On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:28:20 +0000 (UTC), DejaVU
wrote:

so, Gunner and his survivalist buddies have a point after all!

Ill refrain from the Neener Neener Neener! G

Btw..the usual crop of regulars are still posting on misc.survivalism,
even though the neighborhoods are black as the bottom of a coal mine.
Perhaps proper preperation prevented **** poor performance?

Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?

How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed out
their corpses?

We are survivalists, not be cause its a neat club to join..G but
because Bad **** does happen.

but I still fail to understand why the nuclear plants shut themselves
down? anyone care to explain?

When the generators started to get over loaded, and out of sync with the
rest of the grid(s), they kicked out several thousand safeties, most of
which were intended as major shut down.

Gunner

swarf, steam and wind

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty
is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-- Ben Franklin

Gunner scribed in
:

hiya Gunner

didn't think I'd see replies till Monday, but the time difference has
foxed me again....

so, Gunner and his survivalist buddies have a point after all!

Ill refrain from the Neener Neener Neener! G

fine... I'm just giving you guys the thumbs up and I might be joining
you on m.s

Btw..the usual crop of regulars are still posting on
misc.survivalism, even though the neighborhoods are black as the
bottom of a coal mine. Perhaps proper preperation prevented ****
poor performance?

That's a feat in itself! I can cool the local stuff like running a
laptop on a car battery etc, but how the hell do they connect to the
web?

Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?
How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed
out their corpses?

that's a very bad thing to even think about and is not in keeping
with the American way and you sohuld be ashamed of yourself. how
could that possibly happen in February? (-:

We are survivalists, not be cause its a neat club to join..G
but because Bad **** does happen.

I'm in a small town known for power outages. when I was young, we
had our own coal fired power station. that was shut down in favour
of a national grid connection. this was in the middle of the
Aparthied/gorilla war. I thought it was nuts to hang everything on
the end of a HT line, when blowing up a pylon is so easy. anyhow,
very few were actually blown up, but we lose a pylon to bad
maintenance about once a year and have it down for 12 hours or so.

but I still fail to understand why the nuclear plants shut
themselves down? anyone care to explain?

When the generators started to get over loaded, and out of sync
with the rest of the grid(s), they kicked out several thousand
safeties, most of which were intended as major shut down.

ah, ok, now I get it....

so the answer is some way to isolate them from each other without
shutting down everything. some network planner is going to get grey
hair...

here in town, if everything goes off, the first things to come back
on are the hospital, then the University. then suburbs in sequence.
what sequence? dunno, but I suspect it goes 'mayors house (or
electrical supplierz employees?), then suburb with most councillors,
then the rest of us'

remember, the best thing you can have on your block is a councillor.
he will ensure that the sidewalk grass is cut, snow plowed etc etc,
before the next street (-:

swarf, steam and wind

--
David Forsyth -:- the email address is real /"\
http://terrapin.ru.ac.za/~iwdf/welcome.html \ /
ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail - - - - - - - X
If you receive email saying "Send this to everyone you know," / \
PLEASE pretend you don't know me.

The nuclear side of the plants themselves do not shut down, just the
generating grid that they are hooked to. The problem when bringing
everything back online is re-syncing the ac freq of the generators to
the grid frequency. The wrong frequency would load down the line and
re-trip the system again.

Jim Vrzal
Holiday,FL.

DejaVU wrote:
so, Gunner and his survivalist buddies have a point after all!

but I still fail to understand why the nuclear plants shut themselves
down? anyone care to explain?

swarf, steam and wind

--
David Forsyth -:- the email address is real /"\
http://terrapin.ru.ac.za/~iwdf/welcome.html \ /
ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail - - - - - - - X
If you receive email saying "Send this to everyone you know," / \
PLEASE pretend you don't know me.

DejaVU wrote:
so, Gunner and his survivalist buddies have a point after all!

but I still fail to understand why the nuclear plants shut themselves
down? anyone care to explain?

Easy.

Remove the load and you have no need for the power they could
generate. It is also part of their safty system.

All nuclear plants have a secondary source of power and also have
emergency generation capabilities. Never a concern about
radioactive releases. Just a safty shutdown lake a steam plant
would do.

Howard
20 years of Navy nuclear experience

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:32:00 +0000 (UTC), the renowned DejaVU
wrote:


That's a feat in itself! I can cool the local stuff like running a
laptop on a car battery etc, but how the hell do they connect to the
web?

The phone system runs on backup power, though we have only one phone
left in the house that doesn't require power from the wall to work.
The cellphone networks were up, but very busy. A
battery/inverter/generator powered laptop with a modem and you're
laughing, provided your ISP isn't down. I would have been okay, but
didn't bother, too busy with friends over, doing an impromptu BBQ
(natural gas) with Kraft dinner (macaroni and cheese) for the kids
and having a few beers before they got warm. ;-) But there wasn't
much more food in the house.

I sure did think of Gunner and his survivalist friends who would be in
a heck of a lot better shape than us if this had continued for even
another day or two. And if this had been a real emergency (and the
news was lies to keep us from panicking, which also crossed my
mind)...

so the answer is some way to isolate them from each other without
shutting down everything. some network planner is going to get grey
hair...

Whatever triggered this, it was obviously a system problem on a large
scale. No single failure should have been able to cause this- at worst
a very limited area should have been isolated in blackout. An
*engineering* failure, for sure.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

Howard R Garner wrote:

All nuclear plants have a secondary source of power and also have
emergency generation capabilities. Never a concern about radioactive
releases. Just a safty shutdown lake a steam plant would do.

