Lights Out?: How the Grid Copes When a Nuclear Power Plant Goes Down

[jpak]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-grid-copes-when-nuclear-power-plant-goes-down

Last Friday at 11 A.M., the operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., detected a leak. About 60 gallons (225 liters) of water a minute was escaping from the eastern cooling tower of the 620-megawatt power plant that provides nearly three quarters of the state's electricity needs. By noon, the owners had shut down both the damaged and undamaged cooling towers and had cut the plant's electricity output in half to avoid any harm to the reactor. By Monday, the plant was operating at 23 percent capacity because of limits on the amount of water it could use from the Connecticut River to cool its nuclear core.

But Vermont electric consumers barely noticed—though they might feel it later in their wallets. Despite the shutdown of the state's major power plant, lights, TVs and life's other electrical amenities continued to operate as usual. How is that possible? The company that operates the state's power grid has a contingency plan in case of emergency shutdowns, says Dorothy Schnure, a spokesperson for Green Mountain Power, one of two local utilities that purchase and resell much of the power from Vermont Yankee.

ISO New England, Inc., the independent system operator that ensures juice is flowing in Vermont and the rest of New England, always has spare power sources—courtesy of fossil fuel–fired, so-called "peakers" (units that provide power to the grid only during peak demand)—to compensate if power plants or transmission lines go on the fritz, according Erin O'Brien, an ISO spokeswoman.

Rob Williams, a spokesperson for Entergy Vermont Yankee, the power company that runs the 35-year-old nuclear facility, says it should be back at full capacity by the end of the week, pending a safety inspection by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The leak was caused by a sagging bracket supporting a cooling pipe in the eastern tower. The problem is worrisome because the bracket—a piece of metal that bolts a support beam in place—was relatively new: All of the brackets in the two towers, which are made of wood, had been replaced after a similar cooling pipe collapse in the western tower last August. The brackets are now being replaced with a new, stronger design, Williams says.

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[bbinacan]

1. Some "peakers" are

jet engines. At least that's what an engineer at Progress Energy told me.

[NNadir]

2. Are we hearing from a wind energy advocate about the capacity utilization of Vermont Yankee?

In the annals of selective attention, this is a classic.

In fact, Vermont Yankee despite the efforts of fundamentalists to shut it and dump dangerous fossil fuel waste into the lungs of people all over the Northeast has produced more energy in the last year than all of the wind plants in New England and all of the solar plants in New England combined.

It has made Vermont the state with the cleanest electricity in the Northeast.

I have covered the situation with respect to Vermont's electrical external costs in a diary that is over the head of the entire anti-science anti-nuke cult:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/8/185552/4950">Um, My Compact Fluorescent Bulb Is Hot. (Places and Times NOT to Conserve Electricity.)

I note, with due contempt, that the "renewables will save us" cults couldn't care less how many people die from dangerous fossil fuels burned when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, even considering the decades long period in which the non-hydro renewable industry has failed miserably to produce a single exajoule of electricity in the United States, going on nearly half a century of disingenuous talk.

[Howzit]

5. I enjoy your writing style on KOS, but wonder about

that one mile you drove to buy the CFL because it was cold out. Almost certainly your Civic did not yield 33 MPG on such a short trip in the cold. It would be running rich until warmed up, and when it is cold out, this could take longer than the whole trip, there and back.

Your point about incandescent light bulbs being a primary source of heat for single rooms is something that many people completely overlook - some talk about banning incandescents because they don't see why anyone needs them. Homes with central heating would needlessly heat the whole house when a single bulb is enough to "take the edge off" in a small room.

That said, I think people who choose to live in parts of the country that require forced heating in Winter and cooling in Summer should be taxed and that money given to residents where the climate is moderate, such as San Diego. We have taxes and incentives to discourage other forms of energy use and to encourage energy saving, so why not extend this to the location people choose to live and work?

Likewise, people make a flap about one's vehicle choice based on MPG, but don't cut you any slack if you have made other choices that reduce your driving needs to less than 5000 miles a year. However, any credit one might get for such low annual mileage should automatically evaporate if your trips are less than 5 miles...

(I am just trying to show how easy it is to make up laws "to save the planet" that seem to make some sense to some people, while hurting others; such as banning incandescent bulbs).

[NickB79]

3. Hooray! More CO2 was released into the atmosphere!

"always has spare power sources—courtesy of fossil fuel–fired, so-called "peakers""

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Ahh, no, you see...

...when fossil fuels are used as a backup, the CO₂ spontaneously turns into flowers, bunnies, and really cute kittens.

[Howzit]

6. The same way solar copes when the sun goes down

You rely on other sources and/or storage.

[Nihil]

7. Precisely the point ...

... which, when taken with the lack of significant storage on the grid,
shows why solar PV is only a *small* piece of the solution as it requires
"other sources" every night. This means that fossil fuels are burned,
nuclear has to be retained (despite complaints), wind & hydro be relied
upon (despite being somewhat intermittent) and the gods of wishful thinking
to be prayed to (in the dark).

The best way to use the sun is to heat your water with it: you can start at
a very low cost (low tech) level and increase efficiency as your budget allows
yet every bit of help from the sun is reducing demand for fossil fuel and
nuclear energy whilst allowing the other renewables to go that bit further
than otherwise.

:hi: