Jon Elson wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:

It might be worth while developing some large power store system to
be kept on-site at a nuclear reactor... like the thing we Brits have
in Wales, a large lake up a mountain which water is pumped to when
the grid is underloaded, and used for hydroelectric power when it's
not.


Oconee Nuclear Station (Duke Power) with 3 reactors has the only
system with the back up being a hydro plant. The hydro plant
only has two turbines. There is also a dedicated line to a steam
plant 30 miles away for secondary backup.




Ah. Well, that's a LOT of power. I think the problem is that these
large stations don't operate
properly, over the long term, under very light load. Also, most
mid-size nukes have a single
turbo-alternator set.

Very true. If the load is removed, they do NOT dump it to the
cooling towers and try to maintain the reactors on line. This
calls for the reactors to go to minimum power or to be shut down.
In a multiple reactor plant, one unit may stay up with minimum
power providing power to maintain cooling water flow to all the
systems.