TX: all our wind turbines are obsolete

[03Lightningrocks]

A few weeks ago, I ran across this video from the Practical Engineering YouTube channel, on the failure of the Texas power grid this winter. He appears to address the issue free of any particular ideology, and sticks merely to the facts of what happened and an engineering analysis of it. It’s instructive.



At 5min/25sec or so, he begins explaining the timeline and why the failure happened. At 7min/30sec, there’s a brief discussion of what percentages of Texas's power come from each type of generation source, and how various failures in delivery contributed to the total collapse. (I don’t really give a cup of warm spit about how California or Massachusetts allocate theirs.) It was instructive to me to see that only something like 4.7% of Ercot's generation is nuclear. More than 3/4 of it is from wind and natural gas, with wind providing 28.8% and natural gas 47.5% respectively of our generation capacity.

It’s true that nobody wants a nuke plant in their back yard, but decommissioning them without replacing them is extremely short sighted. If we continue to rely on what has proven to be UNreliable wind energy and natural gas delivery, then we can only continue to look forward to more future grid collapse events due to extremes of weather—particularly as our population grows with people moving in from more badly governed states.

Building nuclear plants does come with its own set of problems, but it seems to me that nuclear is the most cost efficient AND reliable energy delivery there is….and we need to exploit that.

I like the idea of utilizing nuclear power plants. My only real concern with it is the disposal of the waste resulting from it. That stuff lasts far longer than any of us or our grand children will be on this earth. I feel it creates a serious hazard for future generations. Especially as more and more is created.

[MaduroBU]

The problem with the current generation of nuclear AND coal is that they cannot be more than 5-15% of generation; they are limited to baseload. A gas turbine, wind turbine or solar panel costs only opportunity and overhead when it goes offline. A coal or nuclear plant does not: the absolutely massive rotating assembly for the steam turbines take DAYS to spool up; if you stop one, the obscene weight of the turbine shaft sags, such that the centrifugal force of the rotating assembly acting upon itself is an important part of what keeps it in alignment. The procedure for spooling one up starts from a condition in which the shaft is bent (under its own weight) , and slowly spooling it up is the only way to address that unfortunate consequence of scale and gravity without damage to the turbine. A natural gas turbine is far smaller, both in the primary jet engine and steam turbine, with the result that they can spool up in 30 minutes. The problem is so severe that coal plants, if they go offline but assume that they will need to go back online soon (i..e within days) will pull power FROM the grid, run the dynamo as an electric motor and use that to keep the rotating spinning at ~3 RPM, which is sufficient to allow for rapidly spooling it up. Finally, nuclear plants need to keep pumps running to cool the cores and spent fuel rods.

None of that is bad per se, but right now severe design constraints upon the way that huge steam turbine generation works limit its applicability to meeting variable load, which in turn makes it less than ideal for quickly picking up slack when the sun sets or the wind dies down.

[Daddio-on-patio]

A few weeks ago, I ran across this video from the Practical Engineering YouTube channel, on the failure of the Texas power grid this winter. He appears to address the issue free of any particular ideology, and sticks merely to the facts of what happened and an engineering analysis of it. It’s instructive.



At 5min/25sec or so, he begins explaining the timeline and why the failure happened. At 7min/30sec, there’s a brief discussion of what percentages of Texas's power come from each type of generation source, and how various failures in delivery contributed to the total collapse. (I don’t really give a cup of warm spit about how California or Massachusetts allocate theirs.) It was instructive to me to see that only something like 4.7% of Ercot's generation is nuclear. More than 3/4 of it is from wind and natural gas, with wind providing 28.8% and natural gas 47.5% respectively of our generation capacity.

It’s true that nobody wants a nuke plant in their back yard, but decommissioning them without replacing them is extremely short sighted. If we continue to rely on what has proven to be UNreliable wind energy and natural gas delivery, then we can only continue to look forward to more future grid collapse events due to extremes of weather—particularly as our population grows with people moving in from more badly governed states.

Building nuclear plants does come with its own set of problems, but it seems to me that nuclear is the most cost efficient AND reliable energy delivery there is….and we need to exploit that.

I like the idea of utilizing nuclear power plants. My only real concern with it is the disposal of the waste resulting from it. That stuff lasts far longer than any of us or our grand children will be on this earth. I feel it creates a serious hazard for future generations. Especially as more and more is created.

