Thanks so much for watching! For more on nuclear economics, please check out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ke2xijcJYd0.htmlsi=Lq9uCA-03BmSXItn
I'm from Slovakia and I have some good news for you. They also built a new one. Thankfully Slovakia is still largely using nuclear power. One of the few things I'm happy about here.
Is it a Russian based company? I'm curious from my understanding is that the Russians build or design numerous reactors around the world.
9 дней назад
@@firebry23 not sure if the current one has any ties with Russia but the previous one certainly had since the whole country was controlled by the soviet regime.
@@firebry23 If they're building a new VVER, then it will be Rosatom doing the building. That most certainly is a Russian company. They're building a lot of new VVERs at the moment. All Generation 3+ reactors.
@swokatsamsiyu3590 in Slovakia there is currently ongoing completion of "old" VVER440 reactors. The project (Mochovce Units 3 & 4) was started at the end of 1980s, after the fall of communism, it was stopped and site conserved. It was restarted in ~ 2010s. The design was ofcourse updated, and then updated again after lessons learned from Fukushima. Currently Unit 3 is completed and in operation, while Unit 4 is under construction. It is being built by a mix of local companies (Slovak, Czech, etc.) and control system suppliers like Siemens, Areva, etc. And as far as I know, Rosatom has no involvement there.
Maybe nuclear plants, or any large plant, should put aside money every year for decommissioning instead of paying out billions in bonuses for executives and shareholders and then being broke when they need to be demolished. But that would be responsible, and it's always cheaper to use other people's money. How disgraceful.
Just so you know, this already happens in the US. It is mandatory by law to set aside a small percentage of every single kW the power plant sells to its customers. This money is placed in a special funds that is only, let me repeat, only to be used for decommissioning. And yes, this is monitored. So when the NPP is reaching the end of its service life, the money for decommissioning is already there.
tell me you don't understand a former communist state without saying you don't understand a former communist state..... this was a warsaw pact soviet era plant.... they didn't pay anybody but the politicians billions........ but please let your really warped view of reality color everything you see and blurt out your ignorance for all to see
We’ll see how long this lasts. Maga zealots and the scouts are actively trying to defund a ton of regulatory agencies in the United States. This neutering may free up large sums of money because they would be no longer obligated to adhere to these regulatory agencies.
Another one of your nice, lengthy videos with a ton of details. I so do like these long-winded nerdy videos❤ As to the WWER, or VVER (ВВЭР in Russian). Its full name is; Водо-Водяной (= water-cooled, water-moderated) Энергетический (= energy/power) Реактор (= reactor). To non-Cyrillic people, the Cyrillic "В" looks like a capital "b", but is actually pronounced as "v" in Russian. So, that's why the abbreviation comes back as VVER. The easiest way to pronounce that is V-VER, instead of V-V-E-R. It is a type of PWR, but they do not borate their primary cooling system, and use hexagonal fuel assemblies instead of square ones. And yes, they also use horizontal steam generators instead of vertical ones. Even the newest VVERs have them. Placing them horizontally prevents certain metal fatigues apparently. Or that is what I was told in a lecture about the VVER-1000.
I would love to watch a video where you explain the differences between the technology of nuclear reactors built in the XX century and modern designs ❤
Quick note about the steam generators... horizontal steam generators (used in VVER440/1000/1200) have generally much lower doses than vertical steam generators. We´ve had guys lying inside the VVER440 steam generator for over 1 hour during outage, doing some repairs and the final dose was below 1mSv. In general, these reactors were designed during the soviet era during state planned economy. Money wasn't really an issue they would have to consider. I.e. when the engineers calculated that they need 2 meters of concrete of shielding, they made it 3 meters thick. Similar approach was used everywhere. Need one pressure measurement for control system? Lets give them 5. I've had the opportunity to work on the AP1000 reactor and am able to compare, just the amount of instrumentation at the old soviet design is probably tenfold. Some of these old soviet designs really aren't bad at all.
