Unit was operating at 170 MWe with the shut down loops isolated from the reactor inlet and outlet headers and communicated to the bleed condenser to maintain the pressure at 20 kg/cm2 in the shut down loops. On the event date, one of the isolation valves for the north shut down loop had overtravelled resulting in passing of heat transport system water from the north reactor outlet header to the shut down loop and further to the bleed condenser. The bleed condenser high level led to reactor set back. The passing of the isolation valve coupled with the initiation of reactor set back (which caused shrinkage of the heat transport system) resulted in the coolant system pressure to drop and cause reactor trip on low pressure in Primary Heat Transport System. The overtravel of the shut down cooling loop valves was due to suspected inadvertent operation of the relay while working on another relay mounted adjacent to it. The event can be rated as level '0' under A-1R of the INES user's 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 […]
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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, […]
