Posted on 08/17/2007 3:03:37 AM PDT by Inge_CAV
ATHENS, Ala. -- The Tennessee Valley Authority shut down one of three units at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant on Thursday because water drawn from a river to cool the reactor was too hot, a spokesman said.
The nation's largest public utility shut down Unit 2 about 5:42 p.m. CDT because water drawn from the Tennessee River was exceeding a 90-degree average over 24 hours, amid a blistering heat wave across the Southeast.
"We don't believe we've ever shut down a nuclear unit because of river temperature," said John Moulton, spokesman for the Knoxville, Tenn.-based utility.
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TVA: http://www.tva.gov
(Excerpt) Read more at waff.com ...
Now that is an ultimate heat sink complex. They have canals, cooling towers with basins, and a body of water.
Then you think about a three unit station sitting in the desert...
The humidity there must be terrible.
Pretty much the ultimate in base-load power.
I believe this is coinciding with lower than normal releases up-river at Ft. Loudoun Dam.
Given the depth of TVA’s pocketbook, you’re probably not too far off...
>>The humidity there must be terrible.
Chattanooga is currently 102F/68F WB/DB, which is only 16.% R.H.!
The wet bulb is actually lower than I expected. That’s a pretty typical cooling tower design wet bulb, not any higher.
You are almost correct, especially this summer.
“The humidity there must be terrible.”
It has been but there is a break this afternoon. Nearby thunderstorms have dropped the temps a little.
My old line of work was to postulate and analyze nuclear accidents. I like all the water to remove the residual energy. My new line of work likes nukes to remain on line, at full power, exit refueling outages on time, have no issues like this and on days when the integrated on peak power price is >$120/MWh make lots of money.
My experience with nuke power is limited. Back during the Nam war I did have to practice loading dummy nukes aboard cargo aircraft. Extra nukes not used in a first attack were to be moved to another base. The dummy nuke looked like the real thing and weighed the same, so we were told. With the nuke loaded onto a 10 ton truck we had to drive from the bomb storage area to the the cargo aircraft on the flightline.
Needless to say there was no tailgaters at all riding our truck bumper to pass.
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