@supabass4003 kind of. And also not at all. RBMK is completely different style of reactor. It is graphite moderated, water cooled reactor, where the coolant flows in channels. While VVER reactors are your typical pressurized water reactor, I.e. the most common type out there. The entire concept of RBMK was flawed, in my opinion, as it came with several issues (mainly positive void coefficient). I've heard many reasons why such reactor type was produced. The one that makes the most sense to me is plutonium production - RBMK allows isolation of a single channel, removal of the fuel assembly, and its replacement. The removed fuel assembly can be then taken apart, and plutonium collected (and eventually used for nuclear weapons production). That is not easily achievable at PWRs - you would have to shut down the entire reactor, cool down everything, take it apart, refuel and restart. It also decreases your downtime, as you can continually refuel without major outage. I don't have personal experience with RBMK reactors, so I cannot precisely comment of the margins as I did with VVER reactors.
I work for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories Ltd. (CNL) and we currently have decommissioning teams in various stages of decommissioning 8 reactors, 3 commercial power reactors, 3 research reactors and 2 isotope production reactors. Our decommissioning teams has also previously completely decommissioned and dismantled 7 other research and isotope production reactors. If your commercial operators in the United States need assistance with decommissioning your reactor facilities I'm sure CNL would be more than happy to provide any and all assistance you need as a contractor or consultant.
This is what I never understood before: that water is enough to shield you from the radiation of a nuclear reactor. Just recently I came to understand that neutron radiation is what's produced the most, and I do now understand that water is very good at blocking that. I'm still confused about how there's apparently not much gamma radiation being produced in a reactor. For some reason I thought that it is unavoidable and I know it takes a lot of conrete or lead to block gamma radiation. Water won't do the trick for gamma radiation as far as I understand.
Atmosphere blocks essentially all ionizing radiation from space and it's equivalent to just 10 meters of water. You can think about it in another way: something that passes meters of water unlikely to react with your body.
The B1M is so uneven. Some videos seem like nonsense. Some seem solid. They get enthusiastic about projects that strike me as idiotic - sometimes. Maybe I’m just ignorant and they’re ALWAYS RIGHT, but I doubt it. The nuclear power plant near where I grew up (near Clinton, Illinois) started very late and very very over-budget (partly due to incessant legal challenges and regulatory ratcheting that required rebuilds of much of it) in late 1987. The license expires September 2026. One reactor, intended to have two. Now surrounded by wind farms but when the wind isn’t blowing it’s very useful. (This means that most of the wind farms are useless: install that second reactor and...) Owners wanted to close it in 2017 but the Illinois legislature passed a bill providing subsidies to keep it open because it’s not churning out carbon dioxide and works fine. Voters agreed to a cent per kWh on their electric bills as well. Owners now want the license extended to 2047. There’s SO much coal under a big part of Illinois that it’s astounding. Bituminous and high-sulfur. (My birthplace of Decatur: almost all of the older parts of town have mines underneath, usually around 600 feet down, none active of course.) It’s getting to be taboo to burn any of the coal.
The two finnish VVER-440 reactors (startups in 1977 & 1980) at Loviisa NPP have been heavily upgraded and have a nominal 507 MW capacity atm. In 2023 they received a license extension to 2050, which is a fair bit given the originally planned 25 year lifetime.
Im stoked i have found your channel, it was a short, the Demon core one lol, had me giggle. When i was in school,a long time ago, i loved physics, and chemistry, and nuclear physics is the marriage of both subjects in a beautiful union.
I didn't realize GA only had 2 nuclear plants (at least looking at the ArcGIS data). For some reason I thought there were a lot more -- but most of the plants I was thinking of were actually LNG or hydro. Also noticed a small cogeneration plant near where I grew up (which I never knew existed) which supplies steam to Frito Lay and the excess is used for peak power generation up to 300MW by GA Power. pretty neat.
