity in 2018. By February 20, 2020, 37 reactors were shut down. The Watts Bar 2 nuclear power plant, which began in 1973 and was not completed, continued to be built in 2007 and went into operation in 2016.

geography

Most of the US nuclear power plants are located in the northeast of the country and on the east coast. Today there are only six reactor blocks left on the west coast: two in the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California, which is particularly prone to earthquakes, three in the Palo Verde nuclear power plant (Arizona) and one in the Columbia nuclear power plant .

The states with the most nuclear reactors are Illinois with 11 blocks and Pennsylvania with nine blocks. The Indian Point nuclear power plant is particularly controversial ; it is only about 55 kilometers north of central New York City on the Hudson River .

history

Shippingport Nuclear Power Plant

Research into the peaceful uses of nuclear energy began in the USA shortly after the end of World War II under the auspices of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) founded in 1946 .

Findings from military use should serve peaceful purposes in the future. The US Navy took over the lead after recognizing nuclear power as an opportunity to operate ships and submarines for a long time without refueling. The US Navy sent Hyman Rickover to the AEC. His work there led to the development of the pressurized water reactor (PWR), which was the first model installed on the USS Nautilus . This submarine demonstrated the principle of full-time operation underwater by reaching the North Pole and diving through the polar ice.

In the Marine Reactor Program, nuclear-powered ships were developed. On May 26, 1958, the first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States was inaugurated at Shippingport by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of his Atoms for Peace program. Given the growth of the nuclear industry in the 1960s, the AEC predicted that by 2000 the US would have more than 1,000 reactors in operation. In 1974 the AEC was dissolved and replaced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), with research and development transferred to the Energy Research and Development Administration . Numerous projects started in the 1960s and 1970s, the last start of construction was on July 1, 1978 that of Black Fox 1 & 2. On March 28, 1979 there was a meltdown in the Three Mile Island-2 reactor , which ended many projects ( among others also Black Fox), which had already struggled with considerable delays and cost increases.

On February 14, 2002, Spencer Abraham , Secretary of Energy in the Bush administration , announced the Nuclear Power 2010 Program. The first of a total of six to seven new nuclear power plants should be built by the end of the decade through government subsidies. The Energy Policy Act , passed in 2005, included subsidies and government guarantees to expand nuclear power. On the basis of this law, 32 applications for the construction of new reactors were submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by January 2008. Construction was expected to start in 2008.

Construction of new nuclear reactors

On August 1, 2006, the Tennessee Valley Authority decided to continue building Watts Bar-2, the block is now in operation. However, real new construction did not begin until 2013: at the Vogtle site in the state of Georgia, and at the Virgil C. Summer nuclear power plant , construction began on two new nuclear power plant blocks. The construction of two reactors was planned at the Bellefonte nuclear power plant as part of the 'Nuclear Power 2010 Program'; however, the plans were largely withdrawn in August 2009.

Atomic energy crisis since 2013

In the 2010s, nuclear power in the US became increasingly unprofitable. The reasons for this are the expansion of renewable energies and the oversupply of cheap electricity due to fracking . The Fukushima nuclear disaster also damaged public confidence in nuclear energy in the United States. As a result, a large part of the planning for new nuclear power plants was terminated and the construction of two new blocks in the Virgil C. Summer 2017 nuclear power plant was canceled. In addition, there has been a sustained wave of nuclear plant shutdowns since 2013.

Demolition of new nuclear power plant

According to the former NRC boss Gregory Jaczko , today (2016) the prime costs of the new building projects are massively above the budgeted budget. Due to the difficulties with the new construction projects Vogtle and Virgil C. Summer, Westinghouse Electric Company applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of March 2017 . At the end of July 2017, the two project planners of the Virgil C. Summer power plant announced that the completion of the two reactor blocks under construction would be suspended because the completion was uneconomical. Overall, the construction costs of the power plant had risen from the originally planned 11.5 billion dollars to more than 25 billion dollars. The company Santee Cooper, which has a 45% stake in the power plant, said its share of construction costs had risen from the originally planned $ 5.1 billion to $ 11.4 billion. By abandoning construction, the company's customers could save approximately $ 7 billion compared to completing the blocks.

Decommissioning of nuclear power plants

Between 2013 and 2020, 10 nuclear reactors ( Crystal River , Kewaunee , San Onofre 2 and 3 , Vermont Yankee , Fort Calhoun , Oyster Creek , Pilgrim , TMI 1 and Indian Point 2 ) were permanently shut down. For the period up to 2025, the decommissioning of further reactors, e.g. B. Indian Point 3, Palisades and Diablo Canyon 1 and 2 announced.
In the states of New York and Illinois , electricity providers have withdrawn the decommissioning announcements for a total of six reactors ( Quad Cities 1 and 2 , Clinton , Ginna , Nine Mile Point 1 , Fitzpatrick ) after the respective governments agreed to fund the plants from funds for pollution-free energy to subsidize. In New York, environmental initiatives achieved legal success on January 22, 2018: their lawsuit against this subsidization of nuclear power plants was approved. The governments of Pennsylvania and Ohio refuse (as of September 2017), however, to decide on subsidies for nuclear power plants. The electricity company FirstEnergy got into financial difficulties and has announced that it will either sell or shut down its four nuclear reactors ( Davis Besse , Perry , Beaver Valley 1 and 2 ). In Minnesota, the power company Xcel is considering taking the Prairie Island nuclear power plant out of service. The Duane Arnold nuclear power plant is scheduled to be shut down in 2020 as the term of the electricity purchase agreement has been shortened. FirstEnergy, the operator of the Davis Besse nuclear power plant, announced on April 25, 2018 that it would shut down the power plant on May 31, 2020.

