Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant
| Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant | ||
|---|---|---|
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| location | ||
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| Coordinates | 40 ° 9 '17 " N , 76 ° 43' 30" W | |
| Country: | United States | |
| Data | ||
| Owner: | Block 1: Exelon Block 2: FirstEnergy |
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| Operator: | Exelon | |
| Project start: | 1968 | |
| Commercial operation: | 2nd September 1974 | |
| Shutdown: | 20th September 2019 | |
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Decommissioned reactors (gross): |
2 (1800 MW) | |
| Energy fed in in 2010: | 6,633.75 GWh | |
| Energy fed in since commissioning: | 186,817.74 GWh | |
| Was standing: | June 5, 2011 | |
| The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation . | ||
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The decommissioned Three Mile Island nuclear power plant ( English Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station , abbreviation TMI ) is located on the island of the same name in the Susquehanna River in Dauphin County in Pennsylvania , about ten kilometers southeast of Harrisburg in the United States . On March 28, 1979, a core meltdown occurred in reactor 2, which was destroyed in the process.
technology
In the nuclear power plant, two were pressurized water reactor - blocks the manufacturer Babcock & Wilcox with a net electric power of 805 MW operated and 880 MW. Unit I was put into operation in 1974 and Unit II in 1978. Both blocks have two 130 meter high natural draft wet cooling towers each . The original plan was to take Block I, which is still fully functional, off the grid in April 2014. In October 2009, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it would extend the operating license to 2034.
Shutdown
Certain factors, including the price of oil, gas, electricity, and the fracking boom in the US since around 2010 all contributed to the electricity produced in Three Mile Island becoming unprofitable. There were several speculations that the plant would be shut down prematurely. In August 2015, the system was not able to qualify for a tender to feed its electricity into the grid beyond 2018. Also Exelons nuclear power plants Quad Cities in Illinois and Oyster Creek in New Jersey could not qualify.
In May 2017, Exelon announced that it was planning to shut down reactor 1 by around September 30, 2019. This can only be averted if z. B. the state would subsidize electricity production . In the states of Illinois and New York , Exelon was able to obtain subsidies for six reactors ( Clinton , Quad Cities 1 and 2 , Ginna , Nine Mile Point 1 , Fitzpatrick ) from public funds with similar closure announcements and averted the previously announced premature shutdowns of the plants. In Pennsylvania and Ohio , the campaigns of the electricity providers had little chance of success until February 2018, so in addition to Exelon's Three Mile Island 1, the Perry , Davis Besse and Beaver Valley 1 and 2 plants of the operator FirstEnergy were facing a possible shutdown.
The public relations work of the lobby groups, which advocated subsidizing the unprofitable nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania and neighboring Ohio, was unsuccessful: In May 2019, the operator confirmed the final shutdown for economic reasons in September 2019. Previously, the power plant had posted losses for five years . The operating license ran until 2034. On September 20, 2019, the plant was shut down. The disposal of all contaminated material at the plant is expected to take by 2078, at an estimated cost of $ 1.2 billion.
Incidents and accidents
The accident of March 28, 1979 (Harrisburg)
On March 28, 1979, one occurred Serious accident of the INES stage 5 of the nuclear power plant near Harrisburg in the reactor block. 2 In a partial core meltdown, around half of the inventory in the reactor core melted there .
Incident of February 7, 1993
On February 7, 1993, a man drove a car through the barriers in front of the power plant and through a roller door until he finally stopped in the turbine hall. At this point the nuclear reactor was fully operational. The man could not be arrested until hours later. The incident was first published eight years later. The perpetrator Pierce Nye was not tried, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Incident on November 21, 2009
The undamaged Unit I of the power plant was put back into operation in 1985, although a non-binding referendum in the Harrisburg region in 1982 rejected this with a two-thirds majority.
On November 21, 2009, a radioactivity release occurred in this block, which had just been shut down for maintenance work, and several employees were contaminated. The news channel CNN reported, citing the operator, that a measuring device had briefly sounded the alarm. A light dose was found in the workers, 160 microsieverts in one case . This corresponds to about a twelfth of the average annual dose for flight attendants.
Incident on October 5, 2015
Due to an overheated cooling pump motor on reactor I, a fire broke out in the plant on the night of October 5, 2015. According to information from the authorities, no radioactivity was released.
Operating license
In the USA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission grants an operating license for a nuclear power plant for a period of up to 40 years. The 40 year period was originally based on the fixed asset depreciation period . The American Atomic Energy Act from 1954 allows the operating license to be extended several times by 20 years each time.
The original operating license for Block I was granted to the operator on April 19, 1974 by the NRC. It was extended on October 22, 2010 to April 19, 2034.
Data of the reactor blocks
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant consists of two blocks:
| Reactor block | Reactor type | power | start of building | Netzsynchro- Organization |
commercial operation |
operating permit |
Shutdown | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| net | Gross | |||||||
| Three Mile Island 1 | Pressurized water reactor |
805 MW | 837 MW | May 18, 1968 | June 19, 1974 | Sep 2 1974 | April 19, 2034 | Sep 20 2019 |
| Three Mile Island 2 | 880 MW | 959 MW | Nov 1, 1969 | Apr 12, 1978 | Dec 30, 1978 | March 28, 1979 | ||
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Update 1-NRC renews Exelon Pa. Three Mile Isl reactor license. Reuters, October 22, 2009 (English).
- ↑ Despite selling its power at auction, future of TMI plans still uncertain. Lancaster Online, September 16, 2015.
- ↑ The accident nuclear power plant is becoming too expensive. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 31, 2017.
- ↑ Exelon To Retire Three Mile Island Generating Station in 2019. exeloncorp.com, May 30, 2017 (English).
- ↑ Three Mile Island nuclear power plant goes offline . In: n-tv.de , May 9, 2019. Retrieved May 11, 2019.
- ^ Taylor Romine: The famous Three Mile Island nuclear plant is closing. In: cnn.com . September 19, 2019, accessed on September 20, 2019.
- ↑ Sitting ducks? Porous security makes nuclear power plants inviting targets. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, September 17, 2001, accessed June 3, 2010.
- ^ Three Mile Island. pahighways.com, June 3, 2010 (English).
- ↑ Swiss Energy Foundation : Energy and Environment , No. 4/1982.
- ^ Reactor breakdown on Three Mile Island. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 23, 2009.
- ^ Incident at US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island. Der Spiegel, November 22, 2009.
- ↑ Radioactivity leaked into US reactor Harrisburg ( memento of November 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Zeit Online, November 23, 2009.
- ↑ Don Bishop: 'No Danger' after Nuclear Power Plant Fire. KRMG, October 6, 2015, accessed October 6, 2015 .
- ^ Backgrounder on Reactor License Renewal. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, accessed August 18, 2016 .
- ^ Subsequent License Renewal Background. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, accessed August 18, 2016 .
- ↑ Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, Unit 1. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, accessed on August 18, 2016 .
- ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : United States of America: Nuclear Power Reactors (English).
- ↑ nuklearforum.ch:Three-Mile-Island-1 closed on September 25th , accessed on September 27th, 2019