nuclear power
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Small Modular Reactors
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs Tech giants are signing deals with nuclear power companies to supply energy to their data centers. Many of these deals revolve around unproven Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). This is a relatively new term for most people, so I figured it as worth it to dig in a little to help it make sense. First…
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Three Mile Island Restart
Constellation Energy (full disclosure – I work for them) announced plans to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 after a power purchase deal was signed with Microsoft. This deal is intended to power data centers to support Microsoft’s AI push. The internet reacted with the expected doom and gloom whenever nuclear power is mentioned, with…
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Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant 8/11/24
In the news today, there is a fire at the Zaporizhzhia NPP in Ukraine. https://kyivindependent.com/russian-forces-start-fire-at-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-ukraine-says/ From the looks of it, the fire is located in one of the cooling towers. Let me start by saying that the cooling towers are NOT part of the radioactive loop of the nuclear power plants. The water that is…
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There’s good boiling in a reactor and then there is this.
The Idaho National Lab released a video a while ago that shows something called Departure From Nucleate Boiling (DNB). In high pressure, high temperature environments, water can go from nucleate boiling, which is good, to DNB, in an instant. DNB is about as bad a condition as you can have inside a pressurized water reactor…
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Fission Product Barriers
Reuters is reporting that a Ukrainian attack hit the reactor dome of reactor #6 at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). The article is very clear that radiation levels at the plant are stable. This is exactly what I would expect of any attack short of a bunker-buster style bomb. The containment structure is engineered to…
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Why So Many SCRAMs?
I was reviewing the NRC event reports for the last few months and noticed several reactor trips. The normal average is one trip every two years or so. I did not go back and see if in this recent spate of trips any of the units involved were exceeding that rate, it just seemed like…
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How Much Radiation is Too Much?
Thanks to @nuclearanthro.bsky.social (check out his blog https://deusexatomica.wordpress.com/), we know that a contractor at Los Alamos National Lab accidentally exposed 4 colleagues to radiation while conducting an experiment with Cf-252. The dose ranged between 132 mrem and 195 mrem. As with so much of life, those numbers are meaningless without context. To start, the measure…
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Running Out of Gas
Nuclear power plants can run a very long time without needing more fuel, but not forever. That would make it a perpetual motion machine, and if you figure that one out you are now a billionaire, so congrats. Every 2 years or so, they have to shut down and replace some of the fuel so…
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Grid Nightmares
Today, the FBI Director warned Congress that Chinese hackers are preparing to wreak havoc on US critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure is just what it sounds like. Things like water treatment plants and power stations, banks and refineries, communications and emergency services. In a nutshell, the lifeblood of modernity. Without these functions, we are back to…
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Sitting in the Dark.
Winter Storm Finn is hammering the East Coast. We lost power at my house almost as soon as the wind kicked up. The NWS is calling for 40 mph winds with 60 mph gusts, so it’s going to be a long night. This got me thinking about how a nuclear plant handles power outages. First…
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