Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant (closed)

USA / New York / East Shoreham /
 abandoned / shut down, nuclear reactor, nuclear power plant
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The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a General Electric boiling water reactor located in Wading River, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, 60 miles east of Manhattan. The Plant was designed to produce 800 MWe. The Plant never operated commercially, but did undergo low power testing. It never produced a single kilowatt of electric power. The plant was decommissioned in 1994 due to local opposition.
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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant
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Coordinates:   40°57'40"N   72°51'54"W

Comments

  • Folks had such an irrational fear of nuclear power after Three Mile Island that the plug was pulled on this plant before it was able to produce any electrical power. The building costs ballooned to $5B due to the protests and legal action, which were eventually successful, and these costs were passed to the community. The power needs of the area have grown and now must be met by other polluting, greenhouse gas emitting plants. Nuclear power is a clean, reliable power source and the waste can be safely handled, stored, and even reused for further use. It also does not release any greenhouse gasses. No other power souce comes close to these benefits for the cost and output. Wind and solar power cannot yet produce the power output these plants can and will not be able to do so for some time.
  • This plant is/was not, nor are others like it, a breeder reactor. Through regular operation of plants like this, a very small amount of plutonium is produced in the fuel cells after they have been spent. However, they are not breeder reactors. I'm not sure what you mean by removing the fuel hot. Spent fuel rods stay hot for a long time after they are removed from the reactor due to the radioactive decay of fission products. They usually spend several years in a spent fuel cooling pool before they can be placed into dry storage. The bundles in dry storage are usually the oldest spent fuel bundles from when the plant first started operating. Of course, this plant never operated. As far as the big tower connected to the plant, if you are referring to the round structure in the middle of the other buildings, that is the containment building which housed the reactor. This plant did not use the large cooling towers often associated with nuclear power plants. Rather, it used water from Long Island Sound for cooling.
This article was last modified 5 years ago