Granted this comes from a group championing for nuke energy. I have seen this data in other places: There is not that much of it. All of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards. That might seem like a lot, but coal plants generate that same amount of waste every hour.
www.nei.org

[powerboatr]

The problem with the current generation of nuclear AND coal is that they cannot be more than 5-15% of generation; they are limited to baseload. A gas turbine, wind turbine or solar panel costs only opportunity and overhead when it goes offline. A coal or nuclear plant does not: the absolutely massive rotating assembly for the steam turbines take DAYS to spool up; if you stop one, the obscene weight of the turbine shaft sags, such that the centrifugal force of the rotating assembly acting upon itself is an important part of what keeps it in alignment. The procedure for spooling one up starts from a condition in which the shaft is bent (under its own weight) , and slowly spooling it up is the only way to address that unfortunate consequence of scale and gravity without damage to the turbine. A natural gas turbine is far smaller, both in the primary jet engine and steam turbine, with the result that they can spool up in 30 minutes. The problem is so severe that coal plants, if they go offline but assume that they will need to go back online soon (i..e within days) will pull power FROM the grid, run the dynamo as an electric motor and use that to keep the rotating spinning at ~3 RPM, which is sufficient to allow for rapidly spooling it up. Finally, nuclear plants need to keep pumps running to cool the cores and spent fuel rods.

None of that is bad per se, but right now severe design constraints upon the way that huge steam turbine generation works limit its applicability to meeting variable load, which in turn makes it less than ideal for quickly picking up slack when the sun sets or the wind dies down.

we took a tour of Comanche peak nuke plant a few years back learned a whole bunch of stuff that amazed. i had heard the 5 - 15% before but thought it was hoky as a nuke plant can run for decades on the fuel they have. never really be at anyone's mercy in the regard
BUT thing that grabbed me and gave me pause, was the fact the plant runs on electricity from the GRID, not the electricity produced by the actual plant
this was to ensure pumps and important items stay running if plant scrambles .
if power was lost feeding the plant, they relied on emergency generators to power the pumps and what not, vice the actual electricity they were producing . that imo seemed very concerning.

followed by the, WHY do plants need Department of energy permission to ramp up production during times of increased demand; as in the last big event in February. we had folks without power, not solely because some plants had freeze issue, but because DOE said no increase in output . if plants had been allowed to ramp up, we would have had significantly less damages to property and folks would not have frozen , in some cases to death.

so now insurance rates are going up because of ERCOT and DOE policies, most of which could have been prevented imo

[philip964]

Chernobyl melt down was during a safety test to see if they could safely shut down the plant using the inertia of the rotating turbine. They couldn't. If you haven't seen the HBO docudrama, I would recommend it.

They make these relatively small generators that are used only during peak demand. Apparently they are owned by investors waiting for peak demand, so they can get top dollar for the electricity. One investor here in town reported that he made $400,000 just Friday morning after the crisis was over but the PUC still kept the rate at $9 a Kwh.

[The Annoyed Man]

Chernobyl melt down was during a safety test to see if they could safely shut down the plant using the inertia of the rotating turbine. They couldn't. If you haven't seen the HBO docudrama, I would recommend it.

They make these relatively small generators that are used only during peak demand. Apparently they are owned by investors waiting for peak demand, so they can get top dollar for the electricity. One investor here in town reported that he made $400,000 just Friday morning after the crisis was over but the PUC still kept the rate at $9 a Kwh.

I've seen both the docudrama and the documentary. The Chernobyl disaster was a case of cascading incompetence—beginning with the design, and ending with the near lunatic fecklessness of management under a communist system…….all in the name of being willing to kill thousands as the price of keeping the party from looking bad. But, from the outset, it was an inferior design that should have never been approved for construction.

[03Lightningrocks]

What ever we do, something needs to be done to insure the garbage going on during that freeze does not repeat itself. I have to wonder what will happen if we get one of our "Texas Summers" with several days of 100 plus temps. That would create much more demand than a freeze.

[powerboatr]

Chernobyl melt down was during a safety test to see if they could safely shut down the plant using the inertia of the rotating turbine. They couldn't. If you haven't seen the HBO docudrama, I would recommend it.

They make these relatively small generators that are used only during peak demand. Apparently they are owned by investors waiting for peak demand, so they can get top dollar for the electricity. One investor here in town reported that he made $400,000 just Friday morning after the crisis was over but the PUC still kept the rate at $9 a Kwh.

