Columbia Nuclear Power Plant

Columbia Nuclear Power Plant
Columbia Nuclear Power Plant
location
Coordinates	46 ° 28 ′ 13 ″  N , 119 ° 20 ′ 7 ″  W Coordinates: 46 ° 28 ′ 13 ″  N , 119 ° 20 ′ 7 ″  W
Country:	United States
Data
Owner:	Energy Northwest
Operator:	Energy Northwest
Project start:	1971
Commercial operation:	Dec 13, 1984
Active reactors (gross):	1 (1,190 MW)
Energy fed in since commissioning:	224,200 GWh
Was standing:	December 31, 2015
The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation .

The Columbia nuclear power plant ( English Columbia Generating Station ), also known as Washington State Power Plant (WSPP), with a boiling water reactor is located in Hanford in the US state of Washington . It is the only completed program in the Washington Public Power Supply System Nuclear Project, which includes 5 reactors, with units 1, 2 and 4 at Hanford and 3 & 5 at Elma in Grays Harbor County. The area is in the immediate vicinity of the Hanford Site . This vast area was once the largest US nuclear weapons manufacturing complex; it is heavily radioactively contaminated. (List here )

The nuclear power plant was built from 1972 by General Electric for the operator Washington Public Power Supply System, which renamed itself Energy Northwest in 1999 and operates it under this name to this day. The nuclear reactor first went critical on January 19, 1984 . It went online on May 27, 1984. He has a Mark II containment , a further development of the previous Mark I containment, which was classified as unsatisfactory in certain respects; it is very similar to the containment of the Swedish ASEA boiling water reactors.

The power plant is cooled by six cooling towers.

On December 20, 1983, the nuclear power plant received an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). On January 19, 2010, Northwest applied to the NRC to extend its operating license for 20 years.

Accidents

In October 1998 a water hammer burst the valve on an auxiliary system line in the reactor building. Around 650 cubic meters of water streamed out and flooded the pump rooms of the low-pressure emergency cooling pumps and the condensation chamber pumps, the doors of which were not designed to withstand such water masses and which opened. The reactor could be cooled down using the normal operating systems; but if these had failed, emergency cooling would have been very difficult.

Data of the reactor blocks

The Columbia Nuclear Power Plant has one completed and 2 unfinished blocks :

Reactor block	Reactor type	net power	gross power	start of building	Network synchronization	Commercialization of essential operation	switching off processing
WNP-1	Pressurized water reactor	1259 MW	1339 MW	08/01/1975	Construction canceled on January 1st, 1983
Columbia (WNP-2)	Boiling water reactor	1107 MW	1190 MW	02/19/1972	05/27/1984	12/13/1984	(Planned for 2044)
WNP-4	Pressurized water reactor	1250 MW	1340 MW	08/01/1975	Construction canceled on January 1st, 1982

Individual evidence

1. ↑ spiegel.de February 23, 2013: US radiation ruins Hanford: Leaks in six underground nuclear waste tanks
2. ↑ www.energy-northwest.com 'Columbia Generating Station' ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Energy Northwest - Columbia Generating Station ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) 
4. ↑ Homepage ( Memento of the original from March 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ mydocs.epri.com - Study "Pipe Rupture Frequencies for Internal Flooding PRAs
6. ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "United States of America: Nuclear Power Reactors - Alphabetic" (English)
7. ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "Nuclear Power Reactor Details - WPPSS-1" (English); Archived version at Wayback Machine.
8. ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "Nuclear Power Reactor Details - WPPSS-4" (English); Archived version at Wayback Machine.

See also

• List of nuclear power plants