Posts Tagged: "power"

The current state-of-the-art in nuclear power plant reactor design and construction is known as Generation III+. These reactors are essentially safer versions of the Generation III reactors that began operation in 1996 starting with the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa commercial plant in Japan. Generation III+ reactors must operate within very strict safety guidelines. The power plant’s structure must be durable enough to withstand a plane crash without releasing radiation. Power plants must operate for periods of 60 years. The grace period after reactor shutdown, during which time no human intervention is required, must be 72 hours. Further, the risk of core melt accidents must be low enough that a risk assessment analysis returns a calculated core damage frequency (CDF) of 1×10-4 per year.

Near the middle of August, a nuclear power plant operated by Kyushu Electric Power in the Japanese city of Sendai restarted its reactors to produce electricity once more for the country’s electrical grid. The move is significant because it is the first of 25 nuclear power plants in Japan to restart after applying to reopen since the 2011 explosion of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the world’s most recent nuclear disaster. There have understandably been some mixed reactions to the decision. Areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant are still so heavily contaminated with radiation that there are many of the 160,000 people originally evacuated from the region who still cannot return.