I've seen both the docudrama and the documentary. The Chernobyl disaster was a case of cascading incompetence—beginning with the design, and ending with the near lunatic fecklessness of management under a communist system…….all in the name of being willing to kill thousands as the price of keeping the party from looking bad. But, from the outset, it was an inferior design that should have never been approved for construction.

BINGO
did you watch the show on how they now finally have it encased in a HUGE lead lined building? the entire complex.
i was on long cruise in the med when it happened, we had NBC (nuke bio chemical) alarms start going off all over the weather decks, we had ZERO idea what was going on. Our Captian was smart and immediately went into a protective mode washing ship down and getting us out of the ZONE. no body could figure out what the heck happened, all sensors should not go bad at once

it was over a week later that we finally found out what had happened , that was through official message traffic and the news we got still had nothing on the scale or size of cloud or danger.

[philip964]

Chernobyl melt down was during a safety test to see if they could safely shut down the plant using the inertia of the rotating turbine. They couldn't. If you haven't seen the HBO docudrama, I would recommend it.

They make these relatively small generators that are used only during peak demand. Apparently they are owned by investors waiting for peak demand, so they can get top dollar for the electricity. One investor here in town reported that he made $400,000 just Friday morning after the crisis was over but the PUC still kept the rate at $9 a Kwh.

I've seen both the docudrama and the documentary. The Chernobyl disaster was a case of cascading incompetence—beginning with the design, and ending with the near lunatic fecklessness of management under a communist system…….all in the name of being willing to kill thousands as the price of keeping the party from looking bad. But, from the outset, it was an inferior design that should have never been approved for construction.

BINGO
did you watch the show on how they now finally have it encased in a HUGE lead lined building? the entire complex.
i was on long cruise in the med when it happened, we had NBC (nuke bio chemical) alarms start going off all over the weather decks, we had ZERO idea what was going on. Our Captian was smart and immediately went into a protective mode washing ship down and getting us out of the ZONE. no body could figure out what the heck happened, all sensors should not go bad at once

it was over a week later that we finally found out what had happened , that was through official message traffic and the news we got still had nothing on the scale or size of cloud or danger.

Dumb me. I’m going wow Cruise ships back then had those sort of sensors.

I read the Chernobyl book. I have Iodine tablets.

[powerboatr]

Chernobyl melt down was during a safety test to see if they could safely shut down the plant using the inertia of the rotating turbine. They couldn't. If you haven't seen the HBO docudrama, I would recommend it.

They make these relatively small generators that are used only during peak demand. Apparently they are owned by investors waiting for peak demand, so they can get top dollar for the electricity. One investor here in town reported that he made $400,000 just Friday morning after the crisis was over but the PUC still kept the rate at $9 a Kwh.

I've seen both the docudrama and the documentary. The Chernobyl disaster was a case of cascading incompetence—beginning with the design, and ending with the near lunatic fecklessness of management under a communist system…….all in the name of being willing to kill thousands as the price of keeping the party from looking bad. But, from the outset, it was an inferior design that should have never been approved for construction.

BINGO
did you watch the show on how they now finally have it encased in a HUGE lead lined building? the entire complex.
i was on long cruise in the med when it happened, we had NBC (nuke bio chemical) alarms start going off all over the weather decks, we had ZERO idea what was going on. Our Captian was smart and immediately went into a protective mode washing ship down and getting us out of the ZONE. no body could figure out what the heck happened, all sensors should not go bad at once

it was over a week later that we finally found out what had happened , that was through official message traffic and the news we got still had nothing on the scale or size of cloud or danger.

Dumb me. I’m going wow Cruise ships back then had those sort of sensors.

I read the Chernobyl book. I have Iodine tablets.

nope no cruise ships. It was a large US navy WARSHIP ..long cruise is navy slang for deployment to the far reaches of the world that the leaders feel we need to be in irrc it was 7 months a few days that we were deployed from homebase

I had the "privilege" in mid 2000 to return to odessa ukraine for "fact finding" let me tell you this; nuclear power is safe and wonderful, but TAM is 1000% correct. the plant at chernoblyl should have never ever been allowed to go operational, it was a disaster waiting to happen.
but in 2000 i witnessed first hand the long term effects on the people that were evacuated many hours after the "EVENT" and lived. Birth defects, odd limbs, blindness, mis matched limbs( one long and one short) . it should serve as a notice to the entire world on how NOT to build a plant

it was gut wrenching and heart breaking in one fell swoop

only good thing was an eatery called Fat mosses..superb grilled chicken sandwiches on hard bread