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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 23 2014, @03:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the power-to-the-people dept.

Over at IEEE Spectrum is a story on a series of Nuclear reactor shutdowns threatening power supply in the UK and Belgium.

In Belgium, rolling blackouts are already part of this winter's forecast because three of the country's largest reactors—reactors that normally provide one-quarter of Belgian electricity—are shut down.

This follows an ultrasound inspection in 2012 into possible cracks in the reactor pressure vessel at the Doel Nuclear reactor.

This has led to the shutdown of two reactors, however a third reactor appears to have been deliberately sabotaged. In losing these three reactors Belgium's generating capacity has been halved, and the country is looking at the possibility of blackouts.

The larger danger is that the possible flaws in the pressure vessel indicate a more fundamental design problem, which could affect the generation capacity of other countries using a similar design, and which are heavily dependent on Nuclear sources for baseline power generation. At the same time:

The U.K., meanwhile, is experiencing the same sort of "series defect" that started Belgium's troubles.

The real danger is highlighted at the end of the IEEE article, where the experience of blackout may lead to running these plants for longer than expected, and at a higher risk, yet:

The majority of people will accept the life extension because they place supply reliability at the top of their preferences.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:09PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:09PM (#97203)

    For a good laugh look at nukes blackstart capability (and frankly more critically the legal requirements)

    To make a long story short its safe to shut all those dudes down, or leave all of them running, but there is a safety minimum where you shut down some and have blackouts and suddenly have a plant that isn't generating and isn't getting shore power (or whatever the non-navy term is) for cooling. Aka fukushima II.

    Thats the irony of nuke power. You can't have a stable grid without nukes (well, for most nations grids in 2014) and you can't have nukes without a stable grid unless you're super reckless.

    This "lets shut down two but keep some running and who cares about blackouts" is the kind of stupidity that leads to meltdowns.

    Oh they'll probably be fine. Probably. The diesel backup will probably start. If it doesn't, fine weather and spare parts and clear roads means a fixit guy will fix it instantly. Probably. Or they'll tow in a portable gen to keep the coolant and control systems up. Probably. And the grid will likely come up "on its own" before anything melts anyway... probably. Feeling lucky today?

    Can't run a nuke without a stable source of power, can't have a stable source of power without a nuke ... checkmate.

    At least if you had a boatload of solar and wind, "most of the time" you'd have power. I wonder if any nuke plans have an engineered cooling solution where you have cooling only while the sun is up during the shortest day of the winter. That might be a wise engineering design, or better than nothing. A nuke colocated with a solar plant sounds like a real good idea.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:21PM

      by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:21PM (#97210)

      I wonder if any nuke plans have an engineered cooling solution where you have cooling only while the sun is up during the shortest day of the winter.

      There not only are nuclear plants that can do that, there are plants which need no active cooling after shutdown at all [wikipedia.org]:

      In April 1986, two special tests were performed on the EBR-II, in which the main primary cooling pumps were shut off with the reactor at full power (62.5 megawatts, thermal). By not allowing the normal shutdown systems to interfere, the reactor power dropped to near zero within about 300 seconds. No damage to the fuel or the reactor resulted. This test demonstrated that even with a loss of all electrical power and the capability to shut down the reactor using the normal systems, the reactor will simply shut down without danger or damage.

      Plant operators don't need to throw any switches, no safety systems need to automatically engage and keep running, you can literally just walk away from it and the laws of physics (which famously never turn off) will coast the thing to a standstill.

      • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by RedGreen on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:48PM

        by RedGreen (888) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:48PM (#97229)

        How dare you inject facts into the discussion, the back to the stone age envirowackos will be outraged.

        --
        "I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
      • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:22PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:22PM (#97252)

        The problem is you're talking about a very small EBR (surface area to volume ratio!) and I'm talking about installed working commercial BWR/PWR cores.

        Also there is nothing technological preventing a BWR / PWR from being "walk away safe". Sub guys can't tell the truth because of security theater but hearsay is their tiny little plants are walk away safe. Which is probably partially a surface area to volume thing, and also being surrounded by coolant likely helps (although sea water is a bit corrosive).

        Its like bridge building. You can build an indestructible bridge, you'll just never be able to pay for it. I am willing to go out on a limb that the costs for your little EBR will not scale.

