PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: invflatspin on September 14, 2018, 03:17:17 PM
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I heard from a retired eng that Oyster Creek nuclear power plant is shutting down early. I know - for everyone else this isn't any kind concern, but for a certain population, it was the reactor that many of us cut our teeth on. My first visit to Oyster Creek was right after college. They(along with FermiLabs in IL) were kind of a training ground for people new to the nuclear industry. I was working on some of the radiation monitoring stations, and did a few jumps in the reactor bldg there, and learned a ton of how things in the field work compared to the theory in school. Some Navy guys got their start at Oyster Creek too, but they also have their own training track through the Naval facilities.
Oyster Creek is one of the old style reactors, called a boiling water type. There is no intermediate thermal exchange with the water from the reactor to the turbine, as with a more modern pressure water reactor. The Rankine cycle is typically used to determine efficiency of a reactor, and the guys at GE did an excellent job with Oyster Creek. It always ran pretty clean, and would do around 35% or better on the scale, which is meaningful in terms of energy conversion. Pressure water are not as efficient, but there are reasons that they sort of displaced the boiling circuit.
Will be kind of sad to see it shut down. A lot of people relied on that unit to power their homes and businesses. Most people never new it was there, because it didn't have the typical cooling towers we associate with modern reactor plants. Back in the day, we were hot spit because even though it was a single unit reactor, our uptime was pretty remarkable. I never really got comfy with the idea that the pressure water reactors were any better at containing radiation. Due to the complexity, and added valving, pumping, and heat exchangers, I always found the PWRs to be more hassle to control. The feedback mechanisms for modulating power output on the BWR were dead simple, basically a big throttle to maintain constant pressure ratio in the reactor, and condenser loops.
After leaving Oyster Creek, I had the 'pleasure' of going to Peach Bottom plant. It was a derelict, and everything was screwed up there. The people at Peach Bottom were the worst I've had to work with. Then on to Three Mile island, and finally back to the west coast and some of the stuff there. Good times. I made a stop at a test reactor in CO(you know where) which used a plasma-kind of gunk called Uranium Hexafloride as the fuel. Imagine a slurry that was; Spontaneously fissile, spontaneously combustible in air, under pressure,and extremely caustic. All the kind of stuff one wants in a slurry paste. Thankfully, their funding ran out before they really crapped up pretty parts of the state.
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I am close to Limerick, but Peach Bottom and TMI aren't far away, and I actually lived in Middletown for a while, but well after the venting. They need to recommission, and update these old nuke plants and keep them running.
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I am close to Limerick, but Peach Bottom and TMI aren't far away, and I actually lived in Middletown for a while, but well after the venting. They need to recommission, and update these old nuke plants and keep them running.
Peach Bottom sounds like a porn name.
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Peach Bottom sounds like a porn name.
Inbred porn only down there.
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I wish someone would get off their diff and get the research done to build a Thorium reactor. Thorium is safer and way more plentiful than Uranium.
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There might be a future in Thorium breeder, but the 'breeder' part gives it a huge proliferation problem internationally. I don't know much about the Thorium designs however they have a better stability so I've heard.
Peach Bottom does sound pornish. It was a messy place to work. TMI was a hell-hole, and I got away from there as quick as I could.
There are some interesting compact sealed reactor designs coming out that are intended to be buried hundreds of feet in the ground. I believe they are called life-cycle reactors that are built once, then buried and produce energy until the fuel is finally spent. Then its dug up and reprocessed. Sounds like an interesting idea, but I've been out of the field so long it's all Greek to me anymore.
With San Onofre shut down, there's a couple other shut downs coming I think. The long term costs of spent fuel processing and storage is catching up with the industry.
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Peach Bottom sounds like a porn name.
Googled it. Porn.
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I wish someone would get off their diff and get the research done to build a Thorium reactor. Thorium is safer and way more plentiful than Uranium.
Yeah. Those damn conservatives have been blocking this for years while the Liberals have been pushing nuclear power.