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Nuclear Reactor Shut Down Because River Is Too Hot

treehugger.com — In the middle of a heat wave, the Tennessee Valley Authority has been forced to shut down a reactor at Browns Ferry. because water drawn from the Tennessee River was exceeding a 90-degree average over 24 hours, amid a blistering heat wave across the Southeast. "

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  • delgotit99, on 10/10/2007, -19/+7Wow this is so rare. A heat wave in the Southeast in August.
    • Matteos, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Hmmm... Just like the 360... cant use it when its 90° either.
      • wafflez, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3;) I'm pretty sure you can, there's a difference between Celcius and Farenheit. The article is Farenheit.
  • MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -14/+1EDIT: Why do I suck at jokes?
    • Phyltre, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20We'll never know, you edited out the only way we could have figured it out.
  • stklaw, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1Can i cook my noodles in that?
  • SmackMyMac, on 10/10/2007, -11/+28Can't they use the power from the plant to power a giant A/C unit to cool the water. Perpetual motion.
    • CanTheSpam, on 10/10/2007, -8/+0Perpetual motion?

      WOW!!! Thanks, Global Warming!
    • Protoss, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8A/C unit to cool the water though? AIR Conditioner, wouldn't be that effective on water.
      • schroeder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16McFly, air conditioners don't work on water... unless you have POWAHHH!!
    • afruff23, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Okay, you build a giant A/C unit in a few days.
    • ez12a, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5that would be very inefficient.
      • redfox2600, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Your right, you should mine Haley's comet for ice and drop it in the river.
      • climateHeretic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Better yet turn some atmospheric CO2 into dry ice and put it in the river, 2 birds one stone.
  • NoTiG, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1incorporate this: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/837/
    • Smuikas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1God I hate that smiley butt on the right hand side of everything on that website.
  • spyd3rweb, on 10/10/2007, -5/+17Why did they shut it down?? I was looking forward to shooting mutant dogs in the Zone.
    • Alex2, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3To protect the environment of the river. Power plants heat up the water when they discharge hot water.
      • wafflez, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7I believe you missed the chernobyl (or s.t.a.l.k.e.r.) reference there bub.
  • murf1000, on 10/10/2007, -13/+0wow that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard
    • blacklint, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15That you can't cool a reactor with warm water?
      • pjsk8, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2"Maybe we can cool the water with a breezy island song?!"
    • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5No, you can cool a reactor with warm water; the problem is that you kill the whole ecosystem downriver.
  • sh0k, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8I live in that area, and the Tennessee Valley Authority always reminded me of that evil, secretive government/corporate lab that has its logo on everything in the town and weird security guards with assault rifles roaming the parks at night.

    Yeah, gotta love Alabama.
  • Ostizzle, on 10/10/2007, -5/+21Warning: Unresponsive script
    Warning: Unresponsive script
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    This is getting really ***** old.
  • suxmonkey, on 10/10/2007, -7/+0I would think they could use the heat-energy of the water to create even more power, but that's probably too complicated - let's just pour some ice in there instead
    • Ramble, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1No, it's a change in energy that creates the power. The bigger the difference in energy levels the more power.
  • manicallday, on 10/10/2007, -7/+10Just a side comment. NPR interviewed a scientist about a month back that wrote a book on what would happen if humans suddenly disappeared from earth. Interestingly, one of the most damaging effects from the 400 nuclear plants across the world. I guess that these plants need some manual guidance or else they melt down. I would like to know if the Tennessee Valley Authority's reactor shuts down automatically or was it manual? If it was manual I wonder how many other sites actually monitor the water temperature of their generators? Pretty scary.


    I know. Kind of stupid and off subject.
    • verge, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6not off subject
    • verge, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5and not stupid
    • TJATL, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2Have a nice day, keep living in fear!
      • manicallday, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Alright you're just an idiot. Point proven.
    • blaaguuu, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Oh noes, the poor bunnies will get mutitated :(
    • sirlancelot88, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Nuclear reactors do not melt down if humans cease to monitor it. The Canadian CANDU system for instance has multiple passively triggered redundant shutdown systems to assure that it cannot melt down. First, it holds the control rods in active electromagnetic suspension above the reactor: therefore, if the power fails (indicative of pre-meltdown conditions) the electromagnets fail, and the rods fall into the core by means of gravity, which cannot fail. Secondly, the reactors runs with low grade nuclear fuel, which cannot go critical in light-water, so you'll never run into a situation where the light-water coolant can sustain the reaction.

      "In layman's terms, this means that instead of constantly trying to keep a potential runaway reaction under control, we use a less volatile reaction which is already near its limits".
      • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The CANDU's a great reactor if you want to have something to burn LWR waste.

