{"id":59514,"date":"2021-09-25T18:23:56","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T23:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59514"},"modified":"2021-09-25T18:23:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T23:23:56","slug":"the-record-breaking-failures-of-nuclear-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59514","title":{"rendered":"The Record-Breaking Failures of Nuclear Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Record-Breaking Failures of Nuclear Power<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photograph Source: Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power reactor \u2013\u00a0CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Tennessee Valley Authority could likely rightfully claim a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, but it\u2019s not an achievement for which the federally-owned electric utility corporation would welcome notoriety.<\/p>\n

After taking a whopping 42 years to build and finally bring on line its Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in Tennessee, TVA just broke its own record for longest nuclear plant construction time. However, this time, the company failed to deliver a completed nuclear plant.<\/p>\n

Watts Bar 2 achieved criticality in May 2016, then promptly came off line due to a transformer fire three months later. It finally achieved full operational status on October 19, 2016, making it\u00a0 the first United States reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996.<\/p>\n

Now, almost five years later, TVA has announced it has abandoned its unfinished two-reactor Bellefonte nuclear plant in Alabama, a breathtaking 47 years after construction began.<\/p>\n

TVA was apparently happy to get out of the nuclear construction business, because, as the\u00a0Chattanooga Times Free Press<\/i><\/a>\u00a0reported, the company \u201cdid not see the need for such a large and expensive capacity generation source.\u201d No kidding!<\/p>\n

Ironically, this is precisely the argument used to advance renewables, in an energy environment that cannot and will no longer support inflexible, large, thermo-electric generators that are completely impractical under the coming smart grids as well as climate change-induced conditions.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, TVA was more than happy to accept overtures from a purchaser for Bellefonte \u2014 the Haney real estate company\u2014 whose director, Frank Haney, gained his own notoriety by lavishing $1 million on former President Trump and courting Trump\u2019s lawyer, Michael Cohen, possibly, suggested media reports, to curry regulatory favors for his new nuclear toy.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Record-Breaking Failures of Nuclear Power Photograph Source: Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power reactor \u2013\u00a0CC BY 2.0 The Tennessee Valley Authority could likely rightfully claim a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, but it\u2019s not an achievement for which the federally-owned electric utility corporation would welcome notoriety. After taking a whopping 42 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[5493,31844,579],"class_list":["post-59514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-counterpunch","tag-linda-gunter","tag-nuclear-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59515,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59514\/revisions\/59515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}