AHC: Wank Nuclear Power

Delta Force

Banned
a tech POD would be earlier high-efficiency transmission lines.

That way, you can site the plants in geologically stable areas and transmit the power to LA, San Fran, Pacific NW, etc.

That might actually lead to greater use of hydroelectricity. HVDC technology existed by the 1960s. Its first major application in the United States was for the Pacific DC Intertie.

If the Rampart Dam study had considered the potential of HVDC technology, the economics might have worked out such that the Bonneville Power Administration would have seen it as a suitable power generating resource. However, Rampart would take a lot longer to build and get fully operational than a nuclear power station, and the non-federal utilities in the BPA service area would probably push for ownership of their own nuclear power stations. The Washington Public Power Supply System's Hydro-Thermal Power Plan would probably still go ahead, but with more hydropower coming online over time.

Perhaps the United States could negotiate with Canada to see if British Columbia hydroelectric facilities could be fully or partially owned by American utilities too. The HVDC lines from Alaska would have to run through British Columbia anyways, so they would want to see some benefit from it. There were possible political implications for Rampart regarding disrupting the flow of the Columbia River, and Canada might concede some of the water rights if it gets rights in power sales.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Wouldn't the AEC and later NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) be examples of 'captured' regulatory agencies? that is, set up to regulate, but end up promoting.

And didn't one or both also regulate the production of plutonium for bombs? straight up. and there was some _____ (?) Flats that ended up real polluted. Might even have be worth it given the cold war and the emphasis on throw weights and second-strike capability. But, then I think the agency just responded in typical defensive fashion, pretty much standard for any institution.

======

most regulation is pro forma regulation

The Atomic Energy Commission was never intended to develop civilian nuclear energy and had to be pushed to move faster with it.

The AEC was established under the 1946 Atomic Energy Act with two primary purposes in mind, namely ensuring civilian ownership of nuclear technology and ensuring American nuclear supremacy. In its original incarnation, the AEC was essentially a civilian controlled continuation of the Manhattan Project. Until the 1953 Atomic Energy Act the government owned everything nuclear, and military developments took priority. In 1954 developments in the United Kingdom and Soviet Union led to the National Security Council demanding the AEC move ahead with civilian nuclear power, something the AEC itself thought imprudent. The AEC wanted to do more development and didn't really the technology being fielded until the 1970s or 1980s. Due to the NRC, civilian nuclear power went from the AEC's last priority to its first priority in the mid-1950s.

Some of the weapons scientists started getting interested in nuclear power too. There were periods where the nuclear test programs were halted after talks with the British and Soviets, and the government encouraged the workers to take up private projects they could work on during the test freezes.

Because the United States government wanted to downplay the nuclear arms race and the fact that it used them in war, it encouraged these projects. So, ironically, a lot of ideas about the peaceful uses of nuclear energy originated in military programs, or at least at weapons laboratories.

Also, I think you're referring to Jackass Flats/Area 25. Jackass Flats actually wasn't used for nuclear weapons testing, but it was used to test fire nuclear powered rockets.
 

Delta Force

Banned
As everyone here has said, the keys to keeping nuclear energy alive in the minds of the public is safety, and the key to it economically is capital costs, namely the construction of the facility and the disposal of spent fuel.

There are two massive issues with organically moderated reactors that people mention - organic fluids decompose at higher temperatures, and the organic moderators they were looking at at the time were primarily hydrocarbons, which in the presence of oxygen and these temperatures will be far beyond their flash point, which means all of the measures to contain reactor coolant in a PWR you need to do here, too - and while you can in a PWR get away with containment vessels that are not purged of oxygen, when using hydrocarbon-cooled reactors you must keep oxygen out of the mix at all times, as any leak here will immediately ignite upon catching oxygen. There is also the problems of decomposition of the coolant, which is made triple worse in a reactor like this - decomposition from heat is problem one, but its added to in a reactor by radiolysis (problem two) and by problems without fouling the transfer surfaces in the heat exchangers. For commercial reactors, the problem of coolant purification gets massive, because the largest reactor built that operated was 60 MWe, and you'll need way, way more than that to get them commercially viable. Possible, yes, but they have their own problems, and safety with an organically cooled reactor is a tricky challenge.

The Canadian test unit was able to use the same organic coolant/moderator for two years of operation. It also didn't have the carbonization problems that posed problems with the AEC reactor. Even assuming the organic coolant/moderator is as expensive as racing fuel, at $20 per gallon, it would still cost so much less than heavy water in terms of upfront and lifecycle costs. Heavy water is hundreds of dollars per liter, and a liter is only a bit over a fourth of a gallon.