Howard
20 years of Navy nuclear experience


Below a certain point, apparently, a nuclear plant is producing less
power than its own cooling system is consuming - so they need external
power to run the cooling system during startup and shutdown.

I remember a case in the former USSR where the Navy hadn't paid their
power bills for a year or so because they didn't have any money, so the
power company cut their line. The navy sent armed men to storm the power
station and turn the power back on - because they had a nuclear sub
under repair in dock with the reactor idling, and without power it was
in danger of becoming a glowing lump at the bottom of the harbour, plus
a good amount of dust in the air above, etc.

I've heard various contradictory accounts of What Went Wrong at
Chernobyl, but one of them related to the reactor being used for
experiments in powering down with minimal power input (eg, if you run it
hard then shut down quickly there might be enough 'inertia' in the
cooling system to last it or something) when something went wrong with
the incoming power line from the other reactors in the complex and they
were left with an overheated reactor and no power.

Also, power grids are complex beasts. It's not like a gas manifold - you
can't just plug in more generators. Not only are there AC phase synch
issues, but all sorts of other wierd stuff to do with inductance and
power factors and phase shifts when you have a hundred mile long cable
and whatnot. Apparently early attempts at power grids failed until they
managed to build analog computers that could solve all the equations in
real time in order to keep the network 'balanced' - otherwise the
voltage would rise in some areas and drop in others due to interference
patterns between the outputs from each generator or something.

ABS

DejaVU wrote:
so, Gunner and his survivalist buddies have a point after all!

but I still fail to understand why the nuclear plants shut themselves
down? anyone care to explain?

swarf, steam and wind

Here's the short simplistic story. I'm sure Gary C. or
Peter H. will elaborate now that I've replied (:

1. Main circuit breaker on plant output lines trip
because of overload.

2. Generator now has no load for turbine so turbine
overspeeds and trips.

3. Heat from reactor now has no place to go so reactor
trips. Heat also causes pressure relief valve to
open and blowdown part of cooling water into hotwell.

At this point, the emergency generators should come
on and the operators are faced with about 150 red lights
and they have to start sorting out what went wrong.
Their first job will be to stablize the reactor, getting
coolant temperatures, pressures and levels to normal
idling levels. Once that is done, they have to determine
whether they can reconnect the plant to the grid and
ramp up power.

To get some idea of the amount of energy involved
here, a good sized nuke can put out 1.2 gigawatts of
power. Now a modern 3-truck locomotive can put out
about 6 megawatts. So we have the energy equivilent
of 200 big locomotives running at full throttle.

There was much talk after the '75 blackout about modifing
the power plants to trip to house load, meaning that
the plant would continue to generate power after the
circuit breaker to the grid tripped. Looks like it
didn't work.

Alaric B Snell wrote:

Howard R Garner wrote:

All nuclear plants have a secondary source of power and also have
emergency generation capabilities. Never a concern about radioactive
releases. Just a safty shutdown lake a steam plant would do.

Howard
20 years of Navy nuclear experience


Below a certain point, apparently, a nuclear plant is producing less
power than its own cooling system is consuming - so they need external
power to run the cooling system during startup and shutdown.

I remember a case in the former USSR where the Navy hadn't paid their
power bills for a year or so because they didn't have any money, so
the power company cut their line. The navy sent armed men to storm the
power station and turn the power back on - because they had a nuclear
sub under repair in dock with the reactor idling, and without power it
was in danger of becoming a glowing lump at the bottom of the harbour,
plus a good amount of dust in the air above, etc.

I've heard various contradictory accounts of What Went Wrong at
Chernobyl, but one of them related to the reactor being used for
experiments in powering down with minimal power input (eg, if you run
it hard then shut down quickly there might be enough 'inertia' in the
cooling system to last it or something) when something went wrong with
the incoming power line from the other reactors in the complex and
they were left with an overheated reactor and no power.

Also, power grids are complex beasts. It's not like a gas manifold -
you can't just plug in more generators. Not only are there AC phase
synch issues, but all sorts of other wierd stuff to do with inductance
and power factors and phase shifts when you have a hundred mile long
cable and whatnot. Apparently early attempts at power grids failed
until they managed to build analog computers that could solve all the
equations in real time in order to keep the network 'balanced' -
otherwise the voltage would rise in some areas and drop in others due
to interference patterns between the outputs from each generator or
something.

ABS

I remember an EE lecture in college about how they tried to assemble a
nation wide grid,
but that it was impossible to keep the whole thing in phase. IIRC, a low
frequency ripple
would start and slowly build amplitude until circuit breakers along the
line would pop.

Fred

It is my understanding that France (home of Liberty Fries and other cool
stuff) does not have power blackouts. France has 27 or so nuclear
plants scattered around the country and has so much electricity, they
have become a large net exporter. Perhaps if our governments (Federal
and State) would pull their heads out of the sand and look at the power
problem in this country realistally, we would not have these problems.
This is my third (1965, 1977 and 2003) power blackout. Basta! Enough!

Regards,

Marv

Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:32:00 +0000 (UTC), the renowned DejaVU
wrote:


That's a feat in itself! I can cool the local stuff like running a
laptop on a car battery etc, but how the hell do they connect to the
web?