        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:56PM

          by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:56PM (#97271)

          EBR-II's design doesn't depend on surface-to-volume ratio, it's based on thermal expansion, heat conduction and a large coolant repository:
          1) Low-pressure operation allows you to have large thin-walled vessels with lots of coolant to absorb large amounts of heat, rather than small thick-walled pressure vessels for LWRs (which are expensive, so there's an impetus to keep 'em as small as possible). EBR-II and the Russian BN-800 (800MWe) are completely immersed in a pool of liquid sodium coolant - it's almost equivalent to flooding the entirety of an LWR's containment with water.
          2) Higher temperature coolant (around 550C for EBR-II) allows for much more efficient radiant heat dissipation and conduction - it's the steeper thermal gradient that gives you most of the self-cooling capability.
          3) Metallic fuel instead of oxide fuel allows for thermal expansion of fuel elements to take the reactor sub-critical.
          4) Liquid sodium has high thermal expansion, so achieving natural circulation and convective cooling is quite simple.
          Notice that all of the above principles are based on basic laws of physics, so they are, by any meaning of the word, fail-safe. BWRs/PWRs have none of these characteristics and so achieving walk-away safety is much harder in them. It's possible in certain designs, but very difficult.

          • (Score: 1, Troll) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:20AM

            by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:20AM (#97508)

            Thin walls are no good for resistance to seismic activity or other violent events like explosions (the reactor isn't the only thing that can go boom). Sodium is corrosive and also becomes heavily contaminated and thus difficult to dispose of.

            You fix one problem but introduce several new ones.

            --
            const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
            • (Score: 2) by subs on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:30AM

              by subs (4485) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @09:30AM (#97552)

              Thin walls are no good for resistance to seismic activity or other violent events like explosions (the reactor isn't the only thing that can go boom)

              1) The reactor can't go boom, because it doesn't operate under pressure. There's no stored energy term to push things out.
              2) There's really not much else inside the containment that operates under pressure - even the steam generators are separate.
              3) The reactor is installed sub-grade underneath a blast shield, so there's even better aircraft impact protection.
              4) The reactor housings are seismically isolated [nuclearstreet.com], so their resistance to seismic shocks is perfectly adequate. Existing PWRs aren't seismically isolated because their associated infrastructure is very large, heavy and complex and thus expensive to build onto a single seismically isolated plate. Sodium-cooled reactors are much more compact, so this becomes much easier.

              Sodium is corrosive and also becomes heavily contaminated and thus difficult to dispose of.

              Sodium isn't corrosive, you're confusing it with molten-salt reactors and even in them, corrosion has been shown to be controllable and not really a big issue. Besides, for molten-salt reactor operations corrosivity is at best an investment-protection problem, not a safety problem. If they spring a leak, you catch it underneath the reactor vessel in a catch pan and drain to coolant tanks.
              Sodium coolant becomes activated, not contaminated - at no point do fission products enter the sodium. Activated sodium has a 15 hour half-life, so it's not a disposal problem. Contamination could only happen if the cladding melted, which it can't, since as I've shown, the reactor is unable to operate outside of its safe operational envelope due to the basic physics of the system.

              You fix one problem but introduce several new ones.

              As you can see, none of these problems are really problems.

              • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:18AM

                by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @11:18AM (#97577)

                This fantasy reactor you talk about is very interesting, but I wonder why no-one has built one or even used some of these amazing techniques in existing designs. For example, you say that the reactor would be seismically isolated... Well, they are experts at that kind of thing in Japan, and it didn't work very well.

                --
                const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
                • (Score: 3, Informative) by subs on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:20PM

                  by subs (4485) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:20PM (#97614)

                  Glad you agree that the problems you raised have been resolved, so now we can move on to discuss why it wasn't done.
                   

                  I wonder why no-one has built one

                  This is a complicated issue. The design was developed in the late 80s and early 90s in the US as part of the advanced fast breeder reactor program, also known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). The IFR project got swept up into the political debate and got associated with the republicans, so all democrats viewed it as an enemy without considerations to its merits (plus a bunch of funding from natural gas industry also helped). Ultimately it was killed in 1994 by the Clinton administration which defunded the project, perhaps a couple of years away from commercialization. GE ultimately finalized the design using its own funding (though it took longer because of that), but then hit another snag - the NRC. You have to understand how the NRC works. It's entirely based on rules built around LWRs. If you aren't an LWR, you either have to somehow adapt to fit the rules (which the IFR obviously couldn't do, since it is completely unlike LWRs), or wait for the NRC to slowly change its rules (good luck with that - the NRC moves at the speed of a glacier). The NRC will ask you questions like "where's your hydrogen suppression system" and "how many emergency cooling trains do you have", not realizing that low-pressure non-water-based systems don't need either of those. The NRC simply works through a checklist and getting them to change the checklist is a very slow and expensive process (they bill by the hour).