        Though, I personally think that liquid thorium reactors are generally a better choice; no waste disposal issues, just sales issues (LTR's output industrially useful chemicals).
      • gwolf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Are their control systems EMP shielded?
    • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Unfortunately, this is only true for a number of reactors in the United States; many were built before the movement in nuclear engineering for 'walk-away safe' reactors, and the Department of Energy never seems to get around to issuing licenses for new reactors (so that we can decommission the old ones).
  • Richandler, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12Hmmm. To invent a machine that can harness the energy of hot water......
    • Dustmuffins, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Ever hear of the steam engine? =P
    • blakestah, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Nuclear power plants are essentially big steam engines (oversimplified explanation). Take a bunch of nuclear material. Create a low level reaction in a radioactive shielded core. Make a lot of heat. Pass water outside the core and boil it. Use the steam (which is not radioactive) to power a big steam engine. Which is why nuclear power plants give off a huge steam cloud. I disagree about the TVA director's statement through - the Savannah River Project was throttled back in the early 1950s when the Savannah River heated up 7 degrees Celcius just downstream and the ecosystem began to change dramatically.

      Nuclear power is greener than fossil fuels, but not without excess heat production. Like all forms of energy plants, there is residual heat from inefficiency.

  • diggpotato, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4use the Nuclear power to cool the water....Dear Liza, Dear Liza
    • invictus0x0, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I have a sinking feeling, that I'm the only person on digg to understand this reference.
  • GuitarWizard, on 10/10/2007, -9/+1I'm in ur atomz pwn0zoring your powerz.
  • Scynet, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7The article doesn't mention whether it was shut down because the warmer water couldn't cool the reactor or because the river would've suffered enormously from the excessively hot water output. The former isn't a joke either, you can't rise a river temperature and expect things to live on. There could easily be a law concerning the environmental effects of warm water which was the real "problem".
    • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Well, seeing as 120 degree water can cool 800 degree pressurized steam almost as well as can 80 degree water, I'd guess that it's because of environmental regulations imposed on nuclear power.
    • HappyScrappy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3There's actually a 3rd possibility...

      The river naturally rose so high in temps due to the ambient temperature that they had to turn down the reactors, even though the major contributor to the problem was just that it's hot outside.
  • DrZsbl, on 10/10/2007, -11/+2U moron the plant is old, like all us nuke plants. watch penn & tellers ***** online. no green house gases. If we built a modern nuke plant we get cheap clean energy. US spent 58 Billion on a storage facility, might as well use it. 150,000 us citizens died from car crashes since the Iraq war started, how many nuke deaths world wide, 0. WOW U SUCK BOY.
    • jim1977, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Getting facts and opinions from Penn & Teller = Fail.
      • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I don't agree with P&T's view on Yucca Mountain, but a better choice is to build a new-style LWR right next to a CANDU; pump the waste from one into the gob of the next.
  • databoy, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1Only in America. That nuclear plant was built on the cheapest tender. The actual nuclear core is cooled with liquid sodium. The river water is used to cool the radioactive steam. Someone took a shortcut when they built the plant. A cooling tower should handle the load. And the deputy sheriff, Aussie Prime Minister little Johnny Howard wants to built nuclear plants in Australia when we have cheap gas and coal. The Aussie public are not biting. Nuclear plants are not cheap to build and require a conventional gas or coal plant to manufacture the rods. No greenhouse gasses but you can bury the radio active rods in your own backyard and die of slow long term radio poisoning and damage the planet for the next 1 million years. I can live with green house gasses. Aussies are not as dumb as Yanks.
    • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Wow. That was meandering and hyperbolic. Are you missing a /sarcasm tag?
    • coit, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Wrong on all accounts.
    • pebecker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Incorrect. The Brown's Ferry plant is not a liquid sodium cooled reactor. It is a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor).
    • proliance, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"Aussies are not as dumb as Yanks." Don't sell yourself short.
  • jim1977, on 10/10/2007, -6/+2"The old record [for power consumption] was 33,344 megawatts set last Wednesday."

    Yeah, that means nothing without a time frame. Was the draw over hours, minutes? Seconds?

    Also, you treehugging imbeciles, the plant wasn't shutdown, so much as idled to prevent further damage to the river ecology, not to prevent global warming.

    Jesus. Get your facts straight.
    • calibration, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2The watt (symbol: W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule per second.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt
      Get your facts straight.
      • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11) Time frame wasn't the main point of his post, though it could be useful; a Watt is a unit of power. We want to know joules (or MWh; mathematically dissimilar, but on the same scale of unit) of energy, so that we can figure out the amount of juice output during the peak period.

        2) 'Get your facts straight' was a completely nonsensical comment, sorry. Timeframe is always a useful thing to know.

