TAPS unit no. 1 was operating at 156 MWe. Unit no. 2 was under refuelling outage. At 11.09 hrs, the grid frequency crashed and generator got locked out due low frequency. One diesel generator closed its breaker with 5 seconds. Another diesel generator started on auto but is frequency as shown in control room were 47 Hz and voltage 250 V respectively (frequency and voltage were normal as seen locally). it could be synchronised after 25 minutes. The third diesel generator was under maintenance. During the incident primary steam isolation valves INSO 3A and 4A were found to have not gone close as required during the total loss of power. The control room operators in an effort to close the valves gave open and close signals with the respective valve control switches. Also the air supply to the valves was closed. With these actions both the primary steam isolation valves went close. The event is rated at level 1 on the INES. Justification for rating: Loss of off-site power is an expected event. During the incident safety function, viz. cooling the radioactive material and controlling the reactivity were fully available. The steam line isolation valves did not close automatically but could be closed in short time by manual action from the control room. Since non-closure of PSIV's automatically on total loss of power constituted violation of station Technical Specifications, the event is rated at level 1 on INES.
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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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, […]
