photograph, which enforces my premise in my previous post.The plant may also have as part of its design basis an assumption w/r to the initial heat sink temperature in their accident analyses. The reservoir/river in conjunction with a pond or some other impoundment/basin would serve as part of the ultimate heat sink complex for the plant. The complex would serve as the repository for the station’s residual energy during an accident.
As part of the plant’s operation specifications you could not continue operating outside of the assumptions in your accident analyses. Typically you select your initial conditions as bounding values in your analyses, but sometimes those bounding values may not have enough chubby in them. If you exceed them, you have to get them back in line and failing that, commence a shutdown.
There isn’t anything in this article to suggest they are outside analyzed space.
Browns Ferry is a boiling water reactor. It also has mechanical draft cooling towers (rather than natural/forced draft tower). The cooling towers are likely not credited in any accident analyses (loss of offsite power assumption would shut them down, the expense to make the cooling towers qualified makes it unlikely— however it is the TVA). The cooling tower water basin may count.
You can always re-analyze to a higher initial water temperature— not an insignificant undertaking, mind you. Though not uncommon (I’ve done it twice in the past 12 years at two separate companies).
photograph, which enforces my premise in my previous post.