‘Intermittent & unpredictable’: Another Nuclear Reactor Fails Dependability Test

[kristopher]

Davis-Besse to stay offline for a few weeks
Emergency shutdown of plant caused by a wiring problem
BY VANESSA McCRAY


OAK HARBOR, Ohio — The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant likely will remain out of operation for a couple weeks while repairs related to an emergency shutdown Saturday night continue, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Corp. reported Monday.

Workers identified a problem with wiring connected to the motor that powers one of the plant’s four reactor-coolant pumps, said Jennifer Young, a FirstEnergy spokesman. She said she did not know what caused the wiring problem.

...

During a 2011 shutdown for plant maintenance and replacement of a reactor head, hairline cracks were discovered in its concrete Shield Building. The plant reopened after about two months, and investigators blamed wind-driven moisture during the Blizzard of 1978 for the cracking, which they said was not an on-going problem and could be managed.

Kevin Kamps, a radioactive-waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear, said the most recent incident is another worry.

“A lot of plants have problems, but often times it’s a single problem a plant will have ...,” he said. “But for Davis-Besse, they have just a whole long list of problems, and that’s what concerns us too —that those might line up one day in a very bad way.”

http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2013/07/02/Davis-Besse-to-stay-offline-for-a-few-weeks.html

[RobertEarl]

1. I feel safer

Just knowing that thing is off line makes me feel safer.

I predict it will be the next one to close down for good. Real good. Not this ""it sometimes provides a little electricity"" good, but closed down and disposed of good.

[PamW]

2. Mountain out of a mole hill

Once again, kris pursues his dishonest attempts at making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Every thermal power plant has coolant pumps. Coal power plants have water pumps to pump water through the coal-fired boiler. Gas-fired power plants have pumps to pump water through the gas-fired boiler. A nuclear power plant has pumps that pump water through the reactor.

There's nothing "special" about having a water pump in a reactor plant. There is nothing unique to nuclear power in that sense; the coal and gas-fired plants have the problem too. Hell; you'll have the same problem in large scale solar plants which will need pumps to pump coolant to remove the heat created because solar PV cells are not 100% efficient; so some of the solar influx energy goes into heat.

The pumps are powered by electricity and occasionally something goes wrong with the wiring. Did you ever have the electric fan that blows across the radiator in your car stop working? Of course. Connectors oxidize, and there's corrosion by moisture in the air... there are lots of things that can cause that motor to stop working.

The same happens in coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear power plants. The spokesman Kevin Kamps speaking for Beyond Nuclear is blowing the usual hot air. Even if you have a failure of a single coolant pump or all the coolant pumps; that just means you shutdown the plant. It's hardly a problem to worry about.

PamW

[kristopher]

3. Nuclear intermittency is a worse problem than variable renewables.

When they fail you have a very, very large unplanned-for hole in your supply matrix.

Planned redundancy with renewables is an approach that provides a far more reliable and resilient GRID than is feasible with a centralized system.

[PamW]

4. 100% WRONG as ALWAYS

kris,

Unplanned for nuclear power plant outages are extremely few and far between. The history shows that kris's concerns are "much ado about nothing". We've had nuclear power plants for over 50+ years; and the power companies that run them have been able to deal with the infrequent unexpected outages.

Take for example, Commonwealth Edison of Chicago. Commonwealth Edison serving the Chicago and northern Illinois area receives the vast majority of its electric energy from nuclear power. The Commonwealth Edison service area is no more unstable than any other service area. In actuality, unexpected shutdowns of nuclear power plants are more related to the Rankine steam cycle system, which they share in common with fossil fueled plants, than the reactor being the source of the problem. So decades of history show kris to be 100% WRONG because unexpected shutdowns haven't been an unsolvable problem.

One could say the same for France; which is over 85% nuclear and they are just as stable, if not more so; than any other electric power grid.

