On November 22, 1995 Ignalina 2 was under normal operation at the thermal power of 3750 MW. Electrical power of turbogenerators TG 3/4 was 500 MW/700 MW respectively. At 15:11 pm the fastacting valves between a group of the ECCS pressurized tanks and the reactor spuriously opened. The operator took notice of the opening and shut the valves off. The other two ECCS trains stayed in waiting mode. The opening caused the release of 12 tons of the water from the ECCS pressurized tanks. Reactor power was decreased by 450 MW to investigate the cause of the opening. At 17:11 pm the affected ECCS train was brought back into the waiting mode and reactor power started building up. Justification of rating: Table II A-2 of INES users manual.
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, […]