Fun fact. The reactors 1 and 2 in Jaslovské Bohunice after they were shutted down, were still too hot so for many many years, they were using it for heating nearest cities like Trnava and couple of Villages as well. The reactor number 3 and 4 are still in use and they will be producing energy ( heat energy for those cities as well ) untill a year 2065. I'm from Slovakia and WE ARE BEGGING OUR GOVERNMENT ON KNEES to build atleast another 2 units with 1000MW electric because i'm currently paying around 75€ per month for the electricity but my average power consumption isn't that high to be honest and also don't ask me how many times i was thinking of building my own solar power and get rid of that billing... but solar power in Slovakia is also not that easy to have... you'll need special certified team and a looooot of papers to do but you can build it for yourself by yourself of course but if something bad happen, insurance company will kick your ass right a way and there is also a huge risk that you could've been charged with " unofficial power plant " with fine hitting hundreds of dollars... my country sucks a lot, but i really hope someday it'll be better. In NPP Mochovce on the other hand is last reactor expected to be connected to grid by a next year in 2025. But still, the 440MW one. But atleast the safest one in the world. After the chernobyl and Fukushima incident, those VVER reactors are really really safe and some my friends working in that NPP in Mochovce says that even a 10yo child will not cause a disaster. There is so many computer power, autonomous driving and so many safety system that makes whole this even more safe. POZDRAVUJEM VŠETKÝCH ZO SLOVENSKA❤️❤️🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰
In 32:20, there are NO graphite rods in this reactor. V1 is a VVER-440 which soviet PWR. These blocks were built as dual, with two reactors in same containment and two turbines for each. There is no graphite in Slovak reactors. The same blocks are running in Dukovany, CZ (4 reactors, updated to 510MW) and in Mochovce (SK). Dokovany has the same construction and there is no problem with that neithr on tests after Fukushima. For example, pressure test of containment passed with 1/5 of allowed gas leaks. And they have also updated control systems to western standards. About Jaslovské Bohunice, there is more interesting thing, block A1. It was protoype of Czechoslovak reactor. 150MW of the electrical power, heavy water moderated and carbon dioxide cooled. But it has two serious accidents. First, the fuel rod was ejected from the reactor, three people died. The second was partial meltdown of one fuel rod and damage of the reactor vessel. Then there were some radiation leaks outside the power plant while decomissioning. Now the decomissioning is top secret and it is impossible to get some information about that. I believe that it was reason why V1 was closed, A1 is a secret and they didn't want inspectors there. So they rather closed safe block for safery reasons...
Maybe they could have left the cooling towers in place rather than dismantle them. Then they could add doors, windows, floors, internal drywall, utility supplies, internal lighting and the such and repurpose the building.
Great video, love all the info. I believe the Crystal River unit here in Florida tried to upgrade the containment building, but damaged it. I believe Duke ultimately decided to decommission the plant instead or attempting to fix the fix. Please let me know if I’m mistaken.
I've watched so many reaction videos of yours that when you mentioned your plant had a reservoir instead of cooling towers I thought "Oh this again" XD
Have you seen the channel "That Chernobyl Guy"? He's done some interesting videos on accidents/incidents at Chernobyl units 1, 2, & 3, plus the Leningrad RBMK Accident. I'd love to hear your extra explanations, they are so clear and understandable!
"Nuclear Plants Are Us" --> stock: (1 "Nuclear Power Plant", almost out of stock, new, concrete based, cooling towers included, £9,999,999,999.99), please buy responsibly, always remember to properly research operating costs before you buy.
Interesting to see Armenia mentioned. They have the added complexity that metsamor coming back online in the 90s was what ended the rolling blackouts post fall of the soviet union, its still about 1/3 of their energy production. Its lack of a containment vessel also is particularly concerning due to earthquakes in the region and threats to bomb the facility made by azerbaijan.
2:55 Base load with inertia for voltage and frequency regulation, aka turbines turned by nuclear heated steam take time to slow down when extra load is demanded keeping frequency up which wind and solar being DC then switch inverted AC can not do this and require batteries or flywheels without turbines in the grid mix.
24:10 is that the source of leaks of tritium? I heard a reactor in central Minnesota has "leaked tritium" into the environment. I wondered how this happens.
