Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant
| Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant | ||
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| location | ||
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| Coordinates | 34 ° 42 '25 " N , 87 ° 7' 14" W | |
| Country: |
 United States
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| Data | ||
| Owner: | Tennessee Valley Authority | |
| Operator: | Tennessee Valley Authority | |
| Project start: | 1966 | |
| Commercial operation: | Aug 1, 1974 | |
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Active reactors (gross): |
3 (3,497 MW) | |
| Energy fed in in 2010: | 24,772.92 GWh | |
| Energy fed in since commissioning: | 481,335.35 GWh | |
| Was standing: | June 5, 2011 | |
| The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation . | ||
The Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant is located on the Tennessee River near Athens and Decatur , Alabama , on the north (right bank) side of Wheeler Lake. The facility is named after a ferry that operated on the site until the mid-20th century. The facility has three General Electric - boiling water reactors . The owner and operator is the Tennessee Valley Authority . The power plant has single-row cell coolers .
Block 1
Unit 1 is a General Electric boiling water reactor with a net electrical output of 1065 MWe and a gross output of 1152 MWe. Construction began on May 1, 1967, it was synchronized with the power grid for the first time on October 15, 1973, and went into commercial operation on August 1, 1974.
Fire 1975
On March 22, 1975, a technician was walking around the power station looking for an air leak with a candle. The foam used to protect the wiring caught fire, causing a cable fire. The fire on the other side of the wall (viewed from the ignition point of view) was not detected until there was significant damage to cables related to the control of units 1 and 2. In Block 2, only a single emergency cooling system still worked for shutdown, in Block 1 none at all: the power supply to the pumps was paralyzed by the fire in all of these systems. In an emergency, two so-called condensate pumps (a normal operating system that is not actually qualified for emergencies), whose power supply was not affected by the fire due to their location in the rear of the machine house, could be restarted in Block 1 and - after the reactor was switched off - thus dissipate the decay heat. About five hours later another problem arose in Block 1: the pressure relief valves of the reactor system failed. The fact that an accident did not occur relatively quickly here was due to the fact that the decay heat had already been dissipated for five hours, meaning that the core had already cooled down halfway. That gave enough time to fix the defect in the electronics.
This fire later led to major discussions in the American regulatory authority Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and to considerable improvements in fire protection in all US nuclear power plants as well as worldwide. The polyurethane foam for cable sheathing was replaced by silicone foam in all power plants. In addition, the cable harnesses of the individual security systems were separated from one another much more consistently so that not all redundancies could be affected by the fire at the same time. In this case, two blocks were at risk of accidents at once.
The reactor was out of service from March 22, 1975 to 1976.
Further problems
On September 15, 1984, Unit 2 was shut down for refilling. During this filling phase, Unit 3 had serious incidents in October 1984 and February 1985, so the NRC decided on March 3, 1985 to shut down all three units or not to start them again. After rework costing $ 1.3 billion, reactor 2 was restarted in May 1991.
Reactor 3 went back online in 1995.
Since the TVA initially concentrated on reactors 2 and 3, reactor 1 was not restarted until May 24, 2007, for which it was overhauled for 1.8 billion dollars. During the first tests after the restart, a hydraulic control line in the turbine hall burst and the reactor was temporarily shut down again. All tests were completed on May 27th and the reactor went back online on June 2nd.
According to a lawyer, the fact that the old system was put into operation again at all was due to the fact that it made the approval process much easier. The final shutdown of Unit 1 is planned for 2033 .
Block 2
Unit 2 is also a General Electric boiling water reactor, but with an output of 1118 MWe net and 1155 MWe gross. Construction began on May 1, 1967, the first network synchronization took place on August 28, 1974, and it went into commercial operation on March 1, 1975. Unit 2 has been loaded with low-enriched uranium since 2005.
Due to the rapidly rising water temperature of the Tennessee River caused by a period of drought, and thus also an increased temperature of the coolant, the reactor was shut down for one day in August 2007.
The shutdown is planned for 2034 .
Block 3
Unit 3 is also a General Electric boiling water reactor and has a net output of 1114 MWe and a gross output of 1190 MWe. Construction began on July 1, 1968, it was first synchronized with the power grid on September 12, 1976 and went into commercial operation on March 1, 1977. The shutdown is planned for 2036 .
Disruptions
On April 27, 2011, all three units were automatically shut down after strong storms damaged parts of the interconnection network in the region. The safety systems of the three blocks worked as designed. The power supply was taken over by the emergency diesel engines.
Data of the reactor blocks
The Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant has three blocks :
| Reactor block | Reactor type | net power |
gross power |
start of building | Network synchronization |
Commercialization of essential operation |
switching off processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browns Ferry-1 | Boiling water reactor | 1065 MW | 1152 MW | 05/01/1967 | 10/15/1973 | 08/01/1974 | (Planned for 2033) |
| Browns Ferry-2 | Boiling water reactor | 1118 MW | 1155 MW | 05/01/1967 | 08/28/1974 | 03/01/1975 | (Planned for 2034) |
| Browns Ferry-3 | Boiling water reactor | 1114 MW | 1190 MW | 07/01/1968 | 09/12/1976 | 03/01/1977 | (Planned for 2036) |
See also
Web links
swell
- ↑ to be seen in the picture
- ↑ The Fire at the Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Station (English)
- ↑ https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/browns-ferry-2-ii.pdf
- ↑ https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=641
- ^ Sueddeutsche Zeitung of April 29, 2011 . Retrieved April 30, 2011
- ↑ Blackout NRC Monitors Events at Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant After Loss of Offsite Power and Unusual Event Declaration (English; PDF file; 197 kB)
- ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "United States of America: Nuclear Power Reactors - Alphabetic" (English)
- ↑ This block was shut down from March 22, 1975 to May 24, 2007 and was completely overhauled.