“They took 24 lightning strikes on the site,” - Va. nuke plant event

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?smp=&lang=eng


Dominion Virginia Power’s North Anna 2 nuclear reactor shut down during a thunderstorm Wednesday after being hit by dozens of lightning strikes, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “They took 24 lightning strikes on the site,” said NRC spokesman Joey Ledford in Atlanta. “The last one struck one of the lightning rods on the containment building,” Ledford said, and the surge from that 7:20 p.m. strike tripped the electronic reactor protection system. “It seems to be pretty much an act of God,” he said. Damage was limited to auxiliary instruments monitoring reactor coolant temperature at the 973-megawatt power plant in Louisa County, said Domin-ion Virginia Power spokes-man Rick Zuercher. “We’re expecting to find blown fuses and a power supply that was affected,” which should be fixed rela-tively quickly, he said. “I do not expect it to be a long outage.” The power plant was in “hot shutdown” Thursday, Zuercher said. The largest Virginia util-ity relies on its four nuclear power plants in the state — two at North Anna and two at Surry — to help carry the base electrical demand from its 2.3 million custom-ers. Dominion would not say how much the outage was costing the company. The energy in a light-ning bolt dwarfs that of a power station like North Anna 2. According to the Na-tional Oceanic and Atmos-pheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, “lightning can have 100 million to 1 billion volts, and contains billions of watts.” “Some bolts ... are going to get past even fairly well-designed lightning protec-tion systems,” said Bill Sammler, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office. As a result, lightning causing reactors to trip off-line is “not terribly un-usual,” the NRC’s Ledford said. Including Wednesday’s reactor trip, North Anna 2 has been shut down four times by lightning strikes since 1998, according to Dominion Virginia Power. The last previous hit was May 28, which took the plant off-line for six days.
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why don't they have some kind of lightning deflector?

[MineralMan]

1. Thanks for your news about effective safety measures at

nuclear power plants. Your Hungarian website does a great service in demonstrating that modern safety measures at nuclear power plants have made them more and more safe. You do the nuclear power industry a great favor by showing how safety measures work as designed.

On another note: Since I live in a lightning-prone area, could you give me a link to someplace I can buy those "lightning deflectors" to which you refer. I will purchase one at once. :rofl:

[ensho]

2. isn't that what a lightning rod on your house does? deflect?

aren't there different grades of lightning rods?

[RollWithIt]

4. Size.... and its absorb... not deflect... nt

[ensho]

8. I thought it attracted the lightning and deflected it down the wire into

the ground.

the ground, grounded the lightning?

[MineralMan]

11. Whatever. The nuclear plant had one, right? It functioned properly

and minimized the damage. Excellence in engineering. Once again, you have done the nuclear power industry a yeoman's job of demonstrating how much planning goes into safety measures. We're proud of you, ensho. So proud...

[BeFree]

18. How much planning goes into nukes

And you can thank the 'radicals' who didn't believe the lies told us about how safe nukes are.

Those 'radicals' insisted on extra measures for these time bombs and have probably saved millions of people from death and destruction.

Unfortunately, the 'radicals' who worked the deepwater horizon incidents were not as successful in their endeavors to control the inevitable damages.

So, get down on your knees and thank those who saved our asses from certain problems like lightening blowing a nuke plant sky-high and into your cereal.

[Tesha]

10. Well, yes and no.

Lightning rods provide two functions that interact
synergistically:

Their very sharp points allow a corona discharge
that bleeds off accumulations of local charges, making
it a bit less likely that lightning will select your rooftop
to strike.

But if lightning actually does head towards your roof,
the lightning rod will preferentially get hit and provide
a very low-impedance path to conduct the current of
the lightning stroke to ground, minimizing the voltage gradients
created across your house. And by carrying the current
in the metal conductors of the rods' grounding system,
there's less chance the current will try to flow in the wood
structure of your house, exploding it or lighting it on fire.