Strange to see Hungary on the list of countries soon to be involved in decommissioning NPPs. Our NPP in Paks is using the same VVER-440 reactors (four of them), their already extended EOL is scheduled between 2032 and 2037, but they will extend their lifetime by another 20 years, so they won't be decommissioned at least until the mid 2050s. The extension will cost about 1 billion Euros. Strange that decommissioning these reactors were mandatory for the EU membership of Slovakia in 2004, while Hungary also joined the EU in the same year, has four of these same type of reactors, and they will not be decommissioned at least until the mid 2050s. Although our VVER reactors at Paks went through heavy reconstrunctions starting from 1997, they improved their safety in many aspects, including resistance to earthquakes. They also upgraded the fuel it uses, so the formerly 440MW reactors are now producing 500MW each, 2000MW total.
they are different, the ones that EU wanted shut down where the older VVER-440 V-230 models because they had some kind of design flaw in the containment building, and the newer VVER 440 V-213 had that problem fixed so it was not affected + some new/improved safety features and stuff, also they were modernized since then with new control equipment and stuff at least here in slovakia, they are underpowered compared to other reactors but they are still good, in slovakia we recently finished the 3rd unit at mochovce NPP and the unit 4 will be soon as well all of them them the VVER-440 V-230
A few radioactive sources were stolen last friday here in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They were radioisotope generators for medical procedures. Tc99m and such. The police found some, and some were removed from their shielded containers and are still missing.
Wow. Just checked google maps, and it looks like Cada has no nuclear reactors at all? One would be useful where i live... but again, the human error factor. 😅 I'd be terrified of one being in this city.
Hmm yeah. I must say I am not so happy about that there has been a lot of malfunctions in old reactors and then obviously it is economically best to extend the reactors lifetime ..... but at the same time I am also convinced that new reactors are much safer. Obviously it is technology that is generating energy with very little CO2 emissions, but then at the same time new safer an newer reactor types are not really built, obviously because it is very risky financially because renewables are much cheaper and have much lower investment costs with shorter payback times. Also, the problem with storage of nuclear waste is not really solved yet. Probably if nuclear is to be used, then it would be good to burn spent fuel if that is at all economically feasible. For that it would also make sense to support this by paying for waste treatment Anyway nuclear will have a very very hard time economically competing with renewables... and if nuclear doesnt burn spent fuel then it remains a question if building new nuclear power plants makes sense at all.....
Been a fairly avid watcher of your channel, and knowing that you consider nuclear war to likely be (relatively) less devastating irl, I think you'd enjoy this video covering a "what if" scenario on if a nuclear war happened at the height of the cold war: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-92MKewxnxs0.htmlsi=ATE_-KkYNmhBORFU
Money isn't hard to come by because we use "debt" as "money." and gov't creates as much of it as they ned to fund everything. not one nickel of IRS taxes funds the US gov't as presumed. NOT ONE NICKEL. Money does grow on trees.... for banksters and gov.
