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Nuclear Plant Taken Down In Anticipation of Snowstorm
mdsolar writes Pilgrim Power Plant in Plymouth was taken offline in anticipation of the weekend snowstorm. According to a statement from Entergy, the owner of Pilgrim, the plant was taken off line in preparation of "a potential loss of offsite power or the grid's inability to accept the power Pilgrim generates." This is the second time this season the plant has been shut down due to storm conditions. On January 27 the facility was taken offline after the two main power transmission lines were knocked out by blizzard conditions. Although the transmission lines were restored within a few days, the plant remained offline until February 7 at which time it was reconnected to the grid.
An emergency measure when done after the fact.
He probably wouldn't post something about a 'renewable' going offline, based on his posting history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Right...
However, in this case, the customers don't lose power because the generation isn't there. Customers would lose power because the grid fails. Entergy has power from other sources or purchasing agreements to make up for this temporarily.
Similarly, it is unsafe (and illegal, technically) to run your nuclear powerplant with no access to the grid. If you have a coal plant that gets disconnected from the grid, you'd shut it down too with no way to generate revenue from burning additional fuel.
Devil's advocate to your misguided devil's advocate...The problem is the electrical grid not the source.
Sounds like this is a "preventative measure".
Normally there is some time between neutron capture and actual nuclear fission (I have heard a figure of 15 minutes). This means that even if the control rods are slammed in when the power transmission lines were cut the previous heat load would still be generated for a period of time. Often this means resorting to drastic measures to reduce the neutron flux to zero ASAP (certain salts are added to cooling loops which achieve this but requires a good flush to get rid of).
Controlled shutdown means the reactor can be restarted in "a couple of hours"
Emergency shutdown means the reactor can be restarted in "a couple of weeks"
Burnt once, twice shy...
...that it didn't melt down. We get it, MD, you don't like nuclear power.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I guess your reading skills are not up to snuff. It did NOT take 11 days to repair the transmission lines. You even quoted it - "Although the transmission lines were restored within a few days".
I went through the ice storm of 98 - a month with no power. 25 people died of hypothermia.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Local power lines routed through trees. High tension lines on rotting wooden towers. Welcome to the People's Republic of Massachusetts, where the buses are always on time, the subways never stop running, and town-owned sections of the sidewalk are always the first to be shovelled.
Nuclear plants of the design mentioned in the article must legally have offsite power to continue operation. As soon as offsite power is lost, the plant is required to shutdown. An emergency shutdown is more paperwork than a planned shutdown such as this.
The reason for this is that in an accident scenario, you would like to rely on offsite power to run your emergency coolant pumps for this particular design.
Newer reactor designs don't have this issue, but this is a pretty economic decision considering an emergency shutdown if/when the offsite power does eventually trip. The grid seems pretty unreliable based on past experience, as the article even notes.
Nuclear power plants generate net positive energy(or they wouldn't be power plants at all); but they still have numerous systems(from relatively important sensors, control systems, pumps, etc. down to boring stuff like the bathroom lights) that need to be powered to work properly. They do have backup generators on site; but, for reasons of safety(and because it's hard to sell the output of a plant that isn't connected to the grid) you aren't supposed to run them when they have been disconnected or are expected to be disconnected.
Nuclear plants are a trifle more dramatic, because shutting them down isn't just a matter of not shovelling more coal into the furnace; but it's my understanding that no power plant types are really supposed to be run off grid. Even a perfectly well behaved design is still a waste of money if the power can't reach customers, and nobody likes depending on backup power to keep every electric device in the facility online.
They might well need to review the qualify of the grid connection, if only because an idling nuclear reactor is a punchy opportunity cost; but there isn't much reason to leave it on. (Unless you managed to get the NRC drunk and obtain approval for a madcap scheme to convert the reactor to a snow-melter for the duration of the storm. We really are starting to run out of places to put the stuff, and a nuclear reactor would be very well qualified for melting duties.)
What i cant understand is cycling down a nuclear facility because you're worried about power supplied from external source
Does the phrase "fail safe" ring any bells?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That plant is not known for being run well.
