15 degrees, snowing [discussion on energy situation in Texas]

[SageBrush]

To address social justice ...

I am in favor of letting those places rot.

 

[nwdiver]

Anyway with a Nuc plant you can't just restart it. I read somewhere that a trip requires NRC approval to restart the reactor. Plus there are other reactive elements created in the core when you shut down a reactor that have certain half lives that must be accommodated.

They were down for 52 hours. Good chance it was due to Xenon. A gas turbine could have been back up in ~5 minutes. Crazy to think about how much that may have cost depending on how much they had to pay to replace the lost generation. Prices were >$9k/MWh for a long time. (52hrs)(1,000MW)($9k/MWh) = $468M for some ice in a 1/4" pressure line....

 

[Iain]

I've wondered how that works... I saw that they're pleading with their customers to cancel. So... if you get a $1600 bill you can just say 'I quit' and you're off the hook?

i think this defense only works in the Senate.

 

[CrazyRabbit]

Event Notification Report For Day

"At 0526 [CST] on 02/15/2021, Unit 1 automatically tripped due to low steam generator levels. The low steam generator levels were due to loss of Feedwater pumps 11 and 13 (cause unknown).

sounds like water level in boiler (steam heat exchanger) dropped to low causing shutdown. but if the pumps shutdown due to pressure sensors, perhaps mass flow pressure sensors, is a single point of failure. i would think they would be measuring pump rpm and power input was well, and would only trip if this was out of specification.

i would think that the steam loop for generation would be a closed loop, with big condensers to cool the steam back to water. i would have thought that the freezing problem would be with the cooling water inlets. lakes were freezing over here in north Texas.

 

[Feathermerchan]

They were down for 52 hours.

That's real interesting because we were of for 51 hours and starting about when that unit tripped.