Aging Indian Point Reactor Shut Down By Bird Droppings (nypost.com)

mdsolar writes: A gloop of bird poop was responsible for shutting down the Indian Point nuclear plant for a few hours last December, according to a state-commissioned report into the incident. The Westchester power plant automatically shut down on Dec. 14, 2015 when a string of dropping from a "large bird" fell into some of the plant's electrical equipment and caused the reactor's automatic shut down to trip, according to findings by Entergy, the company that runs the plant. "Damage was caused by a bird streamer. Streamers are long streams of excrement from large birds that are often expelled as a bird takes off from a perch," company officials said in the report, ordered by Gov. Cuomo. Last December's unplanned shut down was the 13th since June 2012.

Comments

Obligatory..

[headkase]

That was some serious shit..

So what?

[msauve]

Seems like things worked as they should, if anything with an error on the side of safety. In a similar vein, power substations often shut down because squirrels short out the lines, tripping safety systems.

Where's the news in things working as they should?

Re:So what?

[msauve]

Oh, just to show how common these things are, look here. "...623 power disruptions caused by squirrels, 214 by birds, 53 by raccoons, one by a Hannah Montana balloon, and a handful of other incidents caused by everything from snakes to slugs."

Re:So what?

[Krishnoid]

It was through either extremely poor luck or possibly supernatural intervention, that the streamer entered the plant through a small, unshielded thermal exhaust port which somehow led straight to the reactor core.

It was definitely an architectural oversight; however, the automatic safeties caught the electrical overload and shut the plant down before catastrophic failure. *That* was a just matter of sound engineering practices.

Re:So what?

[sjames]

Use the force, Lark.

Re: So what?

[wasteoid]

Red bird 5 must have used protein turdpedos.

Re:So what?

[PopeRatzo]

"it's poorly designed"

Yep. They could have put a $2 shield on top of the thermal exhaust port that led directly to the reactor core.

That's the definition of poor design. Failsafes for when something comes down the exhaust port are all well and good, but it's not good design if you plan for a solution after there's been a problem instead of simply preventing the problem in the first place with a much cheaper fix.