They found all the material at a junkyard. The criminal who stole the car, also sold the cannisters made of lead to a guy who was willing to open them.
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Sounds doable, but expensive. And maybe not that viable.
It’s a Babcock & Wilcox pressure-cooker design, B&W LLP (DRYAMB), from the 1960ies. I don’t know the specifics of this particular model, but back then PWR designs typically envisaged an operational lifetime of around 40 years.
Construction of TMI-1 started in 1968 and it went online in 1974.
In 2009 a lifetime extension for up to 60 years / 2034 was granted.
Ironically, also in 2009, there was a minor incident that only slightly irradiated either 20 or 150 workers, depending on the source.
The plant was shut down in 2019 because it had been running at a loss since 2012.
Because natural gas was so cheap and government subsidies weren’t coming.
I don’t know whether they could “just switch it back on” or whether they would have everything re-certified - probably something inbetween.
A huge factor would be whether it was sort of mothballed in 2019 or not. For starters, lots of moving parts that would need a lot of TLC after not having moved for a couple of years. Availability of spare parts and personnel that knows how to handle them. And so on and on.
If the process starts now in earnest, I’d say ~5 years until it is online again. With the proper work and re-certification put into it, I could even see the 10 years of downtime added to the extended lifetime, so ~2044.
For a unit with a nameplate capacity of 819 MW and a known capacity factor of 73.25% over it’s 1974-2019 lifetime.
Side note: will the Susquehanna River still be cold enough to cool TMI-1 all year round in 10, 15 years? France already has problems with some of their plants during a hot summer.
I’d rather they’d put the effort into renewables.
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America’s new Sentinel nukes mushroom 81% in cost. Pentagon says it’s all good
The price tag for the Pentagon’s next-generation nuclear-tipped Sentinel ICBMs has ballooned by 81 percent in less than four years, triggering a Congressionally-mandated justify-or-die review.
The US Dept of Defense carried out that legally required probe into the cost of the program, and on Monday released the results – with under-secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment William LaPlante saying the Sentinel missile program met established criteria for being allowed to continue after his “comprehensive, unbiased review of the program.”
[…]
Wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to just buy North Korea?
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[China gives green light to nuclear reactor that burns thorium – a fuel that could power the country for 20,000 years | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)]
[China sets launch date for world’s first thorium molten salt nuclear power station | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)]
[TMSR-LF1 - Wikipedia]
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Found by @KathyPartdeux :
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ETA
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