On 13 February 1998, shutdown cooling of the reactor vessel was lost for several hours when suction isolation valves for the residual heat removal (RHR) system automatically closed. These valves closed due to the loss of the primary power supply to Division 2 of the Nuclear Safety Protection System, while the alternate power supply was unavailable because of maintenance. The unit had been shut down since 5 September 1996, and decay heat loads were relatively low. During the period the shutdown cooling system was unavailable, water in the reactor vessel began to heat up at a rate of approximately 0.6 deg. F per hour. The licensee declared an ALERT Emergency Classification at the discretion of the control room supervisor, who desired to bring additional personnel onsite to assist in restoring the RHR system. The RHR system was restarted approximately six hours after the initial event. Justification: This event is rated at level 0/below scale in accordance with Part III-3.1.1 of the INES User's Manual as a minor change in coolant temperature due to some degradation of cooling with a comparable large time available for corrective actions.
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, […]
