Skip to main content

Remembering the First Nuclear Electricity

The first electricity generated by nuclear power was produced December 20, 1951, soon to be 55 years ago, at the Experimental Breeder Reactor #1 (EBR-1) in Idaho.

For a comparison of past vs. present practices, that pioneer nuclear power plant was announced March, 1949. The first, albeit token, juice was produced 33 months later.

Yesterday, I participated in a scheduling meeting for the next new nuke. It will take us 14 months to mobilize then prepare and submit the application - and that's for a proven, certified design. First safety-related concrete pour takes another 24+ months following combined construction and operating license (COL) approval.

The take-home point is that the very first nuclear power plant was designed, built, tested, and on-line in the time it takes for a contemporary project to complete its paperwork.

Now, granted, there is a huge difference between EBR-1's 500 watts and tomorrow's 1400 megawatts, but those pioneers built their new, experimental reactor to be cooled with molten sodium metal while our plants are the result of 50 years of painstaking development and refinement of the light water reactor.

Perhaps the NRC's rules on "Limited Work Authorizations" (LWAs) could use some tweaking?

Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm not sure I'd be so quick to hold up EBR-1's rapid design and construction as a model to be emulated by today's industry. The reactor experienced a meltdown six years later in 1955.

http://www.nucleartourist.com/events/part-melt.htm

Maybe there are good reasons why more time is taken now for design and safety reviews.
Anonymous said…
What really amazes me is not just the fact that it takes many years to get the paperwork done, it also costs tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars just to get everything in order before you can even start building the plant. And that money is invested with no assurance that a plant will ever even be built.
Joseph Somsel said…
The up-front cash invested in a merchant plant's mobilization, application, and early site preparations could be considered proprietary information these days.

They'd kill me if I divulged that - I'm probably already in trouble for the schedule info.

As to EBR-1, it was a test reactor built to "go where no man has gone before," built in a cold, rocky desert where no man would want to live.

It does raise the issue of "paralysis by analysis." A favorite political tactic is to call for more analysis and review of any opposed project.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should