IMO the better way forward for trying to develop nuclear energy for North America is the development of passively-safe reactors early on, namely in the development of heavy water designs which use the tritium and deuterium-enriched water as both a coolant and a catalyst for the reaction itself. Gas-cooled reactors like Fort. St. Vrain would also work well from an economics point of view and are very good from a safety point of view, and Fort. St. Vrain could easily be still in operation had there not been the problems with water infiltration - once they had the problems with water infiltration licked, the plant worked very reliably, and massively reduced the cost of construction and improved operational flexibility compared to most PWRs. You'd have a choice here - the cheaper and less complex HTGR, or the absolutely-bulletproof (and able to be refueled while at full power, which is a big plus) heavy water design like the CANDU. Both are also capable of operating with thorium cores assuming the use of a driver fuel, which could be enriched uranium or plutonium, the latter raising the possibility of getting driver plutonium from spent fuel reprocessing. Yes, you could use organically-cooled developments with the CANDU design, but you run into the same problems with coolant decomposition.
Do the CANDU reactors make use of their refueling features? I know a lot of reactors designed with them either never used them or ceased using them due to problems. Online refueling isn't as important a feature now that utilities have found out how to run PWRs for over a year at a time by using more enriched fuels.

The best way, as you pointed out in the other thread, is to keep America's electricity demand growing after the 1970s. That is in fact very possible - if you can stop the development of cheap natural gas and make it so that forced-air electric heating is the most common way of heating homes, you add to that demand to a massive degree. If you can convince railroads to make the investment in electrification of their main lines, you can also get a lot of additional demand from these areas. What also works in favor of additional electrical demand is the fact that the sales of electrical devices (televisions and computers most of all, but also all kinds of consumer electronics) grew dramatically starting in the 1970s and never really backed down, particularly as computers to this day still require more electrical power to continue their growth in processing power. If you can accelerate the growth in the consumer electronics world, you can also grow electricity demand. It also would help if the American steel industry switched in large amounts to the use of electric-arc furnaces during that time as well.
That's how France has tried to resolve its nuclear power glut. France overbuilt nuclear power capacity, and so it encouraged people to use electrically powered heating and cooling systems, use electric powered trains, etc.
 
The Canadian test unit was able to use the same organic coolant/moderator for two years of operation. It also didn't have the carbonization problems that posed problems with the AEC reactor. Even assuming the organic coolant/moderator is as expensive as racing fuel, at $20 per gallon, it would still cost so much less than heavy water in terms of upfront and lifecycle costs. Heavy water is hundreds of dollars per liter, and a liter is only a bit over a fourth of a gallon.

Even if you deal with the economics of the organic coolant and carbonization posing difficulties in reactor control (which was one of the big problems Piqua had), it doesn't dodge the problems of coolant decomposition, fouling of surfaces and the fact that these hydrocarbons are flammable. Yes, heavy water is a very, very big initial investment, but with heavy water you don't have the coolant problems and fire hazards of using hydrocarbons for cooling purposes.

Do the CANDU reactors make use of their refueling features? I know a lot of reactors designed with them either never used them or ceased using them due to problems. Online refueling isn't as important a feature now that utilities have found out how to run PWRs for over a year at a time by using more enriched fuels.

The two CANDU stations closest to me - the Pickering and Darlington nuclear generating stations - both still use online refueling, largely because in a CANDU design, the fuel tubes are inserted horizonally rather than vertically, and as a result the refueling process simply inserts fresh fuel in one end and ejects spent fuel out of the other. The system doesn't require any openings in the reactor as the refueling machines simply seal to the holes in the reactor calandria, thus allowing the reactor to refuel even at full power without any risk of coolant loss.
 
Do the CANDU reactors make use of their refueling features? I know a lot of reactors designed with them either never used them or ceased using them due to problems. Online refueling isn't as important a feature now that utilities have found out how to run PWRs for over a year at a time by using more enriched fuels.
The CANDU design is such that there is essentially no penalty in operational terms from online refuelling. It doesn't help with uptime very much I suspect now that we have burnable poisons since the units will have to have some time off for maintenance on e.g. the steam plant, but what it does give you is far higher burnup of the fuel - take it out and store it for 6 months so the short lived fission products die off, then run it through the reactor again mixed in with fresh fuel. 90% of the benefits of reprocessing at a fraction of the cost.
 
