On 8 October, 1998, with the unit in day 33 of a refueling outage, an ALERT emergency classification was declared due to an electrical fire in the local control panel for the #12 emergency diesel generator (EDG). At the time of fire, the licensee was performing a 24 hour surveillance test of EDG following a major overhaul of the diesel engine. The local EDG operator noticed heavy smoke coming from the control panel and tripped the EDG and opened its output breaker before leaving the area. When site personnel wearing self contained breathing apparatuses arrived in the area several minutes later they found smoke but no flames. The ALERT was terminated shortly thereafter. The licensee determined that the smoke had come from a current limiting transformer for the generator exciter field. Justification of the rating. This event is rated as level 0/below scale in accordance with Table 1 of the INES Users Manual as an event without initiator and with safety function availability within operational limits and conditions. Although the safety function "cooling of the fuel" was negatively impacted by the event, the EDG had previously been removed from service for the overhaul and the unit was in compliance with the plant Technical Specifications. In addition, had this event occurred while the until was operating, continued operation for a limited time with one inoperable EDG is within the scope of the plant Technical Specifications. This plant has a total of four EDGs.
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, […]