The phone system runs on backup power, though we have only one phone
left in the house that doesn't require power from the wall to work.
The cellphone networks were up, but very busy. A
battery/inverter/generator powered laptop with a modem and you're
laughing, provided your ISP isn't down. I would have been okay, but
didn't bother, too busy with friends over, doing an impromptu BBQ
(natural gas) with Kraft dinner (macaroni and cheese) for the kids
and having a few beers before they got warm. ;-) But there wasn't
much more food in the house.

I sure did think of Gunner and his survivalist friends who would be in
a heck of a lot better shape than us if this had continued for even
another day or two. And if this had been a real emergency (and the
news was lies to keep us from panicking, which also crossed my
mind)...


so the answer is some way to isolate them from each other without
shutting down everything. some network planner is going to get grey
hair...


Whatever triggered this, it was obviously a system problem on a large
scale. No single failure should have been able to cause this- at worst
a very limited area should have been isolated in blackout. An
*engineering* failure, for sure.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:58:57 GMT, the renowned Marv Soloff
wrote:

It is my understanding that France (home of Liberty Fries and other cool
stuff) does not have power blackouts. France has 27 or so nuclear
plants scattered around the country and has so much electricity, they
have become a large net exporter. Perhaps if our governments (Federal
and State) would pull their heads out of the sand and look at the power
problem in this country realistally, we would not have these problems.
This is my third (1965, 1977 and 2003) power blackout. Basta! Enough!

I agree, though the reason for this blackout and the 1965 ones was not
(directly) lack of generating capacity.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

Spehro Pefhany wrote:

Whatever triggered this, it was obviously a system problem on a large
scale. No single failure should have been able to cause this- at worst
a very limited area should have been isolated in blackout. An
*engineering* failure, for sure.

I have to respectfully disagree. I think that they've
created a monster that's impossible to model or simulate.
It's not even clear that there's been a 'failure' in the
sense of a defective component. It could have been some
sort of transient that resonated rather than damped down.

Just trying to visualize all that current zipping back
and forth with phase changes and turbine inerta and line
capacitance makes my head spin.

Here where I work, we've even speculated that it is
(remotely) possible that they'll never get the grid
up again. Think about it. All the old farts that brought
it back in '75 are probably gone. The new kids running
the system have never had to deal with this order of a
restart. It can't be trivial and they haven't any
experience doing it. It's sort of like an old car that
you dare not shut off for fear you'll never get it
started again.

ff wrote:

I remember an EE lecture in college about how they tried to assemble a
nation wide grid,
but that it was impossible to keep the whole thing in phase. IIRC, a low
frequency ripple
would start and slowly build amplitude until circuit breakers along the
line would pop.

The answer to this is to ditch AC for the grid. The only reason we use
AC is that you can use transformers to alter the voltage efficiently,
allowing high voltage long-distance links to be stepped down to
household mains.

There is talk afoot of developing huge transistors the size of
electricity substations, and thus building giant switched mode supplies,
in order to run a DC grid instead. The conversion to AC would occur in
your neighbourhood - purely for backwards compatability reasons.

Then the grid *would* behave like a gas manifold system! Replace
'voltage' with 'pressure' and 'current' with 'flow'! Feed pressure in
from the power plants, and it'll flow to where the drain is... nice and
simple :-)


Fred


ABS

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:43:30 -0700, Jim Stewart
wrote:


Here where I work, we've even speculated that it is
(remotely) possible that they'll never get the grid
up again.

As of 5:00 PM Friday, the whole thing was up and running.

-Carl

Leo Lichtman wrote:
What I don't inderstand is why the separate generating stations, with
their local distribution lines can't unhook from the grid and restart
separately, so the people have power. The extra stability provided
by the grid, when it is running right is gone when it fails. So why
not settle for "second best," and go back to the old way?

that's what they do, to some extent, but there is still a lot of
coordination that needs to take place even in one county. The control room
of a major utility is a pretty awesome affair. There is usually some
equipment damage to repair as well. As of this morning, Long Island was
disconnected from most of the grid.

Alaric B Snell wrote: The answer to this is to ditch AC for the grid. The
only reason we use AC is that you can use transformers to alter the voltage
efficiently, allowing high voltage long-distance links to be stepped down
to household mains.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
One of us does not understand this. The use of transformers makes it
possible to send power long distances without big I(squared)R losses.
Edison did not understand this. Steinmetz did. The result is that we have
very efficient power transmission lines that cross the country.

I don't believe it is the fact that we are using AC, per se, that results in
these instabilities. It is a domino effect caused by inadequately designed
automated "protection."

ff wrote in message ...
Alaric B Snell wrote:

I remember an EE lecture in college about how they tried to assemble a
nation wide grid,
but that it was impossible to keep the whole thing in phase. IIRC, a low
frequency ripple
would start and slowly build amplitude until circuit breakers along the
line would pop.

Fred

Now this is interesting.. I noticed for several days before the lights
went out that my window fan was making an odd noise, a sort of
resonating sound that I took to be a bearing going South.. Frequency
and duration would be hard to estimate now, but it seemed the sound
was increasing in duration (dunno about any change in frequency,
duration definitely increased) over the days leading up to the
blackout (which is to be expected of a bearing problem), I'm going to
guess I heard it 4-5 times per hour for 3-5 minutes at a time. Anyone
else hear anything similar in those last few days?

