GOOD NEWS MONDAY: AP1000 MAY WIN APPROVAL BY NEXT YEAR
Monday, August 2nd, 2010In a week when comprehensive energy legislation with meaningful nuclear provisions craters, the next round of loan guarantees look shaky and the completion of Areva’s flagship Flammanville plant is delayed, there isn’t too much in the way of good news.
One glimmer of hope, however. According to Scientific American, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may be laboring toward approval of the Westinghouse AP1000 by September 2011. The NRC has been fiddling around since 2005 with a huge concrete-and-steel shield that is supposed to protect the reactor from airplane attacks.
Apparently the Department of Energy test in the 1990s showing that an F-4 traveling at 500 miles an hour would disintegrate if it hit a containment wall has not been sufficient. Westinghouse originally had the shield at ground level. Then after concerns about terrorist hijacked airplane crashes arose, it voluntarily lifted the shield to a more elevated position. After considering the new design for two years, however, the NRC decided it was not earthquake rigorous and sent Westinghouse back to the drawing boards.
Westinghouse has not yet submitted a new design, but Scientific American reporter Robynne Boyd ventures a guess that its design approval may come by next year. The date is significant because it marks the time China is expected to start its second round of AP1000 construction at Sanmen. The first two reactors are well underway and expected to be completed in 2013. Toshiba, which now owns Westinghouse, and the Shaw Group, of Baton Rouge, are participating in the projects. After units 3 and 4, however, China plans to build the next two units without foreign help.
To the swift goes the race.