U.S. Has Approved 3 New Nuclear Reactors

[AONE]

dangerous... you might want to also look at the economics. I use to live in KC and they brought the Wolf Creek nuclear plant on line. the electric bills literally quadrupled. When they build the plants they have had 100% of them exceed the cost estimate by 100% or more. Its pretty hard to estimate in todays dollar what 20 million yards of concrete will cost in 10 years... thats how long it takes to make them. There are better choices for the consumer that would be much cheaper power.

[jdavid93225]

Originally Posted by UpperPeninsulaRon

A very interesting read. I am an engineer, but not the electrical power kind, so my basic question is in transmission of power. My understanding is that you cannot economically transmit power for much more than 400 miles or so. So I'm suspicious when claims are made that the southwest can supply enough power for the nation. How do you get it to Chicago, or the northeast?

I'm very interested in the latest thinking in that area.

It's somewhere around the 400 mile mark that DC transmission becomes more efficient in the long run than AC transmission. This is the reason that most of the long distance transmission systems in the world use DC. For example, the Pacific HVDC Intertie carries High Voltage DC power between the Columbia River and Los Angeles, a total of 846 miles. This system carries 3100 Amps at +/- 500KV (1000KV line to line), for a total capacity of 3100 MW.

Even with the cost of a Converter Station at each end of the line, it's more efficient in the long run to carry the power over long distances than AC transmission. One of the primary reasons is "Skin Effect." AC power uses only the outer surface, or "skin" of the conductor, while DC power uses the entire conductor, offering much greater ampacity for a given conductor size, due to the increase in usable cross sectional area. Therefore, the conductors don't need to be as large for the same current carrying capability. Another advantage is that DC transmission only uses two conductors, vs. three for AC transmission (because it's a three phase system). This means the conductor costs are lower, as are the costs for the transmission towers, because they only need to support two conductors. With the modern Thyristor that is the basis for the rectifier/inverter process, the losses are minimal, while reliability is extremely high.