On August 27 at 09:15 after three months of stable operation since last refueling outage in May 2003, reactor trip with safety injection actuation occurred. Reactor trip and safety injection was initiated by main steam line Lo-Lo pressure signal as the consequence of unexpected closure of the main steam line isolation valve while performing surveillance testing. All safety, control systems and plant equipment responded in accordance with design requirements. Unusual event was declared based on rapid depressurization on secondary side of the plant. Unusual event was terminated after two hours. Plant was stabilized at "No-load" parameters and restarted after 19 hours and connected to the power grid. Preliminary analysis and evaluation indicates failure of limit switch which caused closure of the main steam isolation valve. There was no impact to the environment or plant personnel.
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, […]