Term extensions

The latest trends are in the direction of further extensions of the term of existing nuclear power plants. After a phase of extensions from 40 to 60 years, which almost all US plants have already received approval, a further extension step to 80 years is now to take place. With three power plants with two blocks this extension is already in progress by the supervisory authority NRC : Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station , Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station and Surry Nuclear Power Plant . Further requests have already been announced.

Use of weapons plutonium

1979 President had Jimmy Carter , the reprocessing and spent nuclear fuel. a. prohibited due to proliferation risks. In 2000, it was decided to use the plutonium from nuclear weapons warheads that had become superfluous as a result of the military disarmament agreement as “fuel” in nuclear power plants, also to reduce the need to store plutonium. One project (as of July 2012) plans to dismantle the plutonium warheads, fill the plutonium into MOX fuel elements and use these fuel elements in the Catawba and McGuire nuclear power plants or the Browns Ferry and Sequoyah nuclear power plants .

Final disposal

In the 2000s, the project was Yucca Mountain in Nevada for the purpose of national final storage of radioactive waste promoted. Due to certain security concerns, it was temporarily dropped and included in the evaluation again in 2013.

criticism

February 2005 Opinion poll in the USA: blue are the supporters, gray are undecided, yellow are the opponents of nuclear energy

There has been great public and scientific debates about the use of nuclear energy in the United States, particularly from the 1960s through the late 1980s, but also since about 2001 when a nuclear renaissance emerged. Topics such as nuclear accidents, the disposal of radioactive waste, the spread of nuclear weapons, energy supply and terrorism played a role. Critics include Barry Commoner , S. David Freeman , John Gofman , Arnold Gundersen , Frank von Hippel , Mark Z. Jacobson , David Lochbaum , Amory Lovins , Edwin Lyman , Arjun Makhijani , Gregory Minor and Joseph Romm . The former NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko has also been critical of nuclear energy since his resignation in May 2012.

The initially relatively high acceptance of nuclear energy among the population of the United States declined significantly after three accidents or disasters noticed worldwide: after the reactor accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (1979, partial meltdown), after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986, fallout in large Parts of western Europe, especially in Austria and southern Germany) and after the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011, three core meltdowns).

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Annual Report of the US Energy Administration .
  2. ^ BP: BP Statistical Review of World Energy
  3. ↑ USA: Watts-Bar-2 in commercial operation , press release Nuklearforum Schweiz of October 24, 2016, accessed on January 4, 2017.
  4. ↑ Closure announced for 2024/25: Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel
  5. ↑ It has an operating permit until 2044
  6. ↑ a b National Geographic , July 2002 (German edition)
  7. ↑ http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/About/News/View/Westinghouse-President-and-CEO-Statement-on-First-Concrete-Pour-at-Vogtle-Unit-3
  8. ↑ Deal reached for Georgia Power nuclear reactors ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ajc.com
  9. ↑ http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2013/03/first-concrete-pour-begins-at-summer-nuclear-unit.html
  10. ^ TVA: Single Nuclear Unit at the Bellefonte Site , accessed on August 15, 2009
  11. ^ Presentation by Jaczko at the "Nuclear Phaseout Congress" in Switzerland; in "Energie-Express", No. 111, June 2016
  12. ↑ a b S.C. utilities halt work on new nuclear reactors, dimming the prospects for a nuclear energy revival . In: Washington Post , July 31, 2017. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  13. ↑ Vogtle nuke cost could top $ 25B as decision time looms . In: UtilityDIve , August 3, 2017. Retrieved August 4, 2017.
  14. ↑ Ruling allows lawsuit against New York nuclear plant subsidies
  15. ↑ http://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/story/news/local/2017/09/29/efforts-ramp-up-save-sell-davis-besse/618306001/
  16. ↑ bismarcktribune.com
  17. ^ Nuklearforum.ch , USA: Decommissioning announcement for Duane Arnold from August 6, 2018, accessed: August 6, 2018
  18. ↑ First Energy Solutions definitely to close its nuclear power plants . In Cleveland.com , April 25, 2018. Accessed April 25, 2018th
  19. ↑ Description of the "Surplus Plutonium Program" ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 1 MB, created on July 17, 2012) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nnsa.energy.gov
  20. ↑ Newer information in: US Department of Energy (DOE) / National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) (April 2015): Final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement PDF, 18 MB, 495 pp.