. . . largely because in a CANDU design, the fuel tubes are inserted horizonally rather than vertically, and as a result the refueling process simply inserts fresh fuel in one end and ejects spent fuel out of the other. . .
This is the kind of smart design I like. :)

Now, you do realize of course, that for those of us who aren't super tech-savvy about nuclear power, you're writing about two levels above us, right?

and for God's sake don't talk down to us, for that's a type of poison

Instead, I might recommend, assume your reader is actually slightly smarter than you are, but just, he or she just doesn't happen to know these particular facts. Of course, this might be a fiction. The writers here seem pretty brainy to me, so might well be a fiction. But please, roll with the fiction. ;)
 
Now, you do realize of course, that for those of us who aren't super tech-savvy about nuclear power, you're writing about two levels above us, right?

and for God's sake don't talk down to us, for that's a type of poison

If I may, allow me to explain it a little bit. Please don't take this as talking down, because it is not at all meant as such. :)

Most nuclear reactors are cooled by water, and one initial idea here was the use of organic cooling, which is a coolant that circulates through the reactor without the use of electric or diesel driven pumps, thus improving the efficiency, and such designs are able to get greater thermal efficiency - the amount of energy from the reactor fuel itself that gets turned into electric power for the grid. My reason for not supporting that idea is that hydrocarbons burn in the presence of oxygen and sufficient heat to cause them to ignite, which means keeping oxygen out of the reactor is absolutely critical to not having it burn to a crisp or blow itself to pieces. Also, heat causes the breakdown of just about any material, and one of the problems of organic reactors is that the heat of nuclear reaction causes the coolant itself to break down into other substances which may or may not be usable.

What makes a CANDU different is that while in most nuclear reactors if left unchecked the reaction goes on on its own, and if you don't cool it down you can get a meltdown, where the fuel melts into a big, very hot blob which is uncontrollable. That's happened once at American nuclear power plant (Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in March 1979) and three times at one power plant in Japan (Fukushima Daiichi south of Sendai in March 2011). A heavy-water reactor like the CANDU design uses lower-enriched fuel which on its own will not maintain its reaction, and it uses the presence of tritium and deuterium, two mildly-radioactive forms of hydrogen, to act a catalyst to the reaction. In the event of a loss of coolant in the reactor, the loss of the tritium and deuterium as a result causes the reaction to die down to a controllable level. The one loss of coolant accident at a CANDU reactor, at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station near Toronto in December 1994, proved that said system works properly. My point was that the CANDU design is safer, and that some types of gas-cooled reactors cooled by helium - which can not be made radioactive by exposure to a nuclear core - are similarly idiot-proof. In addition, as you noted, CANDU reactors simply take in new fuel at one end and spit spent fuel out of the other, which means unlike most reactor designs you can - and the operators at Ontario Power Generation do, and I've seen it done first-hand - refuel the reactor while it is operating. PDF27 however it also correct in that the reactors do need to take some time off for maintenance, and that's when they do major work on the reactors themselves as well.

The economics of a nuclear power station are the second point made here. Nuclear power stations are extremely costly to build as a result of extensive safety precautions, specialized materials and a lot of precision engineering and construction that they require. Once operational, the nuclear station's fuel cost is a tiny fraction of that of any fossil-fueled power plant of similar size, and while the maintenance and operating costs are somewhat higher, there is so much difference in the fuel cost that it makes the power station economically viable. The main cost with nuclear power plants is the initial cost of building them in the first place.

That help some? :)
 
If the Rampart Dam study had considered the potential of HVDC technology, the economics might have worked out such that the Bonneville Power Administration would have seen it as a suitable power generating resource. However, Rampart would take a lot longer to build and get fully operational than a nuclear power station, and the non-federal utilities in the BPA service area would probably push for ownership of their own nuclear power stations. The Washington Public Power Supply System's Hydro-Thermal Power Plan would probably still go ahead, but with more hydropower coming online over time.

I agree that Rampart could have been an interesting addition to western North America's power grid, but itself presents a number of problems. Even if Rampart had been built and HVDC lines built to connect it to the Canadian power grid (shipping power the 2500+ miles from Rampart to the American Pacific Northwest would have been a waste of time even with HVDC lines reducing transmission loss), the best option for the idea would have been for the BPA to evolve into an organization that works with both the WPPSS, British Columbia Hydro (and probably TransAlta as well) and private power supply companies in the West (preferably as far south as San Diego, to make sure there is demand) to co-ordinate the grid. Thus, Rampart's power would drive many facilities in British Columbia as far south as probably Prince George (though by the time Rampart is fully operation in the late 1970s or early 1980s technology may exist to allow its HVDC power to serve Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma and the other communities of the Salish Sea region) and then have BC Hydro's hydroelectric power either so south to power Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho (and probably east to power Alberta), thus allowing the power plants of the Pacific Northwest to use the Pacific Intertie systems to supply electricity all the way to Los Angeles and San Diego.

If you add Rampart and all of BC Hydro's generating capacity into the mix in addition to what you have available from hydroelectric sources, in the 1960s you have plenty of what you need for the Pacific Northwest unless that part of the world undergoes a monstrous economic boom starting around that time - long and short, it makes the WPPSS's nuclear projects somewhat unnecessary.