John

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:58:57 GMT, Marv Soloff
wrote:

It is my understanding that France (home of Liberty Fries and other cool
stuff) does not have power blackouts. France has 27 or so nuclear
plants scattered around the country and has so much electricity, they
have become a large net exporter. Perhaps if our governments (Federal
and State) would pull their heads out of the sand and look at the power
problem in this country realistally, we would not have these problems.
This is my third (1965, 1977 and 2003) power blackout. Basta! Enough!

Regards,

Marv

Its not sand they have their heads up.....

Gunner


Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:32:00 +0000 (UTC), the renowned DejaVU
wrote:


That's a feat in itself! I can cool the local stuff like running a
laptop on a car battery etc, but how the hell do they connect to the
web?


The phone system runs on backup power, though we have only one phone
left in the house that doesn't require power from the wall to work.
The cellphone networks were up, but very busy. A
battery/inverter/generator powered laptop with a modem and you're
laughing, provided your ISP isn't down. I would have been okay, but
didn't bother, too busy with friends over, doing an impromptu BBQ
(natural gas) with Kraft dinner (macaroni and cheese) for the kids
and having a few beers before they got warm. ;-) But there wasn't
much more food in the house.

I sure did think of Gunner and his survivalist friends who would be in
a heck of a lot better shape than us if this had continued for even
another day or two. And if this had been a real emergency (and the
news was lies to keep us from panicking, which also crossed my
mind)...


so the answer is some way to isolate them from each other without
shutting down everything. some network planner is going to get grey
hair...


Whatever triggered this, it was obviously a system problem on a large
scale. No single failure should have been able to cause this- at worst
a very limited area should have been isolated in blackout. An
*engineering* failure, for sure.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty
is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-- Ben Franklin

Without a load, one doesn't want to generate G Watts - in fact
where does it go. The pop the lines and shut down the core.
The turbine plants did the same thing, only some of them take longer
to spin-up as a smaller diesel is used to power the windings of a
smaller
turbine and then it in turn electrifies the windings in others.

Naturally, they, the turbines can't be turned until there is ample
'holy' steam - the industry calls the water that. Once the burners
are up to temp and the steam is running - Then the windings are
engerized.

Gee haven't you ever been in a power house ? - been near ? I have been
and worked inside as a consultant.

Martin
--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Alaric B Snell wrote:


I've heard various contradictory accounts of What Went Wrong at
Chernobyl, but one of them related to the reactor being used for
experiments in powering down with minimal power input (eg, if you run
it hard then shut down quickly there might be enough 'inertia' in the
cooling system to last it or something) when something went wrong with
the incoming power line from the other reactors in the complex and
they were left with an overheated reactor and no power.

I've read a detailed report on Chernobyl. The reactor operators were
fooling around
and trying to settle a barroom bet on how long they could keep the
station operating
solely on the inertia in the turbo-alternator set. But, they forgot
some things that
made this a really bad plan. First, the Chernobyl reactor, an
RBMK-1000, is really
a Plutonium-production reactor diverted for civilian power use. In
other words, it
is a graphite-moderated fast-neutron breeder reactor. It was also going
to shut down
for refueling, so it's fuel was at end of burn, with a great deal of
Plutonium and
other fission products in the fuel. But, unlike many of our air-cooled
production
reactors, it uses light water as the coolant, in many small pipes that
run through the
core. The light water absorbs neutrons, and provides a regulating
influence on
the power level of the reactor. Finally, reactor fuel at end of burn
becomes much
more sensitive to the control rods or other damping influence on the
reaction rate,
and so the control rods need to only be lifted a small amount for the
fission reaction
to increase.

Well, anyway, that is the setup for what happened. They dropped off the
grid, and
were powering the station from the turbo-alternator. Then, they cut off
the feedwater
to the steam generators, and were diverting the heat output of the
reactor to the
cooling towers. As the alternator slowed down, line voltage and
frequency dropped,
and all machinery in the reactor slowed down, including the pumps
circulating
cooling water in the reactor's primary cooling loop. The reactor was
still producing
lots of heat, since the reaction was just shut down, and the fission
daughters would
take two weeks to break down significantly. Well, all this heat, and
the slowed
circulation of the water allowed the water to flash to steam at the ends
of the pipes.
The steam flash pretty much stopped the flow, and much of the water in
the pipes
exploded out the ends, probably blowing the roof off at that time. Now, the
"sleeping" reactor was no longer moderated by the water in the pipes,
and went
from essentially zero controlled fission (the fission daughters are
spontaneous
fissions, and not controllable in any way) to gigawatts in about 10 seconds.
Any remaining water exploded at that point, and gas heated to 10 KiloKelvins
or so blew the reactor all over the place. The now disrupted core burst
into
flames, spreading much of the core (fuel, graphite, and anything else in
there)
all over eastern Europe. There may or may not have been a Hydrogen
explosion,
after the water was disassociated by the hot metals in the core. It
would not
have made much difference, anyway, at that point.

All this to settle a bar bet! Geez, they could have calculated the
answer on the
back of an envelope!

Jon

Leo Lichtman wrote:

Alaric B Snell wrote: The answer to this is to ditch AC for the grid. The
only reason we use AC is that you can use transformers to alter the voltage
efficiently, allowing high voltage long-distance links to be stepped down
to household mains.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
One of us does not understand this. The use of transformers makes it
possible to send power long distances without big I(squared)R losses.
Edison did not understand this. Steinmetz did. The result is that we have
very efficient power transmission lines that cross the country.

