LoL, no apology necessary. Pretty standard backup. Nuke plants ARE the future, and IRAN sees it - why build nuke plants when you have all that oil? Cuz it is not only a fossil fuel, it is also the basis of our lives: Plastics, medicines, building materials, you name it. Oil is becoming less and less a form of power, and more and more a need to our way of life.
Sadly, the US public's irrational fear of nuclear power, and the industry's failure to rationally educate and publicize it, led to it's demise. I was to be an Assistant Project Manager for TVA's 3-unit Cheerokee project, but it was cancelled, deep-sixed along with the crash of nuke power in the 70's. Ironically, I am now retired, and moved from Florida to Tennesse within a few miles of Cherokee Dam, the proposed site.
Now, Nuclear is undergoing a resurgence in the US. The sorry point is that we, the country that led in technology and development of nuclear power, will now have to buy back the technology we developed, and abandoned.
Thanks for the reply. What plant/company are you with?
Don James
As a nuclear engineer (I served on nuke subs as a reactor operator, then following my degree via the GI Bill, started up the Fort Calhoun and Millstone-2 plants, and worked at FPL at both the Turkey Point and Saint Lucie units).
Your message is misleading. Safety systems NEVER rely on off-site power; They can use off-site power if it is available, i.e. if the if the problem is internal to the plant. The backup diesel generators are designed, and have the capacity, to power safety-related equipment to bring the nuclear unit to a Cold Shutdown condition under worst-case scenarios, including LOSP. Once at CSD, you have much time to truck in diesel fuel, or in Turkey Point's case, tap into the adjacent fossil plants' output if/when they are up. Worst-case scenario is that ALL safety systems fail, and residual heat from the core builds up to a core melt, a la TMI (where the failure was human, not system-related), but so what? You end up with an inert mass of mettalic fuel in the bottom of the reactor vessel.
As we used to say in the Navy, if all the safety systems fail, I'll go piss in the steam generators for additional time....
Too many errors in this post, but the one that irks me is '(3) If you put too much cold water in a light water, thermal reactor (a reactor where fission is driven by low energy neutrons), then that reactor will go super prompt critical and explode'.
This is a physical impossibility. The U-235 used in thermal reactors only fissions when impacted by thermal neutrons (neutrons at thermal equilibrium with U-235). Fast neutrons have no effect with U-235, but a large effect with U-238. That's the reason thermal reactors use enriched U-235 and bombs use U-238. The worst that could happen to a thermal reactor in this instance is a core meltdown, aka 'China Syndrome', that Three Mile Island proved false. 80% of TMI's core lies melted and then solidified in the bottom of the unit's reactor vessel. None of it escaped to the reactor's containment vessel. Yes, radioactive gases escaped, but they were inert gases such as xenon which are not taken up by the human body, as opposed to, say, the cesium and strontium released from Chernobyl. In fact, the radiologicical effects at TMI were nil, while the radiological AT TMI from Chernobyl were measurable.
TMI was an economic disaster, not a nuclear one.
Or the direction (scatological) given to a security guard assigned with an axe near a rope holding a backup shutdown rod at the experimental university of Chicago nuclear research reactor where the first sustained and controllable nuclear reaction occurred under the direction of Enrico Fermi: If I say 'cut the rope' cut the rope and 'scram' outta here....
Your physics 'teacher' fed you a load of crap. On a LOSP (Loss Of Offsite Power) the reactor trips, the turbine trips, the main disconnects to the grid open, and the atmospheric dump valves and/or steam reliefs open to remove non-radioactive steam to the atmosphere, coolant the reactor. Simultaneously, backup diesel generators light off to provide essential safety power.
A LOSP means the grid (And thus incoming power) is dead. There is no way the grid power lines could 'glow red and melt' as no power can flow through an open circuit (grid).
Get your facts straight, or at least provide a reference to support your claims. My basis is 40 years in the Navy/civilian nuclear industry. And yes, I worked for FPL, but was 'downsized' during a reorginization. While I indicated my willingness to accept a substantial separation package, I never believed it would be accepted. Consequently, I have no particular respect for FPL.