Now, assuming that despite that the plans go ahead anyways, and that you actually build the Satsop, Hanford and Columbia nuclear power plants, what you get in the Northwest is a vast glut of electricity that, to be fair, has dirt-cheap operating cost for the hydroelectric plants and lower-than-average ones for the nuclear plants, assuming the involvement of the BPA (or its successor agency/agencies) results in lower financing costs. At that point, and remember that the Pacific Northwest is a fairly temperate climate, you'll be wanting to get customers for that power. Going with an idea from my transportation timelines, one potentially-big customer could be the railroads - the Milwaukee Road had a proposal to completely rebuild its electrified mainline and bridge the gap between its electrified districts in the early 1970s but passed on it, feeling that its electrification wasn't helping the railroad's wish to merge with somebody else. But if you have cheap electric power and a wish to go this way, the Milwaukee Road would probably reconsider based on lower operating costs. Rebuild the electrified lines and find the Milwaukee a merger partner and you get not only the rehabilitation of the best route for long-distance traffic east out of the Pacific Northwest (thus increasing the likelihood of more companies being found to build industry in the Pacific NW) you also get a very big single customer for the power systems.

Perhaps the United States could negotiate with Canada to see if British Columbia hydroelectric facilities could be fully or partially owned by American utilities too.

Not a chance. BC Hydro was only a crown corporation from 1961 onwards, and the Social Credit governments that dominated British Columbia for four decades starting in 1952 wouldn't tolerate American utilities owning anything among the province's hydroelectric dams.
 
Looking at the nuclear power stations that were seriously proposed and planned out but never actually built for a variety of reasons, one can see that there is some room for growth in what nuclear plants could be built, and that some were just not wise:

- Allens Creek (Wallis, Texas) - a possibility to be built, as there are no real technical issues here, but citizen protests got this one.
- Bailly (Porter County, Indiana) - another could have been, though this one is not particularly well sited, but then again that didn't stop San Onofre or Indian Point. Call this one as a maybe.
- Alan R. Barton (Clanton, Alabama) - again, no technical problems or poor spacing, but in the still largely-rural central Alabama demand for electricity would probably be an issue unless Birmingham to the north grows or changes its industry, which is a possibility.
- Black Fox (Inola, Oklahoma) - putting a nuclear power station on the edges of a town where people live generally isn't a good idea, particularly if the town doesn't approve from the start.
- Blue Hills (Jasper, Texas) - another possibility, but here again the question of demand (particularly if Allens Creek gets built) arises unless you're running power to Houston. Mind you, if you are doing that, this plant makes all the sense in the world for an economic perspective. Here, however, you may have environmental question marks.
- Bodega Bay (Bodega Bay, California) - site was literally directly on top of the San Andreas Fault. Enough said.
- Erie (Sandusky, Ohio) - no technical problems, but demand only works if you are going to toss out coal-fired generation because of the presence of three existing power stations (Davis-Besse, Fermi and Perry) on Lake Erie.
- Greene County (Catskill, New York) - if you can build this one instead of Indian Point you're probably coming out ahead, but otherwise the local demand isn't really particularly sufficient unless you again are growing electric power demand or keeping local industries active.
- Hanford (Hanford, Washington) - the climate could hardly be much better for the building of a nuclear power plant and the facility is in the middle of a major nuclear reprocessing center, but the main problem here is demand.
- Hartsville (Hartsville, Tennessee) - no technical problems but demand falling out ended the building of this plant. Work around that, and this power plant can easily be built.
- Haven (Haven, Wisconsin) - easily built and no technical, environmental or real local population problems, but there are several other nuclear plants supplying Milwaukee and Chicago to the south, so demand may be an issue here.
- Marble Hill (Hanover, Indiana) - of all the cancelled plants to not be finished, this one is probably the dumbest of them all, as they were installing the reactors when this one was called off. Finishing it would have been much more wise.
- Montague (Montague, Massachusetts) - another case of citizen protests killing a proposal under construction, but again the question of demand level in New England exists.
- Satsop (Elma, Washington) - not particularly the best place to build a nuclear power plant, but there is no real technical issues here aside from the region being seismically active, which can be built to deal with.
- Sears Isle (Sears Isle, Maine) - no technical problems here either aside from the local weather sometimes being somewhat vile, but this one has been a focal point for environmentalist concerns since the 1960s. Probably best, considering local electrical demand, to pass on this one.
- Sundesert (Blythe, California) - primary problem here is the fact that this part of the world is very seismically active. Get around that problem and this plant is viable, though water supplies in the region are rather short.
- Victoria County (Victoria, Texas) - no problems with viability here, as the plant location is pretty much equidistant from Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Corpus Christi, but yet again the primary problem is economics here - the plan got killed because of cheap natural gas. Make the economics work and this one would be a no-brainer.
- Yellow Creek (Iuka, Mississippi) - another TVA project canned because of falling electricity demand, you can make this one work if the generating ability is there, but having both this and the Alan R. Barton plant mentioned above would create a glut of power unless you sought to run power east over the Appalachians.

This list doesn't count Bellefonte (which may be finished yet) and Watts Bar Unit 2 (finishing up activation now) because those two may not be entirely dead yet.