I don't believe it is the fact that we are using AC, per se, that results in
these instabilities. It is a domino effect caused by inadequately designed
automated "protection."


Yes, but trying to couple large, distributed systems by direct AC connection
becomes very difficult. The problem is an AC interconnect of the type
normally
used is just a bunch of transformers, possibly with some series
inductors, between
sections of the grid. All loads have some power factor, or phase angle
between
voltage and current. So, you end up with a lot of variables. There's
voltage,
there's frequency, and there's phase angles for both voltage and current.
So that's 4 different parameters. The alternators have fantastic
inertia (the
rotors weigh 50 tons or so and are spinning at 3600 RPM) and the cities are
filled with thousands of motors spinning near synchronous speed. This
provides a huge inertia, with the phase angle changing constantly, a form of
imaginary power flow that is constantly rippling back and forth between
generating stations and their loads. Add a bunch of these station-load
groups, and tie them all together with transformers and transmission lines
(think of springs here) and you have a very complex, dynamic system.
Cause a ripple over here, it bounces around through the system like waves
on the ocean, reflecting off one region, then hitting another. It is a
totally
chaotic system, and sometimes these ripples can all combine at one spot
and cause real trouble. (Have you heard about the giant ocean waves?
Sometimes, way out in the ocean, waves coming from many directions
can just all line up and pass through the same spot at the same time, in
phase, and cause 130' waves to totally smash big ships.) This is the same
thing that can happen in the power grid.

Now, I don't know about distribution to the neighborhood of DC. Someday
that may actually make sense, too. But, in large power transmission
systems,
DC makes sense, as there is no radiation loss, no ground heating, less
corona,
and on and on. But, the other advantage is that voltage, current and
phase all
are independently adjustable. So, a phase transient or just a slow
shift in phase
of one system will not disturb the system at the other end of the line.

There are other ways to do this, however. Many large transmission systems
have huge cycloconverters at one end of each major transmission line.
This allows them to match the power phase between the two systems no
matter what the phase relationship is, and control the flow of power without
respect to phase. These cycloconverters are the size of an apartment
building,
and have SCRs (some use optically-controlled Insulated Gate Bipolar
Transistors)
that are a foot or so in diameter, and carry thousands of amps at 1200 V
and higher.
Banks of these in series control power at 14,000 V, which is stepped up for
transmission.

Jon

Eastburn wrote:

Without a load, one doesn't want to generate G Watts - in fact
where does it go. The pop the lines and shut down the core.
The turbine plants did the same thing, only some of them take longer
to spin-up as a smaller diesel is used to power the windings of a
smaller
turbine and then it in turn electrifies the windings in others.

Naturally, they, the turbines can't be turned until there is ample
'holy' steam - the industry calls the water that. Once the burners
are up to temp and the steam is running - Then the windings are
engerized.


No, actually, the big turbo-alternator sets can't ever stop turning.
The alternator
rotors weigh 50 + tons, and the shafts will bend if they stop turning.
They have
a small motor called the turning gear that keeps the machine rotating slowly
when no steam is available. The air gap on the rotors is incredibly small
for such a huge machine, about .001" per side. The rotor on an 800 MVA
alternator is about 18-20" diameter and about 12 feet long. it is solid
steel,
with the shaft and rotor one piece. Grooves are cut into the face of the
rotor, and solid rectangular copper bars are fitted into the grooves, with
insulating paper surrounding them. They run some fantastic current through
these bars, something like 10,000 Amps at 100 V DC! They'd melt if it
wasn't for the Hydrogen cooling.

If the high pressure section of the turbines ever cool off, there is a
complicated
procedure to warm them up slowly without causing too much condensation on
the blades and guide vanes. You don't want a lot of water slinging
around inside
the turbine while parts are moving near the speed of sound, only a
fraction of
an inch apart.

Jon

Have you heard about the giant ocean waves?
Sometimes, way out in the ocean, waves coming from many directions
can just all line up and pass through the same spot at the same time, in
phase, and cause 130' waves to totally smash big ships.)

Called a 'rogue wave' and it is one of the most feared of deep ocean
phenomena.

Ken.

Jon Elson wrote:

There are other ways to do this, however. Many large transmission systems
have huge cycloconverters at one end of each major transmission line.
This allows them to match the power phase between the two systems no
matter what the phase relationship is, and control the flow of power
without
respect to phase. These cycloconverters are the size of an apartment
building,
and have SCRs (some use optically-controlled Insulated Gate Bipolar
Transistors)
that are a foot or so in diameter, and carry thousands of amps at 1200 V
and higher.
Banks of these in series control power at 14,000 V, which is stepped up for
transmission.

Oooh!

I love big power transmission systems. I inherited a load of books from
my grandfathers - never met either of them, sadly, but they were both
engineers in the days when 'engineer' covered 'mechanical, civil, and
electrical'. So I have a few old books on power transmission, ever since
I was learning to read, and big transformers and whatnot have always
filled me with breathless awe. When I was a kid I wired my room with a
12v power distribution system - regulated, with automatic battery backup
that recharged when it was on mains, and fault tolerance :-)

Ahem. I had a strange childhood.


Jon


ABS

Hey Jim,

Hmmm... the re-synch is no problem. It's what to do with the heat
generated by the reactor, maybe one million pounds of steam (or
more??) per hour while they "idle" the turbines. Not even a big
cooling tower can do THAT. SCRAM the plant first.

