Hurricane Sandy: Problems at Five Nuke Plants

Hurricane Sandy: Problems at Five Nuke Plants

abcnews.go.com

Operators also declared an alert at the nation's oldest nuclear plant, Oyster Creek in Lacey Township, New Jersey, on Monday evening after the center of Sandy made landfall
"Water level is rising in the intake structure due to a combination of a rising tide, wind direction and storm surge," the NRC said Monday. "

Exelon Corporation, the owner of the plant, said in a statement that there was "no threat to the public health or safety" from the situation.

(visit the link for the full news article)

5 Nuke plants are down right now but the bigger concern seems to be this one

A unit at a fourth plant 43 miles from Philadelphia, Salem Nuclear Power Plant on Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey, was manually shut down just after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning "when four of the station's six circulating water pumps were no longer available due to weather impacts from Hurricane Sandy,"

I'm no expert but dont they need those pumps to keep the reactor core covered and thus prevent a melt-down????

Lets all pray we dont have a Fukushima level event on the east cost.
abcnews.go.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Not good..
I hope Sandy gives it a break soon I'm thinking of you guys, best wishes.

keeping an eye on this...............................................................................will see what happens....

reply to post by SassyCass


No, the circulating water pumps are used to pump water through the main condenser tubes to maintain a vacuum in there for the Main Turbine to operate properly. The main turbine turns the generator that generates the electricity.

reply to post by fltcui


Glad you had an answer, even if it went right over my head.
forgive me if I just go Blink Blink---
and take your word for everything being okay?

Shutting down a nuclear plant is routine, the only major draw back it to "get rid" of the accumulated power throught the electrical vines. Usualy that "extra" power is sent to anoother facility or send to Quebec Hydro at a loss, yes they pay to get rid of it.

Calm down peeps, slight over-reaction here and this is nothing compared to Fukushima

Originally posted by SassyCass

5 Nuke plants are down right now but the bigger concern seems to be this one

A unit at a fourth plant 43 miles from Philadelphia, Salem Nuclear Power Plant on Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey, was manually shut down just after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning "when four of the station's six circulating water pumps were no longer available due to weather impacts from Hurricane Sandy,"

I'm no expert but dont they need those pumps to keep the reactor core covered and thus prevent a melt-down????

Lets all pray we dont have a Fukushima level event on the east cost.
abcnews.go.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 30-10-2012 by SassyCass because: (no reason given)

The pumps could serve a few purposes at the plant, and if it was salt water from the storm surge they could be toast if any of the circuitry got drenched.
Nuclear plants do have back up systems to deal with loss of pumps. The issue that was the nail in the coffin for fukushima, was a combination of technology and operator error. The control room assumed a valve was open when it was i fact closed, due to a default when the system shuts down. This combined with loss of instrumentation, inevitably lead to the meltdown. Not saying if these things did not occur, it wouldn't have happened but there is a small chance it could have been avoided.

I don't understand why nuclear plants on the coast aren't designed with flooding, hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters in mind. Just seems silly to put something so potentially deadly, precariously balanced on doom.

Not one of the plants that they shut down in the Northeast is in any danger of melting down, releasing radiation etc. Northeast Utilities and a few other companies are afraid of debris getting into the intakes for the water pumps and shut them down to prevent a disaster.

This time , it's a lot of hyping it in a bad way for a very good decision on their part.

Originally posted by Zcustosmorum
Calm down peeps, slight over-reaction here and this is nothing compared to Fukushima

It's these sort of chain of events that led to Fukushima.
Of course, I expect that chain of events to become broken and situation controlled much more quickly than had happened in Japan.

Originally posted by SassyCass

5 Nuke plants are down right now but the bigger concern seems to be this one

A unit at a fourth plant 43 miles from Philadelphia, Salem Nuclear Power Plant on Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey, was manually shut down just after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning "when four of the station's six circulating water pumps were no longer available due to weather impacts from Hurricane Sandy,"

I'm no expert but dont they need those pumps to keep the reactor core covered and thus prevent a melt-down????

not in this case:

One unit at the Salem plant in Hancocks Bridge, N.J., near the Delaware River, was shut down Tuesday because four of its six circulating water pumps were no longer available, according to PSEG Nuclear. The pumps are used to condense steam on the non-nuclear side of the plant. Another Salem unit has been offline since Oct. 14 for refueling, but the nearby Hope Creek plant remains at full power. Together, the Salem and Hope Creek plants produce enough power for about 3 million homes per day.

from WSJ

Ther are pumps that do that function - pumping coolant into teh reactor - in Pressurised Water Reactors as these are, but from the description it sounds like the pumps concerned are those to do with the condenser circuit or similar, as per the animated GIF on that page - or here

reply to post by SassyCass


Hello fellow ATS'ers already posted as it was happening here:

America's oldest nuclear power plant is on alert

reply to post by SassyCass


There are back up cooling systems that will prevent anything from happening. The storm surge is already dropping significantly however. It also takes quite a long time for them to heat to the point of being truly dangerous. As a last resort they can dump water from the fire fighting system into the pool, or even ice into it, to cool it.

Using the well-known Fukushima Equation, we can deduce that at least 3 of these plants are in meltdown already. Meh, I'm sure they'll bang em all back into shape in no time...what could possibly go wrong?

In the wake of Frankenstorm, Frankenpublic makes his own debut! Please forgive me, I couldn't help myself on that one, carry on.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by SassyCass

 

There are back up cooling systems that will prevent anything from happening. The storm surge is already dropping significantly however. It also takes quite a long time for them to heat to the point of being truly dangerous. As a last resort they can dump water from the fire fighting system into the pool, or even ice into it, to cool it.

They arent talking about spent fuel pools. Reactors are sealed! Cant put water in them unless they break open/get unbolted.....

Those pumps are for making electricity anyway. Doesnt matter. Were fine.



When you drop dead unexpectedly we will know there was a meltdown

We have a nuke plant here thst releases radioactive steam without even telling us..

From what i know from my dad working at most of the nuke plants in PA. There are "failsafes" (put that in quotes for a reason) that will prevent a meltdown. Normally there are retention ponds near a plant that houses the recycled water that is used in the reactor. If radiation levels get to a certain point a valve is opened to an 8 foot diameter pipe that will release all water from the pond into the reactor. If it gets past that point, well then we should be pretty worried.

reply to post by phroziac


Going by memory from the article. They were talking about emergency cooling measures, and one of them was to use ice to cool things down. It was an absolute last resort, but they said it was possible.

Moot point anyway, as you said, everything is fine, and we're back to normal at the plants.

I know oyster creak is shut down for refueling so they dont need to worry about cooling down a core in the reactor but that does mean that there is fresh fuel in the SFP and its gonna start heating up pretty quickly. I saw an article talking about using fire hoses to cool the pool. Fire hoses and spent fuel pool should not be used in the same sentence.