This list also doesn't look at the closed plants - Crystal River (Crystal River, Florida) is only out of commission because the work on a major retrofit of the plant ended up being a monumental fuckup, San Onofre (San Clemente, California) closed because of defective components causing economic issues, Fort St. Vrain (Platteville, Colorado) ended up being closed because of economic issues after the plant got its technical issues figured out, Rancho Seco (Herald, California) and Trojan (Rainier, Oregon) because of citizen opposition, demand issues and operating problems, Shoreham (East Shoreham, New York) was probably the worst-located nuclear plant of all in North America and Zion (Lake County, Illinois) because of operator screwups and economic issues.

Now, knowing the glut of power having the additional plants would create and Trojan's crappy construction quality, closing it may be inevitable, and Shoreham should have never been built in the first place, but the rest could - probably should - still be operating today, namely owing to the concerns about power demand in the areas around the plants.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Most nuclear reactors are cooled by water, and one initial idea here was the use of organic cooling, which is a coolant that circulates through the reactor without the use of electric or diesel driven pumps, thus improving the efficiency, and such designs are able to get greater thermal efficiency - the amount of energy from the reactor fuel itself that gets turned into electric power for the grid.

What you're talking about is natural circulation, in which a reactor is designed such that some or all of the cooling needs can be met without the need for pumps.

That's not the same as organic coolant, which is using hydrocarbons to cool the reactor.

My reason for not supporting that idea is that hydrocarbons burn in the presence of oxygen and sufficient heat to cause them to ignite, which means keeping oxygen out of the reactor is absolutely critical to not having it burn to a crisp or blow itself to pieces. Also, heat causes the breakdown of just about any material, and one of the problems of organic reactors is that the heat of nuclear reaction causes the coolant itself to break down into other substances which may or may not be usable.

These issues seem far more manageable than those seen in sodium cooled reactors. WR-1 suffered two loss of coolant accidents and I don't see anything about it catching fire as a result of them. I don't recall anything about the AEC reactor catching fire either. WR-1 also had an availability rate of 85%.

In contrast, sodium cooled reactors catch fire all the time. The most reliable sodium cooled reactor developed thus far, BN-600, has an availability rate of around 75%, despite sodium reactors being a more developed technology. BN-600 also has the usual fire catching issues, and actually has redundant turbine halls so the reactor can keep producing power if one catches fire.

What makes a CANDU different is that while in most nuclear reactors if left unchecked the reaction goes on on its own, and if you don't cool it down you can get a meltdown, where the fuel melts into a big, very hot blob which is uncontrollable. That's happened once at American nuclear power plant (Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in March 1979) and three times at one power plant in Japan (Fukushima Daiichi south of Sendai in March 2011). A heavy-water reactor like the CANDU design uses lower-enriched fuel which on its own will not maintain its reaction, and it uses the presence of tritium and deuterium, two mildly-radioactive forms of hydrogen, to act a catalyst to the reaction. In the event of a loss of coolant in the reactor, the loss of the tritium and deuterium as a result causes the reaction to die down to a controllable level. The one loss of coolant accident at a CANDU reactor, at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station near Toronto in December 1994, proved that said system works properly. My point was that the CANDU design is safer, and that some types of gas-cooled reactors cooled by helium - which can not be made radioactive by exposure to a nuclear core - are similarly idiot-proof. In addition, as you noted, CANDU reactors simply take in new fuel at one end and spit spent fuel out of the other, which means unlike most reactor designs you can - and the operators at Ontario Power Generation do, and I've seen it done first-hand - refuel the reactor while it is operating. PDF27 however it also correct in that the reactors do need to take some time off for maintenance, and that's when they do major work on the reactors themselves as well.

Loss of coolant capabilities can always lead to a meltdown. The difference is what happens if temperatures exceed the safety margin. If things get too hot in a water cooled reactor, a steam explosion can be an issue. If things get really hot, the water breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen and all it takes is an ignition source to create a hydrogen fire or explosion.

Gas cooled reactors can't suffer steam explosions or gas explosions. Carbon dioxide and air cooled reactors can get hot enough that the oxygen is stripped from the gas and used to fuel a fire, but the reactor has to be on fire to begin with, and fires are easier to deal with than explosions.

The economics of a nuclear power station are the second point made here. Nuclear power stations are extremely costly to build as a result of extensive safety precautions, specialized materials and a lot of precision engineering and construction that they require. Once operational, the nuclear station's fuel cost is a tiny fraction of that of any fossil-fueled power plant of similar size, and while the maintenance and operating costs are somewhat higher, there is so much difference in the fuel cost that it makes the power station economically viable. The main cost with nuclear power plants is the initial cost of building them in the first place.

