Thinking of Steam - in a big way

Frenchie

I thought Oyster Creek was a G.E. boiling water reactor? Now I'll have to go to the NRC website.....

Perry_2

Thinking of Steam - in a big way (somewhat off topic)

I had never really looked.... until today.

We are in the process of restarting Unit 2 of the plant... which is a multiple days long process. My key work was done a week ago, and now I'm focusing on reports and lessor issues.

But, I wondered. What is the steam flow... once we are up and running. So I looked at the "live" Unit 1 data that is available just by calling it up on my computer.

Steam Flow: 6.4 Million Lbs/Hr @ about 800 PSI, and 520 F.

All of that produces 500 MW of electrical power sold to businesses and people all over this side of the state.

Just think - we're an old "small" plant at that...

Thought a few of you might be interested.

That new Viessmann Vitodens in my house ... Just a small toy in comparison - and it doesn't even produce steam.

Perry

Frenchie

Plant

Perry I think I remember you saying you are from Wisconsin. I'm just curious which plant you are at? I'm in WE-Energies territory, in S.E. Wi. Are you at Point Beach nuclear station? If so, thanks for supplying a good percentage of my power!!!!

Perry_2

Yup

Your welcome.

Point Beach it is.

When I was first hired into the nuke plants I was actually hired to be working at both Kewaunee and Point Beach at the same time - doing essentially the same job at both plants and one other job at another. It was too much as the job was structured. Thus, I kept the job at Point Beach and dropped Kewaunee.

I get down to your area every now and then - we should get together.

Perry

Brad White_146

So Perry

Once the steam leaves the turbines and at what pressure, what do you do with the excess? Parabolic cooling towers? District steam? Wisconsin Mineral Spa and Resort?

The ASME steam blow has to be a sight to behold. I designed a 3.0 MW replacement generator at Dartmouth College in 1991-2, during which the steam blow made snow...
Yours I can only imagine!

Brad

Perry_2

Heat sink and steam blow

We use Lake Michagan water to condense the turbine exhaust steam back into water, whereupon it is pumped back to the boilers (through a series of Feedwater Heaters). Condenser vacuum typically runs between 1 and 2 " Hg (absolute) [i.e.; 28-29" Vacuum).

Edited to add: For those who are into circulating pumps. The Point Beach circulating pumps move about 200,000 GPM at about 15 Ft head - each (there are two of them). This is the water that is used to cool the condenser where the steam is condensed back into condensate.



I was not arround for the ASME steam blow for the plant as I was in High School at the time - but stories of it being heard 10 miles away circulate.

In the early 80's I worked at a new fossil plant that was smaller and I got to talk to many people who witnessed the steam blow (I started their 9 months after it went online) - and they reported that it could be heard for 7 miles.

Then when I was working at a much much smaller fossil plant (municipal power plant) - you could clearly hear the boiler safety valves lift from 3 miles away when the plant tripped (and I could be into my cloths and heading out the door before the phone rang in the middle of the night).

Perry

Frenchie

Vitodens?

I figured you were at "The Beach" by your description of the unit. Is the visitors center open to the public again? I go right past there every time I go to my parents place in Wabeno. I've always been curious to stop in. How on earth did you get a Vitodens in this area? It may be a challenge to get parts..... All I could get last year for my house was Crown or Weil-Mclain. So, I replaced my 26 year old W/M gas boiler with a Crown oil boiler. I would be frightened owning a mod/con out here in the styx!! I'm not a heating contractor, just an industrial pipefitter in a chemical plant.

Steamhead (in transit)

Are those

Babcock & Wilcox reactors?

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Perry_2

Reactor Type

is Westinghouse; at both Point Beach and Kewaunee. These are the first generation 2 loop plants. Thus we have two "steam generators" (AKA: Boilers) per reactor.

These produce saturated steam, where the B&W, or at least one model of B&W, produced superheated steam for the turbines.

Of the 5 companies that produced early US reactors: Allis Chalmers, General Electric, B&W, Westinghouse, and Combustion Engineering - only General Electric and Westinghouse exist today. Both GE and Westinghouse have precertified designs of the next generation reactors ready for someone to order (which won't be long).

Have a great day,

Perry

Perry_2

Vitoden Parts & Visitors Center is OPEN

are stocked in Milwaukee at two supply houses.

I do admit that getting a heating contractor to install it was a challange. All anyone wanted to quote and install were the crowns and Well McLean cast iron boilers. One company did talk about a Munckin - but could not figure out how they would connect it to my existing cast iron baseboard monoflo T system.

