Yeah, from the late 60’s the builders pretty much talked themselves up from 500 MW to the over 1,000 MW zone. Mumbo jumbo about economies of scale, etc. But if you ever want to hear industrial grade whining just sit around a table full of guys from Combustion Engineering, GE, Westinghouse, Foster Wheeler, and a few more of their friends and listen to why they can’t make smaller, community sized, units.
Never mind that a pressurized water Naval Nuclear reactor is good for about 36,000 horsepower, or so. Super carrier units are a bit larger but in the same zone. And they only need a puddle of water to keep them working but that’s enough power to run a good sized town.
Maybe it’s harder now , since Hilliary sold half or our uranium to Russia and SloJoe locked up the other half in the Grand Canyon? But we should be using them. It’s a way-better option than wrecking a coal train every few weeks.
Well, the 1000+ MW units make sense to a point, and in a large enough grid that if the generator trips off line, the frequency won’t go too far astray (when load increases, it tends to slow down generators, and if a big unit trips off line, the frequency does drop - it’s up to the utility that lost the generation resource to make up the difference). The governors and rotating mass of all the other interconnected generators arrest the frequency drop, but the deficit needs to be attended to, of course.
Anyway, yeah, I live near a 2 unit nuclear plant, about 1150 MW per unit. There’s another of similar size maybe 40 miles up the river, and a third plant with 3 big generators about maybe 80 miles downstream (just an educated guess, not checking the map).
But for an island like Hawaii having an 1100 mw unit trip might prove too much for the grid to handle. There’s no interconnection to other utilities to hold things together. I’m guessing that it’s not practical.
I doubt that Hawaii has any natural gas, but that would be ideal if it were already on the island(s). I suspect that if there were gas, they’d already be using it.
I remember Unanium One - Hillary’s little act of treason. Democrats are good at that (and republicans are too, in some cases). I think SloJoe needs to visit the Grand Canyon. With a canteen (empty).