Getting the size right is key too. Not only are fuel costs very low, but reducing power output doesn't really make the core last that much longer. With current technology reactors have to reduce core output directly, which means it has to build up power again to meet higher loads, but there were some proposals that would use adaptations of USN aircraft carrier technology to bleed steam from the system to control power output more directly. The reactor would still have to build up steam again to get to full output, but that's safer and easier than varying reactor output.

Still, the best way to operate a nuclear reactor is at full output for as long as possible, and to do that it has to sell all of its power.

If you have to meet 1000 MW of peak demand, but the baseload (lowest power consumption) is 700 MW, it's best to build a 700 MW nuclear power plant and 300 MW of something with lower capital costs and can vary output to meet demand, probably a petroleum or natural gas powered facility. It's probably going to have higher variable costs, but it's lifecycle costs are lower than 300 MW of nuclear you aren't going to use.
 

Delta Force

Banned
I agree that Rampart could have been an interesting addition to western North America's power grid, but itself presents a number of problems. Even if Rampart had been built and HVDC lines built to connect it to the Canadian power grid (shipping power the 2500+ miles from Rampart to the American Pacific Northwest would have been a waste of time even with HVDC lines reducing transmission loss), the best option for the idea would have been for the BPA to evolve into an organization that works with both the WPPSS, British Columbia Hydro (and probably TransAlta as well) and private power supply companies in the West (preferably as far south as San Diego, to make sure there is demand) to co-ordinate the grid. Thus, Rampart's power would drive many facilities in British Columbia as far south as probably Prince George (though by the time Rampart is fully operation in the late 1970s or early 1980s technology may exist to allow its HVDC power to serve Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma and the other communities of the Salish Sea region) and then have BC Hydro's hydroelectric power either so south to power Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho (and probably east to power Alberta), thus allowing the power plants of the Pacific Northwest to use the Pacific Intertie systems to supply electricity all the way to Los Angeles and San Diego.

Perhaps a mini-NAWPA could have been formed to execute the plan? There was already some collaboration under the Columbia River Treaty.

If you add Rampart and all of BC Hydro's generating capacity into the mix in addition to what you have available from hydroelectric sources, in the 1960s you have plenty of what you need for the Pacific Northwest unless that part of the world undergoes a monstrous economic boom starting around that time - long and short, it makes the WPPSS's nuclear projects somewhat unnecessary.
The electricity industry was very different prior to the energy crises. It grew 7% per year (doubling every decade) between the 1890s until October 1973. When the Hydro-Thermal Power Plan was developed in 1968, it was thought that 41,400 MW of power capacity would have to be brought online between 1971 and 1990 to meet forecast demand.

Now, assuming that despite that the plans go ahead anyways, and that you actually build the Satsop, Hanford and Columbia nuclear power plants, what you get in the Northwest is a vast glut of electricity that, to be fair, has dirt-cheap operating cost for the hydroelectric plants and lower-than-average ones for the nuclear plants, assuming the involvement of the BPA (or its successor agency/agencies) results in lower financing costs. At that point, and remember that the Pacific Northwest is a fairly temperate climate, you'll be wanting to get customers for that power. Going with an idea from my transportation timelines, one potentially-big customer could be the railroads - the Milwaukee Road had a proposal to completely rebuild its electrified mainline and bridge the gap between its electrified districts in the early 1970s but passed on it, feeling that its electrification wasn't helping the railroad's wish to merge with somebody else. But if you have cheap electric power and a wish to go this way, the Milwaukee Road would probably reconsider based on lower operating costs. Rebuild the electrified lines and find the Milwaukee a merger partner and you get not only the rehabilitation of the best route for long-distance traffic east out of the Pacific Northwest (thus increasing the likelihood of more companies being found to build industry in the Pacific NW) you also get a very big single customer for the power systems.
The Northwest enjoyed some of the lowest electricity prices in the world until the WPPSS fiasco and the BPA entering insufficiency in the early 1980s. Until insufficiency, industrial firms could purchase blocks of power from the BPA at rates guaranteed for 20 years. Oregon and Washington had dozens of firms consuming dozens or even hundreds of megawatts of power, especially aluminum smelters. Now all that's left of the once thriving Northwest aluminum industry are two Alcoa plants in Washington. BMW opened up a carbon fiber factory in Washington though to make material for the i3.

Not a chance. BC Hydro was only a crown corporation from 1961 onwards, and the Social Credit governments that dominated British Columbia for four decades starting in 1952 wouldn't tolerate American utilities owning anything among the province's hydroelectric dams.
Being able to purchase firm power supply contracts BPA style could work for utilities and industrial firms.
 
TheMann, thank you for a very good description.

Let me ask you this. The whole thing with breeder reactors, was that misguided? That conserving fuel wasn't the number one priority. But maybe we kind of had a design industry which rolled forward. Plus, even the possibility of breeder reactions coming into use strengthened the bridge between power generation and weapons?

