The nuclear power plant IS the power. Why would they shut it down after losing off site power? Sounds like a leftist plot.
I could be understanding this wrong. Someone enlighten me please
So, if there is loss of power from the outside, the protocol is to make a graceful shut down.
Nuclear plans nee power to keep the reactor cool. Even when it is shut down tremendous amounts of heat are still produced. They rely on power from the grid to run the cooling systems, in the absence of said power they SCRAM the reactor and switch over to diesel generators to run the cooling system.
In Japan, they lost grid power and the tidal wave took out the generators.
The core of a conventional nuclear reactor continues to generate a lot of heat even after it is shut down by inserting the control rods. It takes many weeks for the heat generation to decrease to the point where the cooling system can be shut off. The plant has to have backup power to keep the cooling system going, or the core will heat up and eventually melt. How fast it heats up depends on how much cooling capacity remains and how long the reactor has been shut down. The first few hours are the most critical.
After the tsunami, the problems at the Japanese reactors began when the flood water wrecked the backup power systems and they lost the ability to sufficiently cool the (shut down) reactors.
really?
“The nuclear power plant IS the power”
It’s just one source of the grid’s power, we get a lot of power here in Mass from as far away as Canada on a regular basis.
Even if it was a conventional plant, what would they do with all the power they generate if they were disconnected from the grid? Even “shut down” they can probably generate enough steam to keep the turbines spinning until they are connected again.