Contract Signed On Pressure Vessel For New Texas Nuclear Reactors.

[NNadir]

Japanese engineering company IHI Corporation has been awarded a contract by Toshiba to produce the reactor pressure vessel for the first Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) to be built in the USA.

Under the contract, IHI will supply the reactor pressure vessel for the first of two ABWRs planned at the South Texas Project (STP). The contract, the value of which has not been disclosed, was awarded by Toshiba's US subsidiary Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation (TANE).

The reactor pressure vessel - about 20 metres tall and 7 metres wide and weighing some 900 tonnes - will be manufactured at IHI's plant in Yokohama. It is scheduled to be delivered to the STP site in 2012. STP unit 3 is set to begin operation in FY2016.

Both of these reactors are rated at full power at 1350 MWe. The volume of the reactor pressure vessel is about 3079 cubic meters, or to put it more graphically, the equivalent of a cube roughly 14 meters on a side which could easily be placed within the infield of a baseball diamond.

I never tire of noting that all of the wind turbines in Denmark, by reference to the website of the Danish Energy Agency, produce about 22 petajoules of energy per year. This is the equivalent of an average continuous power rating of 700 MWe, discounting the fact that the Danish windmills often produce electricity when no one needs it, and when it must be dumped on the spot market at well below wholesale cost. Conversely it is often not available at times of peak demand, hot stagnant days.

Thus to match the power output of all the wind turbines in Denmark, either of the two new Texas reactors need to operate at (100)*700/1350 = 51% of capacity utilization. Most nuclear reactors in the United States operate at closer to 90% capacity utilization, meaning it's easy for either reactor to produce more energy than all of the wind farms in the entire nation of Denmark, constructed over a period of 3 decades.

The ABWR was developed jointly by GE, Toshiba and Hitachi, following on from GE's development of the BWR concept in the 1950s. The three firms partnered for build at Kashiwazaki Kariwa and Lungmen and now both GE-Hitachi (which merged their nuclear businesses in 2007) and Toshiba assert the right to build ABWRs. However, GE-Hitachi owns the very specific design certified for use in the USA by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).



In April, Toshiba and IHI signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the formation of a joint venture to manufacture steam turbine components for nuclear power plants at home and abroad. The new company - set to be launched in October 2010 - will be based at Yokohama, within IHI's Yokohama headquarters representatives office. It will manufacture casings and nozzles for steam turbines at new nuclear power plants for both pressurised water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs) for the domestic and overseas markets, as well as providing maintenance services for installed equipment.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Contract_for_Texan_ABWR_pressure_vessel-0106105.html">Contract for Texan ABWR pressure vessel

[Go2Peace]

1. I think the world is going to "meltdown"

if we don't build thousands of nuclear reactors. That alternative energy stuff is just bad policy.
Besides, turbines can fall out of the sky and could cause civilian casualties, lost revenue, and toxic conditions if they fall in a vat of battery acid. So we best not even bother.

:rofl:

[NNadir]

2. One of the appalling things about mindless anti-nukes is that they giggle insipidly in the face of a

crisis that they are too scientifically illiterate to comprehend.

My opinion of anti-nukes gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse by the hour, precisely because, having never opened either a science or math book in their pathetic mindless lives, they lack a sense of scale.

Given that dumb indifferent people have been cheering, again mindlessly the numbers tell the truth: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1.html

The dead, including those who will die from the carcinogenicity of crude oil - about which predictably the anti-science anti-nukes know nothing and care not at all - aren't laughing.

I would include, in this giggle fest - the 1.6 million people http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/national/countryprofile/mapoap/en/index.html">The World Health Organization reports die each year from air pollution, much of which is associated with that object of anti-nuke love fests, biomass burning.

Happily, the world scientific and engineering community doesn't give a rat's ass what a much of insipid mindless self declared "environmentalists" think, which is why the world community is rebuilding nuclear infrastructure that was destroyed by ignorance.

Have a nice insipid giggling while the Gulf dies day.

[Go2Peace]

3. Maybe I should include a sarcasm tag

for the dull "pro-nuke" cadre who seem to have trouble recognizing it.

I hate it when those "pro-nuke" narcissists post in arrogance, thinking they are more intelligent than others who post. They must be very hard to talk to in real life. Probably take out their irrational anger on others around them too.

It's a shame those arrogant anti-alternative energy myopic nuclear spokesmen can't recognize how stupid they look. If only they realized the way that people really see them. Because most liberals are much more intelligent than they want to believe and can see through their act.

Have a nice nuclear meltdown eyes burned into your skull love your radiation day!

[jpak]

5. One of the appalling things about mindless pro-nukes is that they giggle insipidly in the face of

crisis that they are too scientifically illiterate to comprehend.

My opinion of pro-nukes gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse by the hour, precisely because, having never opened either a science or math book in their pathetic mindless lives, they lack a sense of scale.

Given that dumb indifferent people have been cheering, again mindlessly the numbers tell the truth - nuclear power sucks

The dead, including those who will die from the carcinogenicity of crude oil - about which predictably the anti-science pro-nukes know nothing and care not at all - aren't laughing.

I would include, in this giggle fest - the 1.6 million people The World Health Organization reports die each year from air pollution, much of which is associated with that object of pro-nuke love fests, biomass burning.

Happily, the world scientific and engineering community doesn't give a rat's ass what a much of insipid mindless self declared "environmentalists" think, which is why the world community is rebuilding nuclear infrastructure that was destroyed by ignorance.

Have a nice insipid giggling while the Gulf dies day.

:rofl:

[jpak]

4. Yeah, Japan gets the good jobs, ratepayers get fucked & taxpayers get to pay for spent fuel disposal

yawn