=====

With Three Mile Island, I remember one issue was with a large hydrogen bubble. And to handle it, release of low-level radiation. Was there even a partial meltdown?

And, are you familiar with Charles Perrow on 'normal accidents' or William Langewiesche(sp?) on 'system accidents'?
 
TheMann, thank you for a very good description.

You're welcome, I hope that helped. :)

Let me ask you this. The whole thing with breeder reactors, was that misguided? That conserving fuel wasn't the number one priority. But maybe we kind of had a design industry which rolled forward. Plus, even the possibility of breeder reactions coming into use strengthened the bridge between power generation and weapons?

The primary advantage with breeder reactors is that they can extract pretty much all of the energy that is available in uranium and/or thorium fuel put into the reactor, though it requires specialized fuel processing both of the original fuel and what comes out of the reactor, the latter to remove elements which would reduce the reaction. With Thorium this is pain because Thorium-232 decays into Protinactium-233, which then in a reactor decays to Uranium-233. If one does not take the Protinactium out, you end up with Uranium-232 in the reactor, which decays into several elements which produce nasty gamma radiation, which cannot be protected by clothing or most forms of radiation shielding, which makes fuel handing a real problem.

Breeder reactors can only function properly when combined with substantial fuel reprocessing, which is expensive, and if you're doing so at one central facility, you must be aware that you cannot transport items that are gamma emitters in major quantities from a facility without endangering the public. If you can work around that problem (perhaps by having a way on-site of removing gamma-emitting radioactive materials) then breeder reactor economics improve considerably.

With Three Mile Island, I remember one issue was with a large hydrogen bubble. And to handle it, release of low-level radiation. Was there even a partial meltdown?

Yes. Three Mile Island suffered a substantial partial core meltdown - what happened there was a primary loop pressure relief valve jammed open on the reactor, and the reactor's operating crew misdiagnosed the problem and realized much too late that their water readings, which they thought were high, were coming from the reactor's pressurizer and not the core itself, and they didn't realize there was a problem until long after nearly half of the reactor core had melted. Temperatures got so hot inside of the reactor that the material used to clad the uranium fuel had acted as a catalyst, splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. They did indeed vent radioactive hydrogen to the atmosphere, which took with it some amounts of radioactive noble gases and iodine. Thankfully for all involved, Three Mile Island Unit 2's reactor vessel held from the heat, thus stopping what could have been a much, much worse accident.

And, are you familiar with Charles Perrow on 'normal accidents' or William Langewiesche(sp?) on 'system accidents'?

Oh yes. It's practically required reading in my field of work. :)

The problem with Charles Perrow's assumptions is that while yes, humans are fallible and complex machines of any sort do make it possible for accidents to happen, the problem with Perrow's theory of this is that one can reduce complexity to the point where the operators can maintain any system from failure, and if that is not possible that the technology involved should be abandoned. Applying this theory to the world's worst nuclear accidents - Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island - forgets that in all three cases you had screwups that were entirely the result of human error or known design faults in the reactors themselves. The RBMK-1000 reactor design that failed at Chernobyl was known to be unstable and prone to positive feedback at lower water levels, but the operators ran the reactor down anyways. The Babcock and Wilcox reactor design used at Three Mile Island was known to have problems with stuck-open relief valves, and the Rancho Seco and Davis-Besse plants had had similar problems with said valves but the operators were much, much faster at diagnosing the problem. Fukushima had the ability to fix the mess if they had been prepared for a tsunami (which they weren't) and if they had rapidly begun injecting seawater into the reactors right after the primary cooling systems failed (which they didn't). The problem with the theory is that the most common failing in most major accidents of any kind is human, and one can reduce human mistakes in both their number and severity through knowledge and training.
 
Perhaps a mini-NAWPA could have been formed to execute the plan? There was already some collaboration under the Columbia River Treaty.

A possibility, but there would have to be something in it for BC Hydro and TransAlta for the scheme to work. What might work in this scenario is that as a condition for being involved in the agreements over the transmission of power that the BPA or the new agency can guarantee the construction of new power stations for the two Canadian agencies. This requires the approval of the Social Credit governments in British Columbia and Alberta and Ottawa to approve of it, but if you are going to do this between 1950 and about 1968 (after this, Trudeau would probably a holdup), you could probably get Ottawa to approve it assuming Canadian interests are involved. If the BPA or a successor agency can get financing done for BC Hydro projects at lower interest rates (thus saving BC Hydro tens of millons in financing costs), you'll probably get them on board.

The electricity industry was very different prior to the energy crises. It grew 7% per year (doubling every decade) between the 1890s until October 1973. When the Hydro-Thermal Power Plan was developed in 1968, it was thought that 41,400 MW of power capacity would have to be brought online between 1971 and 1990 to meet forecast demand.

