Solar Panels on Nuke Plants.....

[Junkdrawer]

What happened in Fukushima could happen to any Nuke Plant, regardless of whether the plant is near a fault zone:

The combination of an earthquake followed by a tsunami in Japan initiated a sequence of events that ultimately led to damage to the reactor cores at Fukushima Dai-Ichi Units 1, 2, and 3 caused by inadequate cooling.

Can’t happen here? Perhaps not by the same method, but definitely with the same consequences.

The earthquake caused the normal supply of electrical power—that from the electrical grid—for the Fukushima nuclear plant to be lost. Per design, the emergency diesel generators at the site automatically started and provided power to essential emergency equipment.

Then the tsunami arrived and disabled the emergency diesel generators. This left the plant without alternating current (ac) electrical power. This condition with no ac electrical power is called a station blackout (SBO).

....

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3922542827/nuclear-station-blackout#

So here's my suggestion: Solar panels and or wind turbines next to the power plant with the appropriate battery capacity to store the power between sunshine and winds.

Not only will it make us all safer, it will drive the "solar and wind are not feasible" types nuts. :evilgrin:

[Atman]

1. Oh, the irony.

But if they're designed by the same people who put the generators in the basement and the spent fuel on the roof, it will probably still be a worthless clusterfuck.

They'll put the solar panels under the trees and the windmills on the leeward side of the island.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. That's some catch, that Catch-22.

[MineralMan]

2. One problem with that is the huge power requirements of the

pumps and other items used to cool nuclear plants. I believe they already have massive battery backup, but that was used up before power could be restored. The amount of power needed would surpass the area available for solar power to keep those backup batteries charged, and they still would have run out of power.

Part of the problem is in understanding just how large the motors that drive those pumps really are. They require very large amounts of electricity to operate. Very large.

[Junkdrawer]

6. Conflicting data. I heard that only a small amount of power was needed....

because the tertiary recirculation system was powered by decay heat and that only small amounts of electrical power was needed to operate control circuits and valves.

[DCKit]

3. Why, you little antagonist, you. nt

[octothorpe]

5. Well, one problem I see is...

wouldn't the solar/wind facilities have been exposed to the same earthquake and tsunami that damaged the generators?

Unless they move them elsewhere, but that could be a solution for other power sources too (I think)...

[upi402]

7. Distributed Energy Resources, DER, would harden the grid

How ironic that the green solution mitigates risk for military, national security, and nuclear plants!

[Old and In the Way]

9. Not only that, but such a network would be labor inefficient....

which means it would take a national jobs program of millions to implement in manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and sales. Funding could be offset by a transfer of a few hundred billion we spend annually on defense to protect the sea lanes and well infrastructure in various oil producing regions in the world.

[Old and In the Way]

10. I still don't know why those generators weren't mounted on the roofs

of these plants. That might not make sense in some areas, but a site on the edge of the ocean in a region where there's a history of significant earthquakes and tsunami's would seemed to have been a no-brainer. How much would a design that integrated them onto the roof-tops have cost? A few million more? A classic case of penny-wise and mega-pound foolish.

[upi402]

12. Greed

Utility companies are frozen in group-think, and greed seems to be the theme.

DER's would harden the grid, AND take military resources off the defense of oil. We just fought 2 needless wars - the reason was hidden, but it was OIL. How many trillion would that have saved? We could blanket the USA with solar, wind, and methane digesters for that.

We need an opposition party to fight this corporatism.

[Statistical]

8. Not enough power density.

The primary coolant pump is 5MW.
5MW * 24 hours = 120MWh.

Assume Japan gets 4 hours on peak sunlight (insolation). That means you need roughly 30MW of solar capacity. Likely you would want to over build the system by 20% (to handle issue in winter or long stretch of cloudy weather) so say 35MW

Sunlight is about 1KW per square meter. At 15% efficiency (average for commercial solar) you would need

35 * 1000 / 0.15 = 233,333 m^2. Thats a 500m x 500m

[Yo_Mama]

11. It is not a bad idea, but

if a disaster bad enough to knock out the power that long happened, both the solar panels and the wind turbines would likely sustain severe damage also.

Also, I do not think you want to put a wind turbine ANYWHERE near a nuclear reactor. Oh, I know, they're supposed to be so hardened, but still, if the worst happens and a turbine throws a blade or even ice, I don't want it to be near a reactor.

They do have battery backups, but they only run for a few hours. What they really use are the diesel generators.