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Message: The BIG Picture

The BIG Picture

posted on Jun 18, 2009 07:02PM
US Govt. pours Billions into 4 Nuke Power co's + meltdown proof reactor Written by Barry Ritholtz - The Big Picture | Thursday, 18 June 2009 06:53 Boom coming? You Judge “Four power companies are expected to split $18.5 billion in federal financing to build the next generation of nuclear reactors — the biggest step in three decades to revive the U.S. nuclear industry and one that could vault the utilities ahead of some of the sector’s strongest players. UniStar Nuclear Energy, NRG Energy Inc., Scana Corp and Southern Co. are expected to share a set of loan guarantees to be awarded by the Energy Department. The guarantees would enable the companies to start building the reactors as early as 2011, with the plants likely to come online by 2015 or 2016 . . . Seventeen companies applied for $122 billion of federal loan guarantees for 21 proposed reactors . . . Expanding the use of nuclear power has the potential to make a significant dent in emissions of carbon dioxide, the most commonly produced greenhouse gas. And Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has made nuclear power an agency priority.” Fascinating development . . . Ed Note: This article HERE discusses the PBMR reactor - the PBMR is a completely new kind of reactor. One of its most distinctive features is that it uses no water. There are no huge cooling towers. Just a room filled with inert helium. For that reason, PBMR power plants are smaller and cheaper to build. It takes about 24 months to put one together. They’re built to last 40 years apiece. But here’s the best part: They’re virtually meltdown proof. Inside a PBMR, there’s a bed of about 500,000 high-temperature silicon graphite balls, each about the size of a billiard ball. About 380,000 of them contain flecks of uranium. When they interact, the bed of graphite balls gets hot. The gas in the room carries the heat to a turbine. The turbine turns. You get electricity.
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