{"id":25594,"date":"2017-09-13T12:31:48","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T17:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25594"},"modified":"2017-09-13T12:31:48","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T17:31:48","slug":"can-you-really-shut-down-a-nuclear-power-plant-before-a-hurricane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25594","title":{"rendered":"Can You Really \u201cShut Down\u201d a Nuclear Power Plant before a Hurricane?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/09\/13\/can-you-shut-down-nuclear-power-plant-before-hurricane\/\">Can You Really \u201cShut Down\u201d a Nuclear Power Plant before a Hurricane?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"ssba ssba-wrap\">\n<div><strong style=\"color: #222222;\">Soothing words before the storm: \u201cOur nuclear plants are now shut down.\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>There are those who believe the answers to life\u2019s most pressing questions can be found in one of two movies: \u201cThe Godfather\u201d (part one) or \u201cThe Princess Bride.\u201d In the latter movie, think of the Spaniard\u2019s vaguely taunting response: \u201cYou keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.\u201d\u00a0 Which might also be the reply to: \u201cOur nuclear plants are now shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Right now we are thinking about the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear power stations in South Florida, in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. But we could have been referring to the South Texas Nuclear Project south of Houston, just a week or two earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Those Westinghouse pressurized water reactors have six modes of operation, sort of like gears in a car. The highest level of performance, mode 1 includes power operations all the way up to 100% power. Mode 6, the lowest level of operation, describes a plant in the state of being refueled.<\/p>\n<p>Senior management at NextEra\u2019s utility subsidiary, Florida Power &amp; Light, placed their nuclear reactors in mode 4, \u201chot shutdown,\u201d as the hurricane advanced towards the plants. (Mode 5 is cold shutdown with far lower internal reactor temperatures.)<\/p>\n<p>In so-called hot shutdown, a nuclear plant has one primary requirement for ongoing safe operation \u2014 a reliable supply of electricity (assuming competent staff of course).<\/p>\n<p>Even though nuclear plants produce electricity for the grid, they also require large amounts of electricity to maintain their own operations particularly in this instance for: 1) cooling the fuel in the recently operating nuclear reactor core and 2) cooling the spent fuel pools where used fuel rods are placed after removal from the reactor. These activities are known as residual heat removal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can You Really \u201cShut Down\u201d a Nuclear Power Plant before a Hurricane? Soothing words before the storm: \u201cOur nuclear plants are now shut down.\u201d There are those who believe the answers to life\u2019s most pressing questions can be found in one of two movies: \u201cThe Godfather\u201d (part one) or \u201cThe Princess Bride.\u201d In the latter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8479,15037,1832,15985,4255],"class_list":["post-25594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-hurricanes","tag-leonard-hyman","tag-nuclear-power-plants","tag-willian-tilles","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25595,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594\/revisions\/25595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}