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LoL, no apology necessary. Pretty standard backup. Nuke plants ARE the future, and IRAN sees it - why build nuke plants when you have all that oil? Cuz it is not only a fossil fuel, it is also the basis of our lives: Plastics, medicines, building materials, you name it. Oil is becoming less and less a form of power, and more and more a need to our way of life. Sadly, the US public's irrational fear of nuclear power, and the industry's failure to rationally educate and publicize it, led to it's demise. I was to be an Assistant Project Manager for TVA's 3-unit Cheerokee project, but it was cancelled, deep-sixed along with the crash of nuke power in the 70's. Ironically, I am now retired, and moved from Florida to Tennesse within a few miles of Cherokee Dam, the proposed site. Now, Nuclear is undergoing a resurgence in the US. The sorry point is that we, the country that led in technology and development of nuclear power, will now have to buy back the technology we developed, and abandoned. Thanks for the reply. What plant/company are you with? Don James
Well said
Silly Englishman, I fart in your general direction .
As a nuclear engineer (I served on nuke subs as a reactor operator, then following my degree via the GI Bill, started up the Fort Calhoun and Millstone-2 plants, and worked at FPL at both the Turkey Point and Saint Lucie units). Your message is misleading. Safety systems NEVER rely on off-site power; They can use off-site power if it is available, i.e. if the if the problem is internal to the plant. The backup diesel generators are designed, and have the capacity, to power safety-related equipment to bring the nuclear unit to a Cold Shutdown condition under worst-case scenarios, including LOSP. Once at CSD, you have much time to truck in diesel fuel, or in Turkey Point's case, tap into the adjacent fossil plants' output if/when they are up. Worst-case scenario is that ALL safety systems fail, and residual heat from the core builds up to a core melt, a la TMI (where the failure was human, not system-related), but so what? You end up with an inert mass of mettalic fuel in the bottom of the reactor vessel. As we used to say in the Navy, if all the safety systems fail, I'll go piss in the steam generators for additional time....
Too many errors in this post, but the one that irks me is '(3) If you put too much cold water in a light water, thermal reactor (a reactor where fission is driven by low energy neutrons), then that reactor will go super prompt critical and explode'. This is a physical impossibility. The U-235 used in thermal reactors only fissions when impacted by thermal neutrons (neutrons at thermal equilibrium with U-235). Fast neutrons have no effect with U-235, but a large effect with U-238. That's the reason thermal reactors use enriched U-235 and bombs use U-238. The worst that could happen to a thermal reactor in this instance is a core meltdown, aka 'China Syndrome', that Three Mile Island proved false. 80% of TMI's core lies melted and then solidified in the bottom of the unit's reactor vessel. None of it escaped to the reactor's containment vessel. Yes, radioactive gases escaped, but they were inert gases such as xenon which are not taken up by the human body, as opposed to, say, the cesium and strontium released from Chernobyl. In fact, the radiologicical effects at TMI were nil, while the radiological AT TMI from Chernobyl were measurable. TMI was an economic disaster, not a nuclear one.
Or the direction (scatological) given to a security guard assigned with an axe near a rope holding a backup shutdown rod at the experimental university of Chicago nuclear research reactor where the first sustained and controllable nuclear reaction occurred under the direction of Enrico Fermi: If I say 'cut the rope' cut the rope and 'scram' outta here....
Your physics 'teacher' fed you a load of crap. On a LOSP (Loss Of Offsite Power) the reactor trips, the turbine trips, the main disconnects to the grid open, and the atmospheric dump valves and/or steam reliefs open to remove non-radioactive steam to the atmosphere, coolant the reactor. Simultaneously, backup diesel generators light off to provide essential safety power. A LOSP means the grid (And thus incoming power) is dead. There is no way the grid power lines could 'glow red and melt' as no power can flow through an open circuit (grid). Get your facts straight, or at least provide a reference to support your claims. My basis is 40 years in the Navy/civilian nuclear industry. And yes, I worked for FPL, but was 'downsized' during a reorginization. While I indicated my willingness to accept a substantial separation package, I never believed it would be accepted. Consequently, I have no particular respect for FPL.