Civaux Nuclear Power Plant | |
---|---|
Official name | Centrale Nucléaire de Civaux |
Country | France |
Location | Civaux (Vienne) |
Coordinates | 46°27′24″N 0°39′10″E / 46.45667°N 0.65278°E |
Status | Operational |
Construction began | 1988 |
Commission date | 2002 |
Operator(s) | EDF |
Nuclear power station | |
Reactor type | PWR N4 |
Reactor supplier | Framatome |
Cooling towers | 2 |
Cooling source | Vienne River |
Power generation | |
Units operational | 2 x 1561 MW |
Make and model | Alstom |
Nameplate capacity | 3,122 MW |
Capacity factor | 78.5% |
Annual net output | 21,458 GW·h |
External links | |
Website | Site c/o EDF |
Commons | Related media on Commons |
The Civaux Nuclear Power Plant is located in the commune of Civaux (Vienne) at the edge of Vienne River between Confolens (60 km upstream) and Chauvigny (14 km downstream), and 44 km south-east of Poitiers.
It has two operating units that were the precursors to the European Pressurized Reactor, being the "N4 stage". Designed for a net power output of 1450 MWe per unit, power was uprated to 1500 MWe in 2010. The Civaux plant uses ambient air and water from the Vienne River for cooling.[1]
As of 2022, 1300 people work at the plant.[2]
The cooling towers of Civaux Nuclear Power Plant are 178 metres in height, which are the highest among those of EDF's nuclear power plants.[3]
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Transcription
Nuclear power is like the unloved child of sustainable energy. It’s got so much potential, but it only gets noticed when it does something wrong. If only people could just see how cool it is. Ahoy-hoy fallout boys and girls, Julian here for DNews and today we’re going to talk about nuclear power. Now I know this is an element that splits the internet and leads to an explosive chain reaction (see what I did there?) but we are going to gingerly handle this sensitive material like the science-loving adults that we are. The most popular green energies people like to discuss are solar and wind power, and I agree, the idea of harnessing the phenomenal cosmic power of the sun and...snazzy earthy blowingness of wind is pretty cool. But we’re going to have to upscale our production in a big way if we are going to meet demands. Last year in the US, wind provided 4.13% of our power, and solar? A microscopic .23%. So we’d need almost 25 times as much of each just to meet demands, not to mention we’d have to overproduce and store energy for when it’s dark and not windy. And we’ll have to build the storage facilities. Meanwhile nuclear provides 19% of our energy in this country, but we’re using an idea we haven’t updated since the 50’s; the Light Water Reactor. Light Water Reactors split uranium 235 to heat water. In the US this water is kept at extremely high pressures to keep it in liquid form. This super-heated super-pressurized water then heats a second loop of water, turning it to steam and driving a turbine. Reactors like this became widespread because of their simplicity, but they only use about 5% of their fuel and the waste is radioactive for 10,000 years. The fuel can be recycled though. France has been relying on nuclear power since the 70s and by recycling, the total amount of high-level waste that could give a family of 4 power from when the kids are born until they’re in college is about the volume of a cigarette lighter. You still have to put that somewhere, and waste storage is one of the major dividing issues. Don’t kid yourself though, in California alone the production of solar panels makes over 13 million tons of toxic waste annually, and that’s just stored somewhere too. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Molten Salt Reactors were a competing idea that were shelved in the 60’s, despite the fact that engineers built reactors that proved they could work. Lately interest in them is growing because of their potential benefits. The concept is liquid salt is the reactor’s coolant, meaning it doesn’t need to be pressurized like it’s light water counterparts. This means there’s no complications from loss of pressure like the rapid expansion of radioactive gas or loss of coolant to the reactor. In fact it’s possible to design molten salt reactors in such a way that they are self-regulating and melt-down proof. Pretty neat, huh? And it gets better, Molten Salt Reactors that would use Thorium as their fuel source would use almost 100% of their fuel. And they would breed more of their own. When thorium 232 is hit with a neutron, it absorbs it and eventually decays into uranium 233. U-233 is fissile, and shoots out 2 or 3 more neutrons. These can keep the chain reaction going and also bombard more thorium to generate more uranium. Thorium has the benefit of being 3 to 4 times more abundant than uranium, and right now is just a hazardous waste byproduct of rare-earth mining. So we’re already digging the stuff up, and have nothing to use it for. Thorium 232 has a half-life of over 14 billion years, but once it’s been used in a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, 80% of the waste decays to safe levels in 10 years. A small amount would need up to 300 years before it was safe, but that beats 10,000 years by a long shot. And the products of a LFTR reactor are harder to use for nuclear weapons, so there’s less of a worry about nuclear proliferation. Not that we don’t have enough weapons to murderize everyone already. MSRs still have issues of their own to work out, like keeping the liquid fluorides from corroding the metal they’re stored in. China thinks they can solve these problems and make safer, more sustainable, and less polluting nuclear power. They’ve planned to have a functioning thorium reactor within the next decade. If you’re worried about the storage of nuclear waste, Anthony has some pretty cool info for you here about how it’s compacted and stored. What are your thoughts on the future of energy? Do you have a personal favorite solution? Let us know in the comments. I’ll see you next time on DNews.
Events
- On 12 May 1998 there was a leak on an elbow in a pipe of the reactor coolant system. Water leaked out at the rate of 30 cubic meters per hour. It was classified as an INES level-2 event.
- Civaux was a proposed target in the 1998 World Cup terror plot; it was planned that Armed Islamic Group terrorists would crash a hijacked aeroplane into the plant on 15 June 1998. The plot was foiled with a mass arrest of conspirators on 26 May.
Reactors
Unit | Type | Net power | Total power | Construction start | Construction finish | Commercial operation | Shut down |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CIVAUX-1 | PWR | 1495 MW | 1561 MW | 1988/10/15 | 1997/12/24 | 2002/01/29 | |
CIVAUX-2 | PWR | 1495 MW | 1561 MW | 1991/04/01 | 1999/12/24 | 2002/04/23 |
See also
References
- ^ ASN. "La centrale de Civaux". Archived from the original on 30 December 2009. Retrieved 19 December 2009.
- ^ EDF. "La centrale nucléaire de Civaux". Archived from the original on 13 April 2022. Retrieved 3 August 2022.
- ^ Document Agence française de sécurité sanitaire de l'environnement et du travail[permanent dead link], 10 octobre 2007