CANDU cousins are at full power

[OVERKILL]

India's PHWR program is based on the Douglas Point design, licensed to them by AECL (Atomic Energy Canada Limited), a relationship that subsequently fell apart when they used the CIRUS research reactor that was also from Canada, to produce nuclear weapons material.

So, while Canada went on to develop and deploy a larger design, the CANDU 6, and later the CANDU 9, India continued with the 220MW design until somewhat recently.

They've managed to basically come up with their own CANDU 6-esque reactor of 700MW and have started constructing it. The first unit came online last year and now both units are at full power as of August 21st:
India’s second 700 MW nuclear power KAPS-4 plant starts operations at full capacity - The Hindu

Interestingly, they are building 14 more of these units! Which are expected to come online between 2031 and 2032 according to the article.

 

[PontiacHO]

Is this a major world wide catastrophe in the making?

 

[SubieRubyRoo]

Is this a major world wide catastrophe in the making?

Not if the containment units hold

 

[oil pan 4]

Is this a major world wide catastrophe in the making?

CANDU reactors are great, no uranium enrichment is needed.
If anything goes wrong and emergency cooling is required, regular light water kills the fission reaction dead. A CANDU pumped full of regular water is no where near criticality.
Plus no pressurized water reactors have blown up and it seems even more unlikely that a CANDU or PHWR type would blow up.

 

[mk378]

There will be great reluctance to pull the trigger on dumping the heavy water though, because it is expensive. A considerable factor in Canada's choice of the CANDU design was their hydroelectric resources to make heavy water.

 

[OVERKILL]

There will be great reluctance to pull the trigger on dumping the heavy water though, because it is expensive. A considerable factor in Canada's choice of the CANDU design was their hydroelectric resources to make heavy water.

Dumping? The stuff is like gold, and India has at least 5x heavy water plants. We still have the heavy water in storage from Douglas Point, Gentilly 2, Pickering 2/3...etc. The plan is to reuse it in new CANDU's. You don't dump it.

Also, the first commercial heavy water plant in Canada was in Nova Scotia and was powered by coal. When Ontario started to produce its own heavy water at the Bruce site, this was also initially fossil powered until Bruce A was online, at which point the plants (we built several) were powered by process steam bled off the Bruce A units.

 

[zzyzzx]

https://whyy.org/articles/three-mile-island-considers-nuclear-restart/

Three Mile Island considers nuclear restart

 

[I<3oil]

https://whyy.org/articles/three-mile-island-considers-nuclear-restart/

Three Mile Island considers nuclear restart

Heck yeah

 

[oil pan 4]

https://whyy.org/articles/three-mile-island-considers-nuclear-restart/

Three Mile Island considers nuclear restart

Best news I've heard all week.
I heard it shut down in 2019 or 2020 and as of 2023 the cooling towers were still up and it didn't look like anything had been torn down.

 

[oil pan 4]

There will be great reluctance to pull the trigger on dumping the heavy water though, because it is expensive. A considerable factor in Canada's choice of the CANDU design was their hydroelectric resources to make heavy water.

I figured since it's worth at least as much a silver they would have a budget for a tank to catch it case they ever had to push the oh shhh button.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

https://whyy.org/articles/three-mile-island-considers-nuclear-restart/

Three Mile Island considers nuclear restart

Palisades in Michigan is going to restart.