If you had contacted Viessmann you would have been directed to the area rep (who is based out of Milwaukee).


The Visitor Center again Open, now that they got the final security upgrades in place for the plant. All of you are invited to stop in. All kinds of neat things to see. If your comming through email me and we can meet (I'll even meet you at the Energy Center (Visitors Center) on most days if I know you are comming and my schedule is open at the moment). My memory is that it is open normal hours Tue-Sunday (I think). Note that I work strange hours at times.

Perry

Steamhead (in transit)

That B&W

would have been the #177 I believe, which became famous at Three Mile Island. For anyone who hasn't read it, "The Warning" is a very well-written book about that event.

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Brad White_146

Now Frank....

You really know how to build up confidence in eastern Wisconsin, don't you?

Steamhead (in transit)

Read the book

it doesn't preach, either way. Just tells the story, like all good books do.

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Perry_2

Lots has changed since then

3 Mile Island happened for several reasons.

1 minor equipment failure.

Several operator errors - largly because the operators were trying to save the plant - keep it online.

Several more operator errors after the plant was offline - becasue the operators did not know a key item - what was the water level in the reactor.

Results: core meltdown; and unit will never run again.

But most people miss the biggest thing that 3 Mile Island showed - dispite all the operator errors a key design feature worked: Containment.

The US looked at all the risk - and concluded that as long as even part of the safety and backup systems worked and the operators behaved in a rational manner - that the chance of a core meltdown was so remote.... But, just in case we build very expensive containment buildings arround the reactor (and they were and are very expensive buildings).

The USSR looked at all the risk - and concluded that as long as even part of the safety and backup systems worked and the operators behaved in a rational manner - that the chance of a core meltdown was so remote.... Why almost double the cost of the plant with a containment building.

Major lesson learned: Operators do not always behave rationaly. The safety systems worked at both 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl - and if the operators had not deliberatly turned things off at both plants... neither plant would have had a castastrohy....

3 Mile Island, virtually no radiation released from site during the accident (yes I know some people claim otherwise based on interesting theories - but their are all kinds of things that would have indicated a major radiation release - and nothing did). Most people get more radiation from flying half way across the US and back than what someone standing at the site boundry downwind of the plant would have recieved during the 3 Mile Island event.

Chernobyl: Hundreds dead (rather quickly) from radiation sickness, several thousand dead within a few years - and radiation detected arround the world by everyone.

The Key difference: The contaiment building.

Since then: Operators no longer try to "save" plants when problems develop. They are now trained to quickly trip the unit and let the normal safeties take over - and then ensure that all the safety shutdown systems are operating.

Reactor water level instrumentation was retrofit onto all reactors in the US (and many other countries) so that in a similar situation the operators would know that the reactor was not totally flooded.

There were a number of other retrofits and industry improvements as well. The plants are operated much more safely - and maintined better - than back when 3 Mile Island occured.

So relax.... (unless you are traveling to other countries with older Soviet style reactors... that don't have contaiment buildings).

Perry

Christian Egli_2

That's a herd of about 200,000 boiler horse power

OK, I exaggerate, my numbers turn your 6.4 million lb/hr into about 186,000 BHP, and here we're all gung ho about a 3 boiler horsepower home heating application. Your plant could heat more than 60,000 homes, a heck of a boiler room...

In its heyday, the city of Paris had a herd of about 15,000 flesh and bones horses to power its mass transit system. You could do that and thirteen times more just with your steam output. Man.

And you achieve 29 inHg - my beloved vacuumizers never get anywhere near that - does this suck? we should all be so jealous.

In a way, this point out how sophisticated a power plant is and how seriously all of you on the job work at maintaining efficiency. The same with district heating, while most homeowners gleefully wait until something leaks badly before calling for help.

Thanks for making all that good electricity. In the last 18 years, here, we've never once had a power failure.

There is much talk just now here in Ohio about nuclear stuff. We have one large uranium processing plant (of three in the US, I think) that is being cleaned up and rebuilt. Plus, right here in Dayton is where the nuclear power packs for satellites and space ships were developed, and before that, Dayton played a key part in the Manhattan Project by first having been able to turn polonium into the triggers that were needed for the war effort. All that has been kept secret until now while no one thought it strange that the old laboratories converted into school property should look like weirdly isolated small bunkers... hey, they didn't glow either, polonium has no shelf life. Bockscar and a Fatman replica are here too.

There, enough of me speaking like the chamber of commerce. Tanks, Perry, for thinking about your steam.

Al_19

Great post!

