Robinson Unit 2 was operating at 2 percent reactor power with preparations underway to place the turbine/generator on line. An auxiliary operator notified the control room that the "A" charging pump relief valve was lifting. Control room operators started the "B" charging pump and isolated the "A" charging pump. Operators completed isolating the lifting relief valve within approximately 15 minutes, after which time the volume control tank level and pressurizer level stabilized. The leak rate was calculated to be approximately 284 liters/minute (75 gallons/minute). The diversion of charging flow through the failed relief valve was directed to and contained in a liquid radioactivce waste hold up tank. There was no radiological release and no personnel exposures. The operators continued with an orderly plant startup. An investigation into the failure mechanism of the relief valve is underway. Justification for rating: The event is rated level 0, below scale in accordance with Paragraph III-2.5.2 of the INES user's manual. The leakage from the lifting charging pump relief valve was "identified leakage", was not pressure boundary leakage and charging pump relief valve is considered to be an "expected" initiator, and is not considered to be a small loss of coolant accident. The safety function availability at the time of the event was fully operable. Therefore, the event is rated "level 0, below scale", in accordance with Table II 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, […]