Take care.

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:51:28 -0700, mawdeeb
wrote:

The nuclear side of the plants themselves do not shut down, just the
generating grid that they are hooked to. The problem when bringing
everything back online is re-syncing the ac freq of the generators to
the grid frequency. The wrong frequency would load down the line and
re-trip the system again.

Jim Vrzal
Holiday,FL.

DejaVU wrote:
so, Gunner and his survivalist buddies have a point after all!

but I still fail to understand why the nuclear plants shut themselves
down? anyone care to explain?

swarf, steam and wind

--
David Forsyth -:- the email address is real /"\
http://terrapin.ru.ac.za/~iwdf/welcome.html \ /
ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail - - - - - - - X
If you receive email saying "Send this to everyone you know," / \
PLEASE pretend you don't know me.

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:58:57 GMT, Marv Soloff
scribed:

It is my understanding that France (home of Liberty Fries and other cool
stuff) does not have power blackouts. France has 27 or so nuclear
plants scattered around the country and has so much electricity, they
have become a large net exporter. Perhaps if our governments (Federal
and State) would pull their heads out of the sand and look at the power
problem in this country realistally, we would not have these problems.
This is my third (1965, 1977 and 2003) power blackout. Basta! Enough!

Regards,

Marv

Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 10:32:00 +0000 (UTC), the renowned DejaVU
wrote:


That's a feat in itself! I can cool the local stuff like running a
laptop on a car battery etc, but how the hell do they connect to the
web?


The phone system runs on backup power, though we have only one phone
left in the house that doesn't require power from the wall to work.
The cellphone networks were up, but very busy. A
battery/inverter/generator powered laptop with a modem and you're
laughing, provided your ISP isn't down. I would have been okay, but
didn't bother, too busy with friends over, doing an impromptu BBQ
(natural gas) with Kraft dinner (macaroni and cheese) for the kids
and having a few beers before they got warm. ;-) But there wasn't
much more food in the house.

I sure did think of Gunner and his survivalist friends who would be in
a heck of a lot better shape than us if this had continued for even
another day or two. And if this had been a real emergency (and the
news was lies to keep us from panicking, which also crossed my
mind)...


so the answer is some way to isolate them from each other without
shutting down everything. some network planner is going to get grey
hair...


Whatever triggered this, it was obviously a system problem on a large
scale. No single failure should have been able to cause this- at worst
a very limited area should have been isolated in blackout. An
*engineering* failure, for sure.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany


This months Wired Magazine had a pretty good layout of who imports and
exports power... France is right up near the top exporter as I read...

US is the largest importer of power...

Interesting read.

www.wired.com


Best,

Fred

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:27:45 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

Ill refrain from the Neener Neener Neener! G

Btw..the usual crop of regulars are still posting on misc.survivalism,
even though the neighborhoods are black as the bottom of a coal mine.
Perhaps proper preperation prevented **** poor performance?
We are survivalists, not be cause its a neat club to join..G but
because Bad **** does happen.

What you creampuff Kalifornians call Bad ****, us Upstate New Yorkers
call A Normal Day g.The weather around here can be severe and losing
power is just A Fact Of Life.

Example: In May, my niece got married despite a three-day power outage
(thanks to an ice storm). The reception hall had a generator for the
kitchen, and the banquet room was lit by about 500 candles. Very
romantic.

Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?
How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed out
their corpses?

A five hour power outage? No big deal- we would do what we always do-
fire up the generator and invite our elderly nieghbors over.
Anyone living in Central New York stocks up enough groceries for three
days (after that the stores are back in action) and those Evil Utility
Companies distribute dry ice for food storage. Some trucking companies
move reefer trailers to shopping mall parking lots so folks can store
their frozen foods. No charge.

In short, we all pull together and we just work around it.

If the power went out in, say, Los Angles on a hot summer evening, how
long before the rioting and looting started?

-Carl

"Alaric B Snell" wrote in message
...


Whole bunch of stuff snipped

Oooh!

I love big power transmission systems. I inherited a load of books from
my grandfathers - never met either of them, sadly, but they were both
engineers in the days when 'engineer' covered 'mechanical, civil, and
electrical'. So I have a few old books on power transmission, ever since
I was learning to read, and big transformers and whatnot have always
filled me with breathless awe. When I was a kid I wired my room with a
12v power distribution system - regulated, with automatic battery backup
that recharged when it was on mains, and fault tolerance :-)

Ahem. I had a strange childhood.


Jon


ABS


Ahem! I made two electric motors, 6 volt DC , from tin can metal, and wire
from old transformers, at 11 years of age! The next thing was a battery
radio from junk parts. No money for proper batteries, so it was powered by
scrounged fire alarm batteries. The batteries had to be replaced in local
industries once a year. Many were still good. They took up all of the space
under my bed. Before either of these projects, at 8 years of age, I came
into some old telephones. My own private telephone system was soon in
service, powered by,.........you guessed it, ..........scrounged fire alarm
batteries!

You are not alone!

Steve Rayner.

In the winter here on Canada's west coast, big trees often get blown down
over power lines. Sometimes hundreds of trees in my area alone. I keep
enough food on hand for two weeks. The power can go out for 4 days or more.

Steve Rayner.


