On February 24 the operators noticed trend of increase of the temperature of the axial bearing of the motor of the Reactor Coolant Pump #2 as indicated by one of the two temperature sensors. On February 25 morning the trend increased so the decision was brought to start manual shutdown of the plant to prevent the temperature of the bearing to go above 90 degrees C which is a limit set by the pump motor producer. The starting shutdown rate of 10 MW/min was later increased to 20MW/min but at 28% of the reactor power at 2:09 hours the reactor was manually tripped to keep the temperature limit. The trip sequence went in accordance with the design. The pressure transient on the secondary side caused a 7.6-mm pipe of the extraction steam to open and the leak damaged a local fire protection installation. The investigation of the event concluded that the cause of the high temperature indication was a deteriorated temperature sensor and not actual increase of the temperature.
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough […]
Kernenergie en veiligheid: A wargame sought to test if a major radiological release that would prompt the evacuation of millions of civilians in South Korea could distract key US allies from assisting and rebuffing an all-out military invasion of Taiwan. The short answer was yes. The game originally presumed that China, wanting to keep the […]
Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the […]
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK's nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money...The […]
Last year, the Dutch Province of Limburg started an alliance in which, besides the local government, research institutes, small nuclear reactor (SMR) developers, utilities, industrial customers and funders cooperated. With this "Limburg SMR alliance" Limburg tried to lead the way towards an SMR in Limburg. The preferred site for a first SMR would be Chemelot, […]