A quick Google on Pilgrim Capacity Factor yields a spreadsheet that shows 6 recent years of operation with an average capacity factor of 90$. That is quite good.
I've seen a wide variety of broken components in even well run thermal power plants (I've never worked with nukes but anything after the water is heated is pretty similar). I've seen even more on the way to breaking and getting cut out before they can fail.
So to sum up I don't think there's much to take away from a single outage - if all you've got is outage times you'd have to get statistical with more info before a sensible judgement.
A month and a serious death toll, that does indeed suck. I'd wonder why they didn't truck in a pile of the container sized generators or a similar disaster plan as done by utilities after hurricanes.
France seems to handle their plants fine. And wind power and solar power have capacity factors so low than it won't work for grid generation without excess generation capacity and storage to begin with.
Both the top news you posted here and your second link in the parent post are about transmission grid failures. Not nuclear power plant failures. As for graceful powering up and down it can be done. France for example has nuclear power plants with load-following mode. The US doesn't bother with this because the faction of power generated with nuclear is low enough that it isn't worth doing the retrofits. As for the heat sink being too hot you would have the same problem with any other thermal power plant which uses a cooling tower. Coal, natural gas, whatever. It isn't a nuclear power specific problem either. It's a thermal power plant issue.
Relative terms can be missleading. The slowest cheetah is still much faster than the fastest turtle. While it may be among the worst nuclear plants it is still extremely reliable. From the article you referenced
Pilgrim performed at nearly 97 percent capacity in 2014
It isn't a nuclear power specific problem either. It's a thermal power plant issue.
Ofc it is! Since when can a coal plant melt down?
Your wind/solar nitpicking is idiocy. Who cares about 'capacity' factors as long as a plant yields energy when it is needed or is planned for?
Actually, no one in the industry uses that term. It is only used by marketing droids after fanboys like you made it popular in the internet. The term used by power companies is load utilization, and it is not measured in % ... up to you to figure. Google might (or might not) be your friend.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
'Capacity' factor is a word that is only used in the climate denier scene and recently by marketing droids.
I know you have a massive anti-nuclear streak, but lets be real here. Solar couldnt cope with the storm either, gets awful generation during winter especially at latitutes where these types of storms are common due to insolation, and cant provide base load.
Nuclear on the other hand has caused-- past, present, and anticipated future-- FAR fewer deaths than hydro or coal. Heres a question for you: Do you protest as vigorously when a new hydro plant opens? Because a single dam event around 20 years ago killed ~triple the number of people expected to die from Chernobyl, and well over double the number of people who have died or are expected to die from nuclear since its inception till now.
A plant has no capacity factor.
From the Energy Information Administration:
Capacity factor is a measure of how often an electric generator runs for a specific period of time. It indicates how much electricity a generator actually produces relative to the maximum it could produce at continuous full power operation during the same period.
For example, if a one megawatt generator produced 5,000 megawatthours the entire year, its capacity factor would be 0.57 or 57%
In fact they provide capacity factor information for various technologies if you so desire.
Im really not sure where you get your information but it seems terribly off.
Here in Finland, the best private investment in terms of ROI are nuclear reactors at Loviisa, followed by nuclear reactors at Olkiluoto
Source? I was under the impression Olkiluoto #3 was a colossal failure and 300% over budget. Oh yes, from wikipedia,
"Unit 3, an EPR reactor, is still under construction, but various problems with workmanship and supervision have created costly delays which have been the subject of an inquiry by the Finnish nuclear regulator Säteilyturvakeskus (STUK).[1] In December 2012, Areva estimated that the full cost of building the reactor will be about €8.5 billion, or almost three times the delivery price of €3 billion.[2][3] A license for a fourth reactor to be built at the site was granted by the Finnish parliament in July 2010,[4][5][6] but discontinued by the government in September 2014. TVO has the option to reapply for the license in the future.[7]"
Are you claiming at 300% over budget it has the among the best ROI? I mean even in Finland you could build out solar energy with a better ROI than a $10/WAC nuclear plant (or gas, oil, wood, steam, wind, biomass) nothing costs this much except a nuclear boondoogle.