Weezbo

Perry, what is Super cooled water?

i recall reading somewhere ,decades ago, that it was around 770 degrees F ...i have often wondered about by-pass valves and the construction and maintenance of the valves... the valves cant be something that open and close quickly so i figure there are smaller valves that by pass the larger valves ,the big valves might be chain driven buh what of the smaller valves..what pressure do the have to contain? and are they repairable in place?

Perry_2

B& W buildt several of them

I know other versions of the superheated steam B & W plants exist - just not how many or where off of the top of my head.

If you're really interested I could hunt up some links for you to find the information. But that will have to be later. Off to work soon.

Perry

Perry_2

If it helps... We actually have two plants that size.

The numbers above are for each power plant "unit." We are a dual unit site with two power plants of the same size.

So total net generation delivered to the electrical grid when both units are running is about 1000 MW. Gross generation is higher as the plant uses a lot of electrical load to operate pumps and other things.

We are planning a power uprate to take advantage of original extreemly conservative design margins and changes in technology that improve efficiency of equipment and will likely increas that by about 35-40 MW per unit (and 70-80 for both units) in about 3 - 5 years from now.

Kewaunee just up the road is a slightly larger single unit plant and has already completed their power uprate. I think they are putting out about 570 MW net.

Perry

Perry_2

Super Critical Water vs Super cooled water & Valves

Super cooled water is liquid water at 31.5 F or below. Water does not always freeze at 32 F. Interesting stuff...

I believe you are refering to Super Critical Water. I don't have my reference books with me to check the values and temperatures - but somewhere about 3200 PSI the density of the steam matches the density of the boiling hot water. At - and above - this pressure their is no longer any difference between the boiler water and steam - including the fact that their is no longer a water line in the steam drum either.

Fossil fired "boilers" do take advantage of this and the most efficient steam power plants are built super critical. The first generation of plants built in the 1970's had a lot of maintenance and reliability issues and companies stopped building them.

Only in the last decade has interest, and new plants, been revived. Better materials and decades of lessons learned now allow reliable - efficient - plants to aging be built.

As far as the valves: Conventional valve design - just heavier wall and appropriate alloys for the pressure and temperatures (and fossil plants have been operating at 1050 F or higher for many decades - the main steam lines glow dull red in the dark with the insulation off).

Most of the major valves last decades between rebuilds (lapping in seat and disk). Any valve requiring routine operation will have a motor or air operator on it (and the operators require more maintenance than the valve itself). Less frequently operated major valves will have large handwheels on them.

Perry

Steamhead (in transit)

That's pretty much

what was written in "The Warning". But I prefer to encourage people to actually read the book, and draw their own conclusions.

Same with "Final Warning" which is about Chernobyl, but by a different author.

Also "We Almost Lost Detroit" which covered the Fermi fast-breeder in Monroe, Michigan. Yes, I know that was in 1966 or so... anyone remember what killed that reactor? Hint: when they first found it, they thought it was a beer can..... read the book!

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Steamhead (in transit)

How about

Oyster Creek, in NJ (where TMI Unit 2 was originally to have been built- read the book!)? Davis-Besse, near Toledo, OH? Oconee, in Arkansas I believe? TVA has a couple in Tennessee but I can't remember where..........

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EBEBRATT-Ed

Thanks Perry---------great information!



ED

Steamhead (in transit)

It might be

I don't remember if the manufacturer of OC Unit 1 was named in the book, but Unit 2 was to have been the B&W #177. One of the reasons they moved the project to TMI was that another B&W was already being built there.

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Weezbo

that is very informative:)

thank you for reading between the lines and answering my question.

LarryC

Thermal output vs Electrical output.

Rule of thumb for commercial nukes. Reactor thermal output is approximately 3X net electrical output.

Larry C

Perry_2

Same rule applies to most fossil power plants

Most fossil power plants have about the same effeciency (within say 5 percent).

Some of the gas turbine combined cycle plants get close to 2x, but many don't actually achieve that due to the way they are cycled (similar to how boilers loose efective efficency due to how they are cycled).

The laws of thermo-dymamics come to play and it's just not possible to do a lot better than that using the heat cycles that we use.

Perry

Frenchie

Great thread

This was a great thread, Perry. I remember a thread called end of the age of oil a couple years ago that turned into a very animated nuclear debate. It went around 200 posts I think. Some strong opinions both ways. It always amazes me how little most of the public knows about nuclear power, and fear of the unknown is prevalent. I'm strongly pro-nuclear so in my opinion the more it is talked about the better!!