Tesha

[MineralMan]

5. No, it doesn't deflect lighting. Rather, it attracts the lightning,

then sends it safely to a ground. Indeed, your very article referred to the lightning rods on the reactor building. Apparently they worked pretty well. There was only minor damage, which will soon be repaired.

Again, thanks for publicizing the safety of modern nuclear reactors. And thanks for posting the countless stores from your Hungarian web site. We are so grateful for your constant support for the nuclear power industry. Yes, indeed.

[Statistical]

6. "The last one struck one of the lightning rods on the containment building,”

No lightning rods don't deflect lightning.

The attempt to create a situation where the lightning rod is the most likely point to be struck. So if anything they attract lightning to a safe strike area.

Still the word is "attract" not guarantee. Nature is sometimes unpredictable and can find another route to the ground bypassing the lightning rod.

Glad to see how safe our nuclear reactors are. 24 lightning strikes and no damger to worker or public. LETS GO NUCLEAR!
In related news the recovery rig in Gulf got struck by lightning once and burst into flames.

[arcadian]

16. You sound like a spokesman for Dominion power.

The actual danger is in the shipment of the fuel rods from where they are manfactured to the reactor sites. They put them on unmarked 18 wheelers. Oh yeah, the driver has a pistol. Reeeeeeal safe. :eyes:

I should add, this is the little secret the NRC and power companies don't want you to know about. It's why they don't ever talk about it. Sure the 3 foot thick containment wall can with stand a 747 crshing into it, but the delivery of the fuel for the reactor is just out on the nation's highways just waiting for an accident.

[RollWithIt]

3. So proper safety measures were adhered to and nothing happened?

Yet another reason why we should have MORE nuclear plants like they have done in Europe. NOT more coal.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes, once again Ensho has given us evidence of nuclear power

safety. We should all give him a big hand. "YAY ENSHO!"

[Codeine]

9. Another fabulous example of nuclear safety.

973 megawatts of clean power operating safely during a heavy lightning storm -- great stuff!

[MineralMan]

12. Our Friend The Atom

Even Disney knew:

[blueworld]

13. Thanks for showing the safety measures are a crap shoot at best

“Some bolts ... are going to get past even fairly well-designed lightning protec-tion systems,” said Bill Sammler, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office. As a result, lightning causing reactors to trip off-line is “not terribly un-usual,” the NRC’s Ledford said. Including Wednesday’s reactor trip, North Anna 2 has been shut down four times by lightning strikes since 1998, according to Dominion Virginia Power. The last previous hit was May 28, which took the plant off-line for six days."

"some bolts"? "not terribly unusual"? Off line for 6 freakin' days & the protection systems are working? Puh-leeze. It was shut down many more times for other reasons.

I live less than 4 miles away from another of their nuclear brain-trusts which frequently leaks into the air & water, but we usually don't find out for months.

However there are always those who think humans can conquer nature, make fool-proof back-ups & never worry that something might slip past their perfect vigilance. Good grief. Thanks for posting this.

[gratuitous]

14. Maybe they should erect a six-story Jesus sculpture?

I'm so glad to see that the company at least fessed up to some inconvenience. I wonder what the real story is, given that nuclear power plant operators are only slightly more trustworthy than BP?

[ensho]

15. agree

nt

[Overseas]

17. Kicking on the dangers of nuclear power. Still there. The billions required

to extend nuclear power should be poured first into renewables, conservation technology and given to the cities to fund for mass transit improvements on a grand scale.

Funding to safeguard existing nuclear plants and improve them, but not to build more until we have given full support (the same subsidy levels we have given Big Oil for decades) to the much safer, much more long lasting solar, wind, conservation, other renewable technology, and mass transit systems.

Funding for mass transit nationwide, given to cities and states, should be part of our defense budget. A diverse range of mass transit options all over the country.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

19. the Soviets built a scalar lightning generator

or so they claimed. The russians later claimed that they could make a hurricane, and still maintain that claim.