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Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) is a closed nuclear power plant in Massachusetts in the Manomet section of Plymouth on Cape Cod Bay, south of the tip of Rocky Point and north of Priscilla Beach. Like many similar plants, it was constructed by Bechtel, and was powered by a General Electric BWR 3 boiling water reactor inside of a Mark 1 pressure suppression type containment and generator. With a 690 MWe production capacity, it produced about 14% of the electricity generated in Massachusetts. On October 13, 2015, the plant's owners announced that it would close by June 1, 2019, citing "market conditions and increased costs," which would have included tens of millions of dollars of necessary safety upgrades. Following closure, decommissioning is expected to take decades for radiation to decay. History Built at a cost of $231 million in 1972 by Boston Edison, the plant was sold in 1999 to the Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, part of a complex deal that was the re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth ( ; historically also spelled as Plimouth and Plimoth) is a town in and the county seat of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Located in Greater Boston, the town holds a place of great prominence in American history, folklore, and culture, and is known as "America's Hometown". Plymouth was the site of the colony founded in 1620 by the ''Mayflower'' Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony), Pilgrims, where New England was first established. It is the oldest municipality in New England and one of the oldest in the United States. The town has served as the location of several prominent events, one of the more notable being the Thanksgiving (United States)#Harvest festival observed by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, First Thanksgiving feast. Plymouth served as the capital of Plymouth Colony from its founding in 1620 until the colony's merger with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. The English explorer John Smith (explorer), John Smith named the area Plymouth (after the city in Sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NSTAR (company)
NSTAR was a utility company that provided retail electricity and natural gas to 1.4 million customers in eastern and central Massachusetts, including the Boston urban area. NSTAR became a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities in April 2012. In February 2015, Northeast Utilities and all of its operating companies (Western Massachusetts Electric, Public Service New Hampshire, Connecticut Light and Power, Yankee Gas, and NSTAR Gas and Electric) became one large company known as Eversource Energy. History NSTAR was formed in 1999 by the merger of BEC Energy and Commonwealth Energy System and had the following operating units: Boston Edison Company, Cambridge Electric Light Company, Commonwealth Electric Company, and NSTAR Gas Company (formerly Commonwealth Gas and Cambridge Gas Company). As a part of deregulation of the local electrical power industry, NSTAR has divested itself of all electric generation facilities, keeping only those elements of the business which remain regulated. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emergency Core Cooling System
The three primary objectives of nuclear reactor safety systems as defined by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are to shut down the reactor, maintain it in a shutdown condition and prevent the release of radioactive material. Reactor protection system (RPS) A reactor protection system is designed to immediately terminate the nuclear reaction. By breaking the nuclear chain reaction, the source of heat is eliminated. Other systems can then be used to remove decay heat from the core. All nuclear plants have some form of reactor protection system. Control rods Control rods are a series of rods that can be quickly inserted into the reactor core to absorb neutrons and rapidly terminate the nuclear reaction. They are typically composed of actinides, lanthanides, transition metals, and boron, in various alloys with structural backing such as steel. In addition to being neutron absorbent, the alloys used also are required to have at least a low coefficient of thermal expansion so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SCRAM
A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor effected by immediately terminating the fission reaction. It is also the name that is given to the manually operated kill switch that initiates the shutdown. In commercial reactor operations, this type of shutdown is often referred to as a "scram" at boiling water reactors, a "reactor ''trip''" at pressurized water reactors and "EPIS" at a CANDU reactor. In many cases, a scram is part of the routine shutdown procedure which serves to test the emergency shutdown system. Etymology There is no definitive origin for the term. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian Tom Wellock notes that '' scram'' is English-language slang for leaving quickly and urgently (as in scrambling to get away), and he cites this as the original and most likely accurate basis for the use of ''scram'' in the technical context. Scram is sometimes cited as being an acronym for safety control rod axe man or safety cut rope axe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boston Marathon Bombing
The Boston Marathon bombing, sometimes referred to as simply the Boston bombing, was an Islamist domestic terrorist attack that took place during the 117th annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs that detonated near the finish line of the race 14 seconds and apart. Three people were killed and hundreds injured, including a dozen who lost limbs. On April 18, 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two suspects in the bombing. The two suspects were later identified as the Tsarnaev brothers. Later on the evening of April 18, the Tsarnaev brothers killed an MIT policeman, Sean Collier, and proceeded to commit a carjacking. They engaged in a shootout with police in nearby Watertown, during which two officers were severely injured (one of the injured officers, Dennis Simmonds, died a year later). Tamerlan was shot several times, and his brother Dzhokhar ran him o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Anti-nuclear Groups In The United States