        2) He's exactly right as to why the plant was put to sleep.
        • calibration, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I see, my ways were wrong.
          I wasn't disagreeing with his 2nd part anyways.
        • GiggleStick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2What Jim1977 said was equivalent to:

          "The land speed record is 250 MPH, but for how long?"

          I doesn't matter how long. We're talking about a peak in the rate. What their point out was that the instantaneous demand for power was 33.344 Gigawatts (yes that pronounced jigga). And it doesn't really matter for how long that happens, because if it's beyond the power grid's capacity, even that instantaneous peak will cause serious problems. And he said "Get your facts straight" because he was pointing out that he was wrong while criticizing everyone else, by repeating his rudely toned comment, a common technique.
    • pebecker, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0I'd guess that from the wording, it is for 1 24-hour period.
    • coit, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The record is for power consumption RATE, I do believe.
  • edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -8/+0One down! Several hundred to go.
    Too bad its not permanent.
    • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I hope you're just talking about the dirty ass LWR reactors. I *hope* you're not one of those idiots that think all nuclear power has to have careful management and radioactive waste...
    • coit, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Yeah, bring on the radioactivity spewing coal and natural gas fired plants instead. What's the carbon offset for those plants Mr. Environment?
  • AdmiralDread, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Water cooled reactors should be honestly be put on the back shelves. Not when we have all these shiny new nuclear technologies that are just begging to be used. Besides, we need to start working on power sources that aren't so dependent on their surroundings.

    Personally, I am pleased to see that the TVA would sooner err on the side of safety, rather then convenience.
    • Fordi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Thorium FTW!
    • coit, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Which non-water cooled technologies are you speaking of? All of the next-gen plants are still water cooled...

      For that matter, please tell me which power producing technologies are not water dependent that are suitable for large scale energy production.. None.
    • HappyScrappy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2All nuclear plants are water cooled. Even if they have a primary coolant system that is different (gas cooled or even sodium), the heat is transferred from that cooling loop to water to get the heat out.

      There's just no other way to get rid of that much heat affordably.
  • thuber, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14I work there. When the we brought up unit 1 a few months ago (much cooler time of year) it created a higher total output power. The cooling towers are used to help cool the river water before it gets put back into the river so that it doesn't disturb the river ecosystem. We have river temperature limits. Well, when we started up with the new unit we didn't upgrade the cooling towers fast enough to keep up with the new heat generated. So now, during August (hottest part of the year) the river can't handle output with limited cooling towers, and as a consequence we shut the unit down to stop the temperature rise. BTW, to the poster above, the plant is designed to safely shutdown without human intervention. You can find information on the NRC website about BWR safety systems.
  • mclumber1, on 10/10/2007, -3/+0As the temperature of the heatsink (the river) rises, the lower the efficiency of reactor becomes. As it drops lower, more reactor power is needed to produce the same amount of electrical power, which creates more heat, which has to be dumped in the river.

    The cooler the river water, the more efficient the plant operates. They couldn't operate the plant efficiently enough to justify keeping the reactor critical, so they idled it.
  • paker, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Build a big paddle wheel to let the flow of the river to generate electricity. Problem solved.
    • mountaincable, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Psst, thats what a nuclear plant does, just in a more technological way.
  • darny, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2what they need is a cheap, efficient way to store power so they can generate more power during the winter months when the water is cooler and less in the summer. Then they can store excess power and just use it when the demand exceeds the supply. They do this in the natural gas industry at LNG plants...they liquify the NG and store it in tanks as LNG and release the LNG as NG back into distribution when demand gets high.

    Probably not so easy for electrical power since batteries are so expensive and not environmentally friendly.
  • RSXtacy, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1CRAP.... I live in Tennessee.... and let me tell you the heat wave BLOWS.... it's been a pretty steady 102 degrees and the heat index is like 107.... I wished i lived in the f*ckin desert.... oh wait it feels like one anyways......
  • f0dder, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4It's to protect the fish. Warm water holds less oxygen so they suffocate. In a humid climate, cooling towers are ineffective that's why they don't bother with them in asia. It has nothing to do w/leaking radiation to the environment.
  • daveeemc2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0same deal in nc - coal and nuke both in jeopardy. Duke energy has been warning, they've already shut down 1 coal plant because river levels too low and temp too high. Serious drought and hi temps.... if it continues, rolling blackout for sure.
  • brad3378, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1This is why they should be using the waste heat for something useful like creating ethanol.
    http://digg.com/general_sciences/Engineer_touts_nuclear_ethanol_tag_team
    • happytron, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I don't think thermodynamics can be cheated that easily. Although some heat can trapped in ethanol's chemical bonds, not all of it can. There is a bound on how much energy, in the form of waste heat, must be transferred to the cold temperature reservoir per unit of mechanical (and thus electrical) work extracted (the amount depends on the relative temperature differences).
  • BearinG, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Air to water cooler?
  •  

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