Fair point, but after the energy crisis hits that is going to be proven to be dramatically optimistic with regards to power demand, and what happens then? If the projects are built by then, you have a monumental glut of excess electric power once its clear that the demand is not going to keep rising. Do you mothball the nuclear plants, or do you swallow the cost and finish all of the projects, accepting the awesome debts that you would get saddled with as a result of this, in the hope of finding some way of recouping your investment? If you go with the latter option, how? HVDC lines to California and Alberta? Trying to get every heavy power consumption industry to relocate to the Pacific Northwest (though this is gonna drive the environmental movement in that part of the world absolutely bonkers)?

The Northwest enjoyed some of the lowest electricity prices in the world until the WPPSS fiasco and the BPA entering insufficiency in the early 1980s. Until insufficiency, industrial firms could purchase blocks of power from the BPA at rates guaranteed for 20 years. Oregon and Washington had dozens of firms consuming dozens or even hundreds of megawatts of power, especially aluminum smelters. Now all that's left of the once thriving Northwest aluminum industry are two Alcoa plants in Washington. BMW opened up a carbon fiber factory in Washington though to make material for the i3.

Being able to purchase firm power supply contracts BPA style could work for utilities and industrial firms.

Again, point taken, but is this enough to swallow up an additional 41,000 MW PLUS the nearly 6,000 MW made available from the building of Rampart, on top of what is already there? You're talking enough additional energy for at least thirty million people here. The only way I can see this proposal making any sense at all is if you are looking at this as a way of powering most of the West Coast of North America from Anchorage to San Diego. Now, if you can indeed get Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric on board with this, you can pull this off, as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is going to be on board (they worked with the BPA IOTL), and with these three utilities looking to be part of this plan you have most of California as potential customers. (This also brings on board the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear stations, and if the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District joints Rancho Seco also joins the nuclear fleet.) Even if you manage to get PG&E and SCE (and the myriad of publicly-owned utilities) on board with this organization, you'll still more than likely end up with some excess demand, and even if you go looking for power-intensive businesses like electric arc furnace steel mills and aluminum smelters, you still end up with big, big excesses unless you push for greater electric use at home, and chase the transportation markets, namely electric-powered public transportation and electrified railroads.

Again, sticking with what I know best, if you have this much excess power and have General Electric on board, you could easily use the BPA or some other agency to finance the development of electrically-powered mass transit in the cities (Vancouver's Skytrain gets going sooner, maybe? Seattle's Monorail grows in size or its light rail systems gets going earlier? Electrified commuter trains? Trolleybuses, streetcars or both?) and get electrification built on the railroads.

One idea that occurs to me on this one - Milwaukee Road desperately wanted a merger, and Southern Pacific desperately needed better ways of moving goods north and east. SP buys Milwaukee in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and General Electric recognizes the cheap power of the region, the development of its new E44 electric locomotive and Southern Pacific's demands for more powerful locomotives and comes up big - the former Milwaukee Road gets its electrification completely rebuilt, the gap closed and a big fleet of E44 electrics built for it, and the mainlines of SP's Portland, Shasta and Salt Lake divisions get the same treatment, the whole works underwritten by GE and with a cheap power contract with the power authorities ready to go. At the same time as this, SP wisely rehabilitates the main lines for tall operations to give 24' of clearance under the wires, and takes on its rivals in California, Oregon, Washington and across the northern routes straight up.

This turns out to be a monumental meal ticket for the struggling railroad. The modern electric power infrastructure and powerful locomotives (and the E44s slowly grow in power from 4,400 hp to 5,000 hp and then 6,000 hp through rebuilds in the 1960s and 1970s) combine with cheap power costs to give SP a great financial advantage. The company's pass routes between Bakersfield and Los Angeles are electrified in the late 1960s, as is much of the Coast Route in the 1970s. The advantages are obvious - the improvement of the former Milwaukee Road in the Northwest is such that Southern Pacific isn't particularly bothered by the Burlington Northern merger in 1970 that combines its northern rivals into one company. BN quickly realizes the obvious, as does Canadian Pacific, Canadian National and the Pacific Great Eastern (which became the British Columbia Railway in 1972) who all follow suit with electrification in the 1970s. The viability of electric and development sees power from the Pacific power projects also see use in Utah and Colorado, resulting in the Rio Grande and Western Pacific railroads also following suit with electrification in the early 1970s, stretching the wires as far west as Denver on the Rio Grande, and SP's electrified operations on the former Milwaukee Road stretched all the way to Minnesota, electrified service to Minneapolis beginning in 1986.

By the 1990s, railroad freight electrification is present through pretty much every heavy-haul line in the rockies, with Union Pacific's diesel-powered Overland Route being the lone holdout, as the Santa Fe began electric operations on its main lines from Barstow, California to Belen, New Mexico, in 1988. Cheap power makes for better economics, and General Motors has long fought General Electric for the electric locomotive market.
 
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