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by dundercoder
210 days ago
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This is very interesting to me because a plant this old might be cheaper to operate than a new plant, but might be like the space shuttle in that replacement parts aren’t readily available and thus expensive to custom manufacture. If you were to step into the control room you’d see analog phones, tiny incandescent bulbs behind plastic covers… looks like a sci-fi set from the 60s. The expensive part of a reactor isn’t really the reactor or tech itself, it’s the government regulation from the DOE and NRC. I worked at Areva/Framatome/B&W and IIRC they still have the archival room where hundreds of 4 inch D ring binders held the original design docs that had to be submitted for approval. |
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Not too disagree with the bulk of comment, but this sentence is not true. They're 90V neon indicator lamps, a technology that's really cool but also so inefficient that people rip it out and replace it.
Neat rabbit hole to do down.