I'd say it's pretty automatic. Thing it the amount of details you need to know increases when you work at several sites as there will be some differences between the constructions. Now I remember that we learned the basics about nuclear reactors back in school. I was fourteen or fifteen when we got to read about the then common models in school. Sure there wasn't any details or much math involved we were just taught the basics, such as how control rods could be used to moderate the reactor. Different ways to stop a reactor and what speed and what problems it would cause. Just dropping the control rods for a fast stop was as I remember the preferred method as it was easy to get the reactor back in working order. I think the boron stop was the big panik button. This dumped a solution of boron was dumped in the reactor core. This quickly moderated the reactor, but it was a bitch to restore it, so it was only to be used when the shit hit the fan. That knowledge is just the beginning for someone working in the field. They need to know a lot of the details and when it's dangerous and how dangerous things are. But there are a lot of jobs where you need a lot of knowledge and training, but few of those handles as dangerous equipment. The fact that we've had so few really dangerous accidents shows that the design of these reactors have been very thought through, and yes that involves the old Soviet reactors. The accident in Chernobyl was to a large degree caused by personal without the full education who didn't understand the results they got and didn't perform the right actions to save the system. As soon as humans are involved things like this can happen no matter how well the reactor is designed. Now the old Soviet reactors do have some issues in the design, but it takes someone to screw things up to cause the Chernobyl kind of problems. Three Mile island was another bad situation that really shouldn't have happened. Again people were misunderstanding the numbers and pressed the wrong buttons. Fukushima was a real tragedy. It stood up to the earthquake but the Tsunami was too much for the system. I do not know if they could have taken it down completely without the seawater cooling, but as I understand it the reactor was supposed to be able to be cooled by a passive cooling system that didn't involve any pumps. Though the cooling tanks would have to be refilled after about one day. The backup generators failing didn't make things better that I'm pretty certain about. Further the passive system could cool the reactor to quickly, causing stress on components that could cause stress fractures. So they personell was instructed to moderate the cooling by closing and opening valves in the passive cooling system as needed. As fas as I understand there were some failure of these valves that made it impossible to open them from the control center. When personell was sent to check they found that the internal pressure in the reactor was so high that they couldn't use the procedures they were taught to get control over the reactor. In my opinion the Fukushima plant wasn't designed to handle a 14 meters high Tsunami wave, and that was where the problems started. But these are the only big accidents I can remember, and I feel the design of the reactors have to be quite thought through or we would have seen more and worse accidents.
Finland has two VVER-40 series PWRs, operated for 45 years. The purchase was partly political, partly based on economic factors, and the Soviet Union's promise (and requirement) to take back all the used fuel. We very soon realized that the control and safety systems were absolute [rude expression deleted]. We replaced those with the then best in class western technology, and significantly improved containment structures. The operating licenses have been extended multiple times, always after a thorough inspection and review of systems for compatibility with the latest standards. No reactor lasts forever, and the operating companies have to have the plans and cash for decommissioning at hand. The Finnish radiation control authority STUK is famously strict in its reviews, a fact the French Areva found out to its detriment (incompetence? attitude problem?) in construction of the Olkiluoto 3 plant, finished in 2023.
It's the result of the German Green party deliberately engineering their future generation of voters through decades of propaganda and control over education when the national school curriculum received a long-lasting overhaul. Demonising nuclear power is literally a part of the German high-school curriculum and a sacred cow that the Green party will not let anyone touch (because that's where their future voters are coming from). And this has the tacit approval of the German car and fossil fuel industry, because nuclear energy, unlike the renewables pushed by the Greens, is something that could actually replace fossil fuels completely.
Children learn in school that IT IS EVIL, apparently. Something like that. Germany still mines vast amounts of lignite, low-grade (brown) coal, and burns it. Somehow that’s okay provided that they also have lots of renewable sources that produce power they export because they can’t store it.
Why cant they make a plant that does not need decommissioning. So when the core design is obsolete they can remove the core and install a new core and keep the infrastructure. Why can that not be done. A modular replaceable design.
Not only the core but also the system that transfers heat to the generators fluid is also in contact with radioactive fluid. Also, keep in mind that there are thousands of parts that compose the system; in some cases it is just easier to re-do all that is too old and worn
Side note: the A1 in Jaslovske Bohunice alsmost did, it was experimental reactor type and after that accident was written off. Later VVER reactors were perfectly ok, but had to be decommissioned due to eu access terms.
Day 5 of asking for video reaction about bad nuclear waste disposal: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hOWQgLeRM-M.htmlsi=qzYRy7hD3HaumLRT
When nuclear power first came out, they promised safe, clean electricity - too cheap to meter. THEY LIED. If you factor in the cost of disposing of the waste and decommissioning of the reactor, it does not make economical sense to pursue this technology from an investor’s standpoint let alone the risk involved to the public. What is your opinion on this? The phrase “too cheap to meter” was used in a 1954 speech by the then-Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis L. Strauss. The occasion for the speech was the 20th anniversary of the National Association of Science Writers, held in New York City on September 16, 1954
