Recent content by RealWing

Pt Lepreau and Gentilly II both have this capability of high power condenser dump. They are a "CANDU 6" design and the same design is used in the export reactors in China, Romania, South Korea and Argentina. Gentilly is somewhat unique in that there is a 382 MW gas turbine plant built beside...

Three units at Bruce and one at Darlington survived the grid upset and stabilized at ~ 60% FP awaiting approval to resync with the grid.

Some Canadian Nucs have been uniquely designed to have the capability to continue to operate after a grid disconnection/upset. At the moment of loss of grid, they immediately "step back" to ~ 75%FP . The tubine/generator continues to supply internal power and the remaining steam energy is dumped...

The Davis Besse reactor vessel corrosion event was another significant wake-up-call for the whole industry. One or more long standing reactor coolant system leaks resulted in boric acid completely eating through ~6.5" of the vessel pressure boundary. All the was preventing a Loss of Coolant...

Not really. Level transmitters are designed and calibrated to sense a differential pressure of a few cm's or meters of water. To measure actual pressures of many Kpa or Mpa, you need a different transmitter with a much larger range. They have several separate lines running into the reactor...

Are you referring to the pre-tsunami event where the sea level receeds - or a different event that causes a drop in sea level at the cooling water intakes? In either scenario, if the water level drops at the cooling water intakes, the pumps will likely trip on low suction levels (if so...

TCups - I'm with you on this one. As I indicated before - it looks like simple gamma shine from the cloud of radioactive material as you suggest.

This link shows a basic layout of the level circuit. 2 taps into the vessel connected to a differential pressure (DP) cell and transmitter. http://www.pbnc2010.org.mx/pdfs/technical/tuesday/14.00_ModelingLevelInstrumentation.pdf The released TEPCO photo shows the techs at a whole panel of DP...

Could be something as simple as gamma shine from radioactive debris in the cloud

The recent tornados in the US were very close to at least one plant. At Surry (VA) on April 16th, the switchyard was badly damaged. Both units tripped and cooled down OK via the 4 Emergency Diesel Generators (EDG's) "Inspection of the 500 kv switchyard revealed substantial damage to bus bars...

I agree that the industry has generally been underestimating the hazards from spent fuel pools, although at least the US appears to have taken some action to ensure means are readily available to add water. You can be sure that there will be industry wide changes to spent fuel pools and...

The current temperature is quite cool at ~11-12 Deg C and the dew point is also the same (100% relative humidity) Thus any warm water vapour from the spent fuel pools is going to change into fog. Thus doesn't look like a major issue to me.

Unit 1 does have an Emergency Cooling Isolation Condenser

Some interesting facts about dense packing and criticality in this document. It also discusses fuel cooling as the water level drops. Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/pdf/11_1Alvarez.pdf Because of...

If this is a live feed - then what is burning? http://news.tbs.co.jp/newsi_sp/youtube_live/