Renewables have a problem in that they vary in power from instant to instant as the energy supplied by Mother Nature varies from instant to instant. What most people don't understand is that an electric grid has to balance energy production with demand and line loss. The production and demand/loss have to balance exactly; otherwise it is a violation of the Law of Physics known as Conservation of Energy. Mother Nature won't permit a grid to operate out of balance.

To keep the grid in balance; all our power plants have feedback loops that keep the generators "synched" to the power line. As demand increases, the generators would fall out of sync and to keep them in sync the feedback system adjusts the power plant's throttle to increase power to compensate.

The problem with renewables is that they don't have throttles. The very important feedback system that keeps the grid balanced can't be implemented in a renewable system since they don't have throttles; we can't tell Mother Nature to give us more power. The renewable systems that are integrated into grids at present all rely on the "dispatchable" power plants, the one's with throttles; to give stability to the system.

Above, kris makes a value judgment; in claiming that nuclear power unplanned shutdowns are worse than the intermittent nature of renewables. The problem is kris is totally unqualified to make such a value decision.

Or is kris hiding something from us? Does kris have a university degree in Physics or Electric Power Engineering that he hasn't told the forum about?

It's like going to a lawyer to get a value judgment on your medical condition and having the lawyer tell you that the ingrown toenail on your left foot is your number one health concern and is priority one for treatment, and that the pancreatic cancer that you also have, can wait.

Forum members shouldn't accept rosy platitudes from people who are monumentally unqualified to make a pronouncement.

PamW

[oldhippie]

5. This .....

Forum members shouldn't accept rosy platitudes from people who are monumentally unqualified to make a pronouncement.

And substitute "propaganda" for "platitudes".

I, for one, have shared my credentials here. You have also. Kris? I don't know. I always wonder who he works for.

[kristopher]

6. It doesn't matter how "few and far between" they are

In a centralized grid when these outages occur - and they do occur with regularity - they are extremely consequential and often extremely long lasting. Weeks are the norm, but sometimes they are down for several months or even several years. What good is it to the people of California to say that nuclear is reliable when San Onofre has left a major void that has to be filled for (as of its initial closing) an indefinite period of time?

That is the textbook definition of 'unreliable'. It isn't just the nature of nuclear power, it is the way it fits into a centralized grid and creates dependency that is disproportionate to its ability to deliver.
It's great until it isn't, and it isn't far too often to depend on.


A distributed grid is fashioned around the idea of power source variability and redundancy. The wind isn't going to stop blowing and the sun isn't going to stop shining (or if they do we will have larger fish to fry than the grid).

The wind might momentarily drop off where you are, but at the same time it is going to be blowing somewhere relatively near. The redundancy in the network makes the whole function in a manner than is more than any individual wind turbine power plant possibly could.

Add solar power, water power of all types, geothermal, biomass and a smattering of storage and you have a system where reliability can be expected to exceed any centralized grid that depends on large scale thermal generation.

Your description of the way the grid works is self-serving claptrap. Integration is always a line item expense for a power source. Wind does not present a unique problem for the grid, neither do any of the other renewables. There is a slight cost with them, just as there is with nuclear, gas or coal. But that cost has nothing to do with the 'throttle' that you are so keen on using to mislead.

While its true a balance must be maintained, the amount of variability that already exists on the grid is significant - particularly from the demand side. People are switching appliances on and off, factories are turning their equipment on and off, and business/commercial operations are doing the same with their equipment. This variability is part of the machine as it exists and the thoughtful, planned addition of renewable capacity does little to change the nature of the problems grid operators encounter. They are far more concerned when one of your nuke plants has an emergency shutdown because of faulty wiring in a relay than they are the problems posed by variability in renewable generation.

The present grid is antique architecture and must be rebuilt no matter what else we do. This modernization effort - this building of a 'smart grid' - will enable power management at a level of refinement that has not previously existed. This is the key element in bringing a grid with a high penetration of renewables into being. Instead of power management at the MegaWatt level we will be able to manage power at the kilowatt level. As renewable generation and electric drive auto penetration increases so too will investment in smart grid technology.

You are promoting a dead technology in nuclear. The future is clearly built on renewables.