"Carl Byrns" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:27:45 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

Ill refrain from the Neener Neener Neener! G

Btw..the usual crop of regulars are still posting on misc.survivalism,
even though the neighborhoods are black as the bottom of a coal mine.
Perhaps proper preperation prevented **** poor performance?
We are survivalists, not be cause its a neat club to join..G but
because Bad **** does happen.

What you creampuff Kalifornians call Bad ****, us Upstate New Yorkers
call A Normal Day g.The weather around here can be severe and losing
power is just A Fact Of Life.

Example: In May, my niece got married despite a three-day power outage
(thanks to an ice storm). The reception hall had a generator for the
kitchen, and the banquet room was lit by about 500 candles. Very
romantic.

Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?
How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed out
their corpses?

A five hour power outage? No big deal- we would do what we always do-
fire up the generator and invite our elderly nieghbors over.
Anyone living in Central New York stocks up enough groceries for three
days (after that the stores are back in action) and those Evil Utility
Companies distribute dry ice for food storage. Some trucking companies
move reefer trailers to shopping mall parking lots so folks can store
their frozen foods. No charge.

In short, we all pull together and we just work around it.

If the power went out in, say, Los Angles on a hot summer evening, how
long before the rioting and looting started?

-Carl

Now Now Carl -

I've been out for 11 days. I luckily had propane to cook and heat
water.
What water we could get with the power out. As luck has it, it runs
downhill.

We loose power on a monthly basis for several hours at a time.

Not all of us out here on the LEFT coast are from Kalifornians.

Martin
--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder


Carl Byrns wrote:

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:27:45 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

Ill refrain from the Neener Neener Neener! G

Btw..the usual crop of regulars are still posting on misc.survivalism,
even though the neighborhoods are black as the bottom of a coal mine.
Perhaps proper preperation prevented **** poor performance?
We are survivalists, not be cause its a neat club to join..G but
because Bad **** does happen.

What you creampuff Kalifornians call Bad ****, us Upstate New Yorkers
call A Normal Day g.The weather around here can be severe and losing
power is just A Fact Of Life.

Example: In May, my niece got married despite a three-day power outage
(thanks to an ice storm). The reception hall had a generator for the
kitchen, and the banquet room was lit by about 500 candles. Very
romantic.

Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?
How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed out
their corpses?

A five hour power outage? No big deal- we would do what we always do-
fire up the generator and invite our elderly nieghbors over.
Anyone living in Central New York stocks up enough groceries for three
days (after that the stores are back in action) and those Evil Utility
Companies distribute dry ice for food storage. Some trucking companies
move reefer trailers to shopping mall parking lots so folks can store
their frozen foods. No charge.

In short, we all pull together and we just work around it.

If the power went out in, say, Los Angles on a hot summer evening, how
long before the rioting and looting started?

-Carl

Eastburn wrote:

Now Now Carl -

I've been out for 11 days. I luckily had propane to cook and heat
water.
What water we could get with the power out. As luck has it, it runs
downhill.

We loose power on a monthly basis for several hours at a time.

Not all of us out here on the LEFT coast are from Kalifornians.

Martin
--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

And many of us were born in California. So what? It boils down to wherever
you live and whatever "bad ****" happens, you deal with it. I lost my home,
all my equity and a lot of capital investment, in the very early 80s. With a
few thousand in savings and our belongings, we started over. It was dealt
with better than some, and likely not as well as others. BFD. It's all about
surviving. You face what comes.

michael

still breathing, today has been a good day.....



Carl Byrns wrote:

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:27:45 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

Ill refrain from the Neener Neener Neener! G

Btw..the usual crop of regulars are still posting on misc.survivalism,
even though the neighborhoods are black as the bottom of a coal mine.
Perhaps proper preperation prevented **** poor performance?
We are survivalists, not be cause its a neat club to join..G but
because Bad **** does happen.

What you creampuff Kalifornians call Bad ****, us Upstate New Yorkers
call A Normal Day g.The weather around here can be severe and losing
power is just A Fact Of Life.

Example: In May, my niece got married despite a three-day power outage
(thanks to an ice storm). The reception hall had a generator for the
kitchen, and the banquet room was lit by about 500 candles. Very
romantic.

Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?
How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed out
their corpses?

A five hour power outage? No big deal- we would do what we always do-
fire up the generator and invite our elderly nieghbors over.
Anyone living in Central New York stocks up enough groceries for three
days (after that the stores are back in action) and those Evil Utility
Companies distribute dry ice for food storage. Some trucking companies
move reefer trailers to shopping mall parking lots so folks can store
their frozen foods. No charge.

In short, we all pull together and we just work around it.

If the power went out in, say, Los Angles on a hot summer evening, how
long before the rioting and looting started?

-Carl

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 04:16:53 GMT, Eastburn
wrote:

Now Now Carl -

I've been out for 11 days. I luckily had propane to cook and heat
water.
What water we could get with the power out. As luck has it, it runs
downhill.

We loose power on a monthly basis for several hours at a time.

Not all of us out here on the LEFT coast are from Kalifornians.

Martin

Not all of us Californians are Kalifornians...G

Gunner
"What do you call someone in possesion of all the facts? Paranoid.-William Burroughs

In article , Gunner says...

Not all of us Californians are Kalifornians...G

It's pretty clear to me that the big problem for
folks when the power goes out, is that all the
conveniences of life are set up to require it.

