[ RadSafe ] Fwd: Rolling Blackouts [Nuclear vs. Coal plants]

[Stewart Farber]

Stephen,
To me your original question below did not relate to emergency shutdowns of nuke plants, but extreme cold weather affecting operations. As far as alternate base-load power plants being affected by cold, some years ago cold weather in the US led to many large coal-fired plants in the central US having to shut down for various periods of time. Extreme cold had frozen many rivers, and barges and ships could not get to coal fired plants.  

The amount of coal fired generation capacity affected when rivers freeze has been quite large in many cases since delivery can be interrupted long enough that the coal plant quickly depletes its coal reserves. 


If coal delivery is by rail, unloading 100 rail coal cars/day in a unit 
train [each boxcar with about 4,200 ft^3/car of coal] to supply about 
11,000 tons of coal each day for each 1,000 MW[e] plant has sometimes been 
affected because bottom dump coal cars are more susceptible to unloading
 problems due to coal freezing in the car, and trains sometime have trouble reaching the plants.

Nuke plants, not needing continuous fuel delivery, are spared the impacts of extreme cold on fuel delivery,  and have proven able to continue operating to meet baseload needs.

Stewart Farber,
 MSPH
Farber Medical Solutions, LLC
Linac, Imaging, & Rad Instrumentation Brokerage

Bridgeport, CT 06604



[203] 441-8433

website: http://www.farber-medical.com
farber at farber.info
==============
> 
> Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:49:18 -0700
> From: Steven Dapra <sjd at swcp.com>
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Rolling blackouts
> To: radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu
> Message-ID: <201102050349.p153n97O094879 at ame7.swcp.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> 
> Feb. 4, 2011
> 
>                 Certain areas in Texas and New Mexico were
 subjected to rolling 
> blackouts as a result of the recent extreme cold.
> 
>                 Does anyone know of a case when a reactor had to shut down or whose 
> operation was adversely affected by cold weather?
> 
> Steven Dapra


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