Nuclear reactor in Ga. shuts down abruptly

[onehandle]

Source: AP/AJC

ATLANTA — A nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia has been taken out of service until authorities determine why it unexpectedly shut down.

The Atlanta-based Southern Co. reported Thursday that the Unit 1 reactor at Plant Vogtle automatically shut down Wednesday evening. Officials say the shutdown procedure, called a scram, was completed without incident.

Nuclear reactors are designed to shut down if automatic monitoring systems detect conditions that could be unsafe. Southern Co. spokesman Alyson Fuqua said it is not immediately clear what prompted the shutdown. No problems have been reported.

Fuqua said the shutdown was triggered by equipment related to an electrical turbine. The company was not certain when the reactor would start producing power again.

Read more: http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/nuclear-reactor-in-ga-920582.html

[NutmegYankee]

1. This is not uncommon. If it's the turbine generator, it's not a reactor issue..

But a malfunctioning turbine generator would still require the heat source, whether nuke or coal, to shutdown.

[onehandle]

3. That's how I read it. nt

[Systematic Chaos]

2. How many more weeks/months/years of endless hysteria must we put up with?

Nothing against the OP, but it seems that most of us would rather forget the "inconvenient truth" that fossil fuel pollution is going to kill at least another 3 million people this year, like it does every year. The Arctic ice will continue to melt, invasive insect species will continue turning our forests into dead carbon sources instead of sinks, the oceans will continue to acidify and die off, and the planet will continue warming apace.

Where are the 37 posts per hour about that?

[Turbineguy]

4. This will help:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x940841

[Systematic Chaos]

6. nah

[RC]

7. Your post was well stated

From an Anti-nuker on another thread:
"All you are doing is going down the nuclear-circle-jerk road where insurmountable obstacles posed by one particular technology are met with the claim that "Well, we could use this OTHER technology..." while ignoring/hiding the fatal flaws of the OTHER technology. If one pursues the circle long enough, the claim eventually returns back to its starting point."

Brings to mind something about a mote/log in someones eye...

[wordpix]

9. yeah, yeah, and nuke power is totally safe and cheap too (sarcasm), requiring "only" billions in

taxpayer-guaranteed loans to build new ones.

And how are you solving the nuke fuel waste problem, may I ask you pro-nukers?

[JuniperLea]

10. All those things are a slow death...

Radiation in large doses is much faster and very brutal.

Unless you can guarantee without fail that nuclear power is safe, or that we aren't being negatively affected by the radiation currently being released into this closed biosphere we call Earth, you shouldn't chastise others for being fearful. Your use of the word 'hysteria' is more than a little insulting to those DUers who are concerned. I'm not saying we should all be in below-ground bunkers right now, but that could just be me. I don't fear death... I've already come to terms with this latest catastrophe. If we are being poisoned by this or any other wrong humans have done to Gaea, I'm not afraid. That doesn't give me the right to tell others they shouldn't be.

[madokie]

13. If you want to increase the use of nuclear power you want us to shut up already

I get your drift. Trouble is I cut my teeth, politically, protesting this issue. Fresh home from the war. did you get to skate or did you like me and many others have to spend a good portion of our late childhood as pawns in another mans game?

I hope the pressure stays on as its been proven now three times that once shits happens it happens in a big way and its all uncharted weather as each of these catastrophe are different so They've not been able to figure out what to do when something does go wrong. Wait until they extend some of these older reactors for 20 and I've even read 40 more years, shits gonna happen. We've seen with Vermont Yankee and Davis-Besse that we can't take our eyes off them for one second. fuck that if its something that the people in charge will bend the rules here and there it can't be trusted.

[grahamhgreen]

5. Build windmills. They are cheaper and safer than nukes or coal according to the DOE (chart).

[NutmegYankee]

8. That chart leaves out one critical fact.

As has been noted in Europe, windmills only produce on average at 20% of the max power output, so they found they needed 5 times the number of mills to get the average required to supply the grid.

[grahamhgreen]

11. No, that is actually factored into the chart! (link). It really is time to build alot of wind

turbines!


http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

[NutmegYankee]

12. Nope.

The duty cycle for intermittent renewable resources of wind and solar is not operator controlled, but dependent on the weather or solar cycle (that is, sunrise/sunset). The availability of wind or solar will not necessarily correspond to operator dispatched duty cycles and, as a result, their levelized costs are not directly comparable to those for other technologies (even where the average annual capacity factor may be similar).

[grahamhgreen]

14. Actually it's just as easy to average estimated wind flow as it is to average estimated coal costs.

Or uranium costs. With nuclear you get the unfactored costs of nuclear disasters and the subsequent rise in insurance rates, storage costs, etc.

It's easier to factor the price of wind power.

[NutmegYankee]

15. I wasn't talking about fuel cost.

Any steam cycle plant (coal, oil, gas, nuclear) can be run at maximum or near maximum output for long lengths of time and be completely controlled by the operator. Wind is at the mercy of the weather. Wind and solar will make a difference, but they are not going to be able to supply our power alone nor provide power when needed to keep the grid supplied on time. That last part is critical and is the part that few non-engineers understand. Grid operators need to bring plants online and off with precise timing to keep the grid at the right voltage and frequency (60Hz) for equipment and appliances.

For example, Denmark relies on the German power grid to dump the excess wind electricity it creates on a very windy day and also to supply power to make up for low wind days. The Denmark success story in wind is only able to happen because of the massive mostly conventional power grid to the south.

[grahamhgreen]

16. If the supply chain is disrupted, the coal, oil, gas or nuclear plant would have to shut down.

If the costs of it's fuel increase, (and sometimes this happens radically and dramatically) the price of the energy production would also increase. The nice thing about wind is that it's price remains constant.

Supplying the base load, as it were, could mostly, and perhaps entirely, be done by wind, hydro, geo, solar, wave and tidal. This would be done by spacing out the energy production strategically along the interstate grids that allowed power to flow from one region to the next. The electricity can be delivered from up to 1,000 mile away.

The rest could be provided by biomass. If you got to burn something, I suppose I could cave on natural gas - it's cheapest, and least polluting (but no fracking!)