On January 19, 2011 the Laguna Verde NPP Unit 2 was operating at 43.2% of rated power in process for testing. According to the sequence of events, it follows that: While testing for the load rejection signal, the main turbine incremented its speed. The main turbine control valves started to close while controlling the turbine speed. The pressure at the first step in the turbine was at 17 kg/cm2, with the control valves closed. Then, the pressure at the first step started to decrease until 4.6 kg/cm2. There was a main turbine trip signal due to the actuation of the Speed Acceleration Limiter, but this signal trip did not actuated the RPS, instead there was a reactor trip due to high pressure signal of the reactor pressure vessel. The cause was that the during the power rising process after testing of the Moisture Separator Reheaters the alarms associated to the bypass of the signal trip for the main turbine trip were not reestablished, therefore the during approximately 40 minutes the reactor operated without the reactor trip signal of the main turbine trip.
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, […]
