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A series of firsts delivers new Plant Vogtle units
Southern Nuclear was first when no one wanted to be.
The nuclear subsidiary of the century-old utility Southern Company, based in Atlanta, Ga., joined a pack of nuclear companies in the early 2000s—during what was then dubbed a “nuclear renaissance”—bullish on plans for new large nuclear facilities and adding thousands of new carbon-free megawatts to the grid.
In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a combined construction and operating license (COL), positioning the company to receive the first such license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012. Also in 2008, Southern became the first U.S. company to sign an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a Generation III+ reactor. Southern chose Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor, which was certified by the NRC in December 2011.
Fast forward a dozen years—which saw dozens of setbacks and hundreds of successes—and Southern Nuclear and its stakeholders celebrated the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4: the first new commercial nuclear power construction project completed in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
Robert E. Uhrig
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 5 | Number 2 | February 1959 | Pages 120-126
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE59-A25564
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Iowa State College subcritical assembly is a natural uranium-graphite pile constructed as a teaching tool to illustrate the principles of nuclear physics and engineering and as a facility for graduate thesis research in nuclear engineering. The determination of the basic operating characteristics of this assembly is described and discussed. The material buckling as determined from flux measurements was the parameter used in comparing the results. Tests were conducted for the 6 in., in., and 12 in. lattice arrangements and for all uranium removed. Tests were made with air and water in the coolant annuli surrounding the uranium slugs. Bucklings were calculated using the elementary theory of Murray (in which all extraneous materials are treated as poisons) and the method of Volkoff and Rumsey (in which the moderating effect of the water and the shielding effects of the various materials are considered) for the three lattice arrangements, and they are compared with the experimental results. The position of the neutron sources in the source compartment and the presence of water around the sources were found to affect the measured value of material buckling.
