zog
Senior Member
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
FPL comes clean
- Thread starter chris kennedy
- Start date
- Status
iaov
Senior Member
- Location
- Rhinelander WI
This confirms it Cris. It wasn't me who touched something! I can sympathise with thier field engineer a bit tho. I was working on some 2300 vt swith gear once. Every time the motor started the breaker tripped. After half a night of getting nowhere I suggested "reforming" (bending) a tab on a trip ajustment that the factory guy said should never be touched. We did this and whala the motor kept running. When we tried starting it again a few minutes later as soon as the operator hit the start button the whole plant went black! It turned out to be the POCO that dropped the load and had nothing to do with the work we were doing, but for a few minutes both my boss and I were pretty sure we were soon to be unemployed.:smile:
Rampage_Rick
Senior Member
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada
Mickey-mouse bypasses of protection systems = BAD OMEN
Ever hear of Chernobyl?
Ever hear of Chernobyl?
zog
Senior Member
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
That had nothing to do with bypassing protections systems, you are thinking of 3 mile island.
Rampage_Rick
Senior Member
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada
Actually the scenario in my head was Three Mile Island, but they did no better at Chernobyl:
1:00 PM Operators begin to slow the reactor down to 25% of capacity in order to run an experiment to determine whether, in the event of a loss of station power, the slowing turbine could provide enough electrical power to operate the emergency equipment until such time as the diesel generators came online.
2:00 PM Operators turned off the emergency core cooling system to prevent it from kicking on and interfering with the test. Although subsequent events were not greatly affected by this, the exclusion of this system for the whole duration of the test reflected a lax attitude towards the implementation of safety procedures. At approximately 50% power the grid dispatcher calls the operators and tells them to delay the slow-down because of a high demand for electrical power.
11:10 PM Dispatcher authorizes further reduction in power. Operators continue to reduce power to target of 25%
12:30 AM The reactor falls to 1% of capacity due to operational error and the nuclear reaction in the core becomes unstable.
1:00 AM Operators bring reaction up to 7% by withdrawing all but 6-8 control rods (though 30 were necessary to retain reactor control) Decision is made to continue with the experiment. Operators reduce feedwater pumps to correct low steam pressure (The reactor would have shut down had the automatic trip not been circumvented) Steam production jumps, and the reactor power output spikes to 10,000% *BOOM*
1:00 PM Operators begin to slow the reactor down to 25% of capacity in order to run an experiment to determine whether, in the event of a loss of station power, the slowing turbine could provide enough electrical power to operate the emergency equipment until such time as the diesel generators came online.
2:00 PM Operators turned off the emergency core cooling system to prevent it from kicking on and interfering with the test. Although subsequent events were not greatly affected by this, the exclusion of this system for the whole duration of the test reflected a lax attitude towards the implementation of safety procedures. At approximately 50% power the grid dispatcher calls the operators and tells them to delay the slow-down because of a high demand for electrical power.
11:10 PM Dispatcher authorizes further reduction in power. Operators continue to reduce power to target of 25%
12:30 AM The reactor falls to 1% of capacity due to operational error and the nuclear reaction in the core becomes unstable.
1:00 AM Operators bring reaction up to 7% by withdrawing all but 6-8 control rods (though 30 were necessary to retain reactor control) Decision is made to continue with the experiment. Operators reduce feedwater pumps to correct low steam pressure (The reactor would have shut down had the automatic trip not been circumvented) Steam production jumps, and the reactor power output spikes to 10,000% *BOOM*
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
zog said:
Charlie Crist is his name.
- Status