Thursday, January 28, 2016

Retired nuclear guy speaks out against Darlington refurb

No, not this retired nuclear guy.

What, they aren't replacing the steam generators?  They're shot to crap.  The whole thing about the 'water laser' was that it destroyed everything.  This is the same as the Niagara Tunnel to Nowhere.  "Let's leave out improving the pumped storage, too much money."  Now they are replacing pressure tubes to nowhere.

He makes some choice sound bites.  Won't repeat them here.  Anyway, I'm not getting depressed over this, it's only money.  Have fun!

** water laser - The fact that those horrible pressure tubes start 'lasing' under the high flows needed to have the rated capacity.  By changing a 5 vane pump to 7 they reduced the horrendous stresses (welding the pressure tubes to each other and shattering them), to just horrible (fatigue).  I wrote something about this.

ps.  They probably ran the numbers through focus groups to check the 'optics', just like the tunnel.  They don't want to wake up the sleepy Ontario voters.  14 billion sounds good, people will think they get a whole new plant for that, and that's the cost.  The true cost of 25 bills will never fly, you could get 2 new plants for that.  So now they will pump the output of virile new tubes, into the 'old lady' steam generators and they will instantly die of apoplexy.  Hey, we need new steam generators!  :)

ps.  I dub this "Retube to Nowhere"  :)

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