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Nuclear close call in Sweden
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:29 am
by x-y-no
Very strange that this took so long to come out as a story ...
Swedish officials are downplaying things, but it seems there were very significant systems failures, particularly of the backup generators which were needed to cool the core during shutdown, which led to this being a pretty close call to a nuclear meltdown.
That's disturbing since Sweden is one of the modst advanced nations in terms of nuclear power.
This from
DerSpiegel
Sweden's nuclear energy authority, SKI, has largely completed its reconstruction of events in an accident last week that led to the closure of a nuclear power plant in the city of Forsmark and, ultimately, the shutdown of half the country's nuclear plants as a precautionary measure. In the incident, two of the plant's four backup generators malfunctioned when the plant experienced a major power outage on July 25. According to officials, who described the event as "serious," a short-circuit triggered the accident, which caused a cut in power to the nuclear facility. Plant workers told Swedish media that it came close to a meltdown.
In fact, the only thing that appears to have stopped a catastrophe is the fact that two diesel backup generators kicked in, enabling the Forsmark facility to operate at least part of its emergency cooling system. Still, for 20 minutes, workers were unable to obtain information about the condition of the reactor and they were only able to respond after 21 minutes and 41 seconds, according to a report in Germany's Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.
Swedish media are reporting that a previously unknown technical problem emerged during the emergency that could also be present in all other Swedish nuclear reactors.
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:45 am
by feederband
for 20 minutes, workers were unable to obtain information about the condition of the reactor
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:48 am
by Brent
WHOA.
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:04 am
by MiamiensisWx
Couldn't this become a problem in the near-term or long-term future there?
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:10 am
by x-y-no
CapeVerdeWave wrote:Couldn't this become a problem in the near-term or long-term future there?
Well, Sweden is highly dependent on nuclear power. I don't think they want to go very long with half their plants shut down. If there's a serious problem there, they've got to get on it fast.
One thing I find strange is that they apparently said nothing at the time it was happening. The story was only released two days later. Contrast that with how things were done during the Three Mile Island incident (which BTW was a significant success story for nuclear power plant safety). At TMI, the community was notified literally within minutes, and kept apprised throughout the event. I know, I was 25 mile away from there myself at the time.
Shame on the Swedes for not being up front about what was going on.
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:22 am
by MiamiensisWx
x-y-no wrote:Well, Sweden is highly dependent on nuclear power. I don't think they want to go very long with half their plants shut down. If there's a serious problem there, they've got to get on it fast.
One thing I find strange is that they apparently said nothing at the time it was happening. The story was only released two days later. Contrast that with how things were done during the Three Mile Island incident (which BTW was a significant success story for nuclear power plant safety). At TMI, the community was notified literally within minutes, and kept apprised throughout the event. I know, I was 25 mile away from there myself at the time.
Shame on the Swedes for not being up front about what was going on.
Good points, and I agree completely. Officials need to give out more information and look into the issue more in-depth in order to fix potential problems.
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:29 am
by coriolis
(scratching head) Power outage at a power generation plant?
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 12:37 pm
by x-y-no
coriolis wrote:(scratching head) Power outage at a power generation plant?
LOL ... it does sound weird.
Best I can gather from these not terribly illuminating press accounts, there was a short circuit sowhere in the output of the nuclear generator and that tripped the equivalent of giant circuit breakers. At that point the nuclear core is supposed to shut down automatically, but it needs to be cooled while that's going on. They have four backup diesel generators to supply power for that and also to run the monitoring equipment, but apparently these failed. Eventually (after 21 minutes) they did get two of them started, which was sufficient to avert disaster.
That's the story as I understand it.
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 12:38 pm
by gtalum
coriolis wrote:(scratching head) Power outage at a power generation plant?
The electricity generated by the plant has to travel to a substation. The power used by the plant is then sent back, as if the plant is just a standard electricity customer. Electricity generally has to be stepped down in voltage and conditioned before being used by electrical appliances.
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:27 am
by ohiostorm
Shouldn't they do emergency tests every so often so this doesn't happen? Or do they do that already? This could've been a worldwide problem.
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 7:09 am
by azsnowman
gtalum wrote:coriolis wrote:(scratching head) Power outage at a power generation plant?
The electricity generated by the plant has to travel to a substation. The power used by the plant is then sent back, as if the plant is just a standard electricity customer. Electricity generally has to be stepped down in voltage and conditioned before being used by electrical appliances.
Sounds like the US Postal Service, mail going to any address in Pinetop goes to Globe Az., 102 miles south and then RETURNS the next day????