I would much rather deal with this in a setting
that never had power at all, with a source of
heat that does not rely on elecricity, the
way my oil fired boiler does. Or in a way
that food could be kept from spoiling without
electrically operated refrigerators.
Or with water and sanitation that don't require
electrical power.

Basically trading the current version of my
house for the original version - that had a
hand pump in the back yard, and outhouse, and
kerosene lamps. Coal furnace in the basement.

Really, an extended power outage here, in the
winter means either a) drain down all the
heating and plumbing systems, and bundle up
as much as possible, b) find a parlor stove
and try to keep the house above freezing by
finding enough scrap wood or coal for fuel,
or c) abandoning ship for another location
that does have heat. Or d) somehow keeping
a standby generator for running the boiler.

I'm beginning to see the wisdom of living in
a small cabin with a large franklin stove.
And a big woodpile. Two rooms and a path.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

Alaric B Snell wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:

Their first job will be to stablize the reactor, getting
coolant temperatures, pressures and levels to normal
idling levels. Once that is done, they have to determine
whether they can reconnect the plant to the grid and
ramp up power.


Well, in almost all conditions, they never even bother to trip the
reactor, they just let it run at rated power and attempt to get their
load back. In the case of the recent blackout, they may have reduced
reactor power, knowing it would be quite a while before they could
get back on the grid.


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.

Sadly, building an artificial mountain + lake next to every reactor
might be tricky. Huge flywheels, maybe?

They basicaly already have it. Big UPS and multiple Diesel generators.
Very reliable,
time-tested technology.

Now, the EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) has been developing
superconducting
magnetic energy storage devices for storing amounts of energy capable of
briding
the peak vs. baseline daily variation in demand.

Jon

In article , Jon Elson says...

They basicaly already have it. Big UPS and multiple Diesel generators.
Very reliable,
time-tested technology.

As a backup for nuclear power plants, this is the way.

However they're not that reliable. About ten years
ago Indian Point Two and Indian Point Three failed
their NRC inspections. One reason they did so, is
that of the several locomotive-sized diesel gensets
on site, all but (I think) one failed to come on
line and accept load, when tested.

What was that phrase - 'whooops.'

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

"Alaric B Snell" wrote in message
...
Jon Elson wrote:

Their first job will be to stablize the reactor, getting
coolant temperatures, pressures and levels to normal
idling levels. Once that is done, they have to determine
whether they can reconnect the plant to the grid and
ramp up power.

Well, in almost all conditions, they never even bother to trip the
reactor, they just let it run at rated power and attempt to get their
load back. In the case of the recent blackout, they may have reduced
reactor power, knowing it would be quite a while before they could
get back on the grid.

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.

They have these all over the world, they are called pump back units.

JTMcC.



Sadly, building an artificial mountain + lake next to every reactor
might be tricky. Huge flywheels, maybe?


Jon


ABS

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 01:36:25 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 21:37:38 GMT, Carl Byrns
wrote:


Now....how much fun would this have been if it happened during a
blizzard in Febuary?
How many millions of people would be popsicles until spring thawed out
their corpses?

A five hour power outage? No big deal- we would do what we always do-
fire up the generator and invite our elderly nieghbors over.
Anyone living in Central New York stocks up enough groceries for three
days (after that the stores are back in action) and those Evil Utility
Companies distribute dry ice for food storage. Some trucking companies
move reefer trailers to shopping mall parking lots so folks can store
their frozen foods. No charge.

Not a 5 hour power outage..lets try a two Day power outage or longer.
Not all power was restored in the East for at least 2 days in some
places, correct?


Beats me. My power was on in 5 hours- no big deal.
We did have an ice storm a few years ago that left some populated
areas without power for a month. In the winter, which can be severe.
No one died from it.

You can't understand winter around here until you've lived through it-
the day can start in the 40's and sunny and be sub-zero with four FEET
of snow by nightfall. This is perfectly normal- we take the Boy Scouts
camping in such weather.

-Carl

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 04:16:53 GMT, Eastburn
wrote:

Now Now Carl -

I've been out for 11 days. I luckily had propane to cook and heat
water.
What water we could get with the power out. As luck has it, it runs
downhill.

We loose power on a monthly basis for several hours at a time.

Not all of us out here on the LEFT coast are from Kalifornians.

Martin

Sorry, Martin- I meant no offense.
It just amuses the hell out of me that what some call 'survivalism' us
Upstate New Yorkers call 'an average day'.

We Upstaters get a kick out of watching major cities like DC come to a
screeching halt after a 2 inch snowfall. Hell, we don't even bother to
brush that off the car g.

-Carl

In article , John T. McCracken says...

JTMcC, who has diesel, candles, coleman lanterns, flashlights, batteries,
ect. ect. : )

How do you handle heat, and water. Diesel to generate
electricity, to pump water and run boilers?

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article , Carl Byrns says...

You can't understand winter around here until you've lived through it-
the day can start in the 40's and sunny and be sub-zero with four FEET
of snow by nightfall.

I recall such a day even around here, in '96. Well,
maybe not four feet, until the next morning. Maybe
three.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

On 17 Aug 2003 07:51:05 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Carl Byrns says...

You can't understand winter around here until you've lived through it-
the day can start in the 40's and sunny and be sub-zero with four FEET
of snow by nightfall.

I recall such a day even around here, in '96. Well,
maybe not four feet, until the next morning. Maybe
three.

Jim

Happened here (well, 30 miles from here) this year. One of my
co-workers was right in the middle of it.

-Carl