Reactor 21 automatically tripped from full load on rate of change of Boiler Gas Outlet Temperature (BGOT) following a trip of the Main Boiler Feed Pump. The Emergency Boiler Feedpump was unavailable at the time of the trip due to maintenance. The Start-Up Boiler Feedpump was put into service manually when it did not automatically start, but it had to be shut down soon afterwards due to a priming oil pump problem which caused a small fire. The station fire team extinguished the fire using hand held extinguishers, but the Fire Brigade were called as a precaution.With no high pressure feed pumps available the boilers were part depressurised using the Boiler Emergency Depressurisation (BED) Valves and the reactor cooled with feed provided from the Shut-Down Boiler Feedpump. Approximately one hour after the auto-trip of Reactor 21, the average Gas Circulator Inlet Temperature for Boiler 22 (calculated by the Data Processing System) exceeded the Operating Rule Limit of 300 degrees Celsius by 2.3 degrees Celsius for approximately 30-40 seconds. This was a consequence of starting the Gas Circulator Low Speed Pony Motors whilst the boilers were being fed by the low capacity Shut-Down Boiler Feed Pump.
Location: DUNGENESS-B1 UNIT A Event date: Fri, 11-07-2003
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, […]
