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New York Nuclear Industry |
Report Updated:
February 2, 2007
There are 6 licensed commercial nuclear reactors in New York. Half of the reactors are of the boiling water type (BWR), including the pair at Nine Mile Point and the lone reactor at the James A. Fitzpatrick power plant. Together, these total 2,468 (MW(e)capacity. The other three reactors, Indian Point 1 and 2 and the Ginna unit, are pressurized light water reactors (PWR) total 2,600 MW(e) capacity. Permanently Shutdown Commercial Reactors: The Indian Point Nuclear Plant originally had three reactors. Indian Point 1 (PWR, capacity 615 megawatts thermal) was permanently shut down on October 31, 1974. The Shoreham Nuclear Plant (one BWR, 2,436 megawatts thermal capacity) was shut down on June 28, 1989, and decommissioning has been completed. Research Reactors: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an operators license for one reactor (critical assembly type, 0.1 kilowatt power level) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on July 3, 1964. Permanently Shutdown Research and Test Reactors regulated by NRC: The Tank (ZPR) reactor at Cornell University (power level 0.1 kilowatts) was shut down on February 12, 1997. A ZPR type reactor (0.0001 kilowatt power level) was also shut down at Manhattan College in December 1996. The Pulstar reactor (2,000 kilowatt power level) at the University of Buffalo was shut down on July 23, 1996.
Nuclear Generation in New York in 2005 was 42,443 billion kwh. Nuclear Generation Electricity generation by nuclear power plants is available for each reactor and each State for the following years: Contribution of Nuclear Power As of January 1, 2005, New York ranked 4th among the 31 States with nuclear capacity. Based on preliminary 2005 annual data, the efficiency of the State's nuclear industry as measured by the capacity factor (the ratio of actual generation to total possible generation) was 95.6 percent. Nearly a third of the State's electricity output is provided by six reactors. The State's three major power outages in 1965, 1977, and 2003, affected both nuclear and non-nuclear plants, but the 2003 crisis did bring about an unanticipated problem for nuclear plants. The Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant in New Jersey could have supplied power that might have helped limit the crisis. But Oyster Creek was shut down because Federal regulations require that a nuclear power plant must have an off-site source of power in case of emergency. Although all systems were in working order at Oyster Creek, the off-site source of power went off-line. Fortunately, such outages are rare but the loss of two plants instead of one tended to exacerbate the crisis.
Brookhaven National Laboratory The Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York was founded in 1948. It is one of 10 labs funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven is the world's largest accelerator for nuclear research. According to the lab's web site, "it collides gold nuclei head-on at energies of 100 billion electron volts per proton or neutron. Researchers are using the collider to "search for a never-before-seen form of hot, dense nuclear matter known as quark-gluon plasma. Half a century before the RHIC was built, Brookhaven scientists decided to build a new machine to accelerate protons to previously unheard of energies. Known as the Cosmotron, it became the first accelerator to send particles to energies in the billion electric volt (or GeV) region. In January 1953, it "reached its full design energy of 3.3 GeV. New York Nuclear Highlights
License Renewal On May 19, 2004, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) renewed the license for single reactor at the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, setting a new expiration date of September 18, 2029. On May 26, 2004, an application was received for license renewal of units 1 and 2 at Nine Mile Point. The application is currently under review. NRC anticipates that Entergy Nuclear, Inc., will submit a license renewal application in July 2006 for the James Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant. Air Quality in New York Of the 50 States plus the District of Columbia, the electric industry of the State of New York ranks 17th highest in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The State's electric industry ranks 16th highest in sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and 23rd highest in nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions.
More information on New York 1962: The First U.S. Nuclear-Powered Surface Ship The contrast between the world's first nuclear-powered surface ship, Lenin, and the world's first nuclear-powered commercial vessel, the Nuclear Ship Savannah, is substantial. The U.S. vessel is the namesake of a vessel launched a century earlier, the first steam-powered vessel to cross the ocean. The nuclear-powered version was a remarkably beautiful and graceful ship, that could (and did) carry cargo. It was an expensive way to carry cargo, however, so the vessel was heavily dependent on the Federal subsidy it received as a unique ship. The nuclear-powered Savannah was conceived by President Eisenhower to promote the "Atoms for Peace" program (a program that also led to the building of the first U.S. nuclear power plant. The ship was launched in 1962 and retired in 1979. Contact: |
see also:
annual nuclear statistics back to 1953
projected electricity capacity to 2025
international electricity statistics