More than 80 anti-nuclear groups are operating, or have operated, in the United States. These include Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Greenpeace, Greenpeace USA, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Musicians United for Safe Energy, Nevada Desert Experience, Nuclear Control Institute, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, Public Citizen Energy Program, Shad Alliance, and the Sierra Club. These are direct action, environmental, health, and public interest organizations who oppose nuclear weapons and/or nuclear power. In 1992, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that "his agency had been pushed in the right direction on safety issues because of the pleas and protests of nuclear watchdog groups". Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who included Nobel Laureates (e.g., Linus Pauling and Hermann Joseph Muller). These scientists have belonged primarily to two groups: the Federation of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Patriot Ledger
''The Patriot Ledger'' is a daily newspaper in Quincy, Massachusetts, that serves the South Shore. It publishes Monday through Saturday. History The paper was founded on , as the weekly ''Quincy Patriot'' by John Adams Green and Edmund Butler Osborne. ''The Quincy Patriot'' was the hometown paper of President John Quincy Adams, a frequent writer of letters to the editor after he left the White House and became a congressman. The longest-running family ownership began in 1852 when George Washington Prescott went to work for the paper as a carrier. He later bought the newspaper. In 1890, Prescott started ''The Quincy Daily Ledger'', continuing The Patriot as a weekly. In 1916, the weekly and daily were merged into ''The Quincy Patriot Ledger''. The paper later expanded to serve communities throughout the South Shore. In the 1950s, the paper became a pioneer in newspaper production. Early experimentation led to development of the first practical photo-typesetting machine. N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregory Jaczko
Gregory B. Jaczko (; born October 29, 1970, Norristown, Pennsylvania) is a physicist who is the 13th and former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from 2009 to 2012."N.R.C. Chairman to Resign After Stormy Tenure" ''New York Times'', May 22, 2012, retrieved May 21, 2012Macfarlane NRC website. While at the NRC, he voted against the opening of new nuclear plants; an inspector general report found that he sought unilaterally and improperly to block the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project from advancing. Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, the 32nd-most populous, and the ninth-least densely populated U.S. state. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's population live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area, including three of the state's four largest incorporated cities. Nevada's capital is Carson City. Las Vegas is the largest city in the state. Nevada is officially known as the "Silver State" because of the importance of silver to its history and economy. It is also known as the "Battle Born State" because it achieved statehood during the Civil War (the words "Battle Born" also appear on its state flag); due to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the Union benefited immensely from the support of newly awarded statehood by the infusion of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the Las Vegas Valley. The project was approved in 2002 by the 107th United States Congress, but the 112th United States Congress, 112th Congress ended federal funding for the site via amendment to the continuing resolution, Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011, during the Obama administration. The project has encountered many difficulties and was highly contested by the public, the Western Shoshone peoples, and many politicians. The project also faces strong state and regional opposition. The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spent Nuclear Fuel
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and, depending on its point along the nuclear fuel cycle, it will have different isotopic constituents than when it started. Nuclear fuel rods become progressively more radioactive (and less thermally useful) due to neutron activation as they are fissioned, or "burnt", in the reactor. A fresh rod of low enriched uranium pellets (which can be safely handled with gloved hands) will become a highly lethal gamma emitter after 1–2 years of core irradiation, unsafe to approach unless under many feet of water shielding. This makes their invariable accumulation and safe temporary storage in spent fuel pools a prime source of high level radioactive waste and a major ongoing issue for future permanent disposal. Nature of spent fuel Nanomaterial pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operations on January 19, 1975, as one of two successor agencies to the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Its functions include overseeing reactor safety and security, administering reactor licensing and renewal, licensing and oversight for fuel cycle facilities, licensing radioactive materials, radionuclide safety, and managing the storage, security, recycling, and disposal of spent fuel. History Prior to 1975 the Atomic Energy Commission was in charge of matters regarding radionuclides. The AEC was dissolved, because it was perceived as unduly favoring the industry it was charged with regulating.John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (1996). ''Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk'', Transaction Publishers, p. 163. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