                  Now when you look outside of the US, you'll see interest in this and similar designs. The UK is investigating constructing a PRISM reactor, though not primarily for power production (that'll be a neat side effect), but for the destruction of its sizable weapons-grade plutonium stockpile. Meanwhile, Russia has been operating and developing commercial sodium-cooled fast breeders for about 40 years now. The latest unit, the BN-800, is already critical and will enter service later this year and will serve as a development platform for a 1200MWe (BN-1200) exportable unit for both Russia and China. I'm not a great fan of the BN-800 because it uses oxide fuel (which has both its advantages as well as drawbacks), but at least they're moving forward and learning new stuff.

                  or even used some of these amazing techniques in existing designs

                  The Westinghouse AP1000 already incorporates a lot of these techniques in its design to achieve a passively safe design resistant to total plant blackout for 72 hours. Existing Russian VVER-1200 designs also incorporate numerous passive safety features, such as passive catalitic hydrogen recombiners, a gravity-fed convective emergency core cooling system and an emergency corium catcher with neutron poisons. If either of these reactors had been installed at Fukushima, even with the low sea wall and flooded generator compartments, you'd never have heard about it. Particularly with the AP1000 all you need to do is fly in a bunch of ordinary water via helicopter to top off its gravity-fed reservoir every now and then (the VVER-1200 incorporates something similar, but I'm not very familiar with how it's fed).

                  For example, you say that the reactor would be seismically isolated... Well, they are experts at that kind of thing in Japan, and it didn't work very well.

                  For one, the GE Mk1 BWR reactors at Fukushima weren't seismically isolated. Seismic isolation requires that all the isolated components sit on dampers - that is the case for PRISM, but not for a Mk1 BWR (there's just too many components to do so cost-effectively). Japan's Mk1 BWRs however were seismically qualified, i.e. built to withstand an earthquake shaking the reactor components and by and large it worked as expected - the reactor vessel and associated piping survived it. It was only after the earthquake that the reactors' vessel's integrity was compromised (partly willfully because of the design of its pressure-supression containment, partly inadvertently due to the hydrogen explosions). You know, there was the Fukushima Nr.2 NPP and Onagawa NPP (which was actually closer to the epicenter) which were the same design, shaken equally badly and nothing happened.

                  Simply declaring a whole branch of technology as fundamentally unsuitable for use simply because we got burned a couple of times due to dumb people making bad decisions is like declaring all use of fire bad, because some cavemen got burned early on while experimenting with it (and hey, you can live off of nuts and berries too, if you really try). Nuclear "fire" is kinda similar to that situation in that the technology is extremely young. Heck, before 1938 we didn't even know nuclear fission was possible - television is older than that. We're very new to this field.

            • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday September 25 2014, @10:54AM

              by mojo chan (266) on Thursday September 25 2014, @10:54AM (#98156)

              When comments like this get modded down to 0 Troll I worry that Soylent News has adopted one of the biggest problems Slashdot has: fanboys.

              --
              const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:30PM

      by sjames (2882) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:30PM (#97312) Journal

      The type of blackouts they're talking about are planned blackouts. That is, when the grid can't meet demand, they deliberately shed load by opening switches.

      So the solution presents itself, don't turn of the still cooling nuclear plant.

      Add in N+1 (or 2) diesel backups and you're in good shape. It might be interesting to also include a lower power system that generates backup power from residual heat in the core. It need not be efficient since it's all waste heat anyway.

      Going forward, there are reactor designs that are OK with passive cooling when shut down.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:43PM (#97352)

      To make a long story short its safe to shut all those dudes down, or leave all of them running, but there is a safety minimum where you shut down some and have blackouts and suddenly have a plant that isn't generating and isn't getting shore power (or whatever the non-navy term is) for cooling. Aka fukushima II.

      Thats the irony of nuke power. You can't have a stable grid without nukes (well, for most nations grids in 2014) and you can't have nukes without a stable grid unless you're super reckless.

      I'm quite certain that there would always be power from the power grid to power a nuclear plant in case it needs said power. You'll sooner have your power cut than nuclear plant experiencing a blackout. Even if you have 1 nuclear power plant and 1 wind generator that is actually running, the power from the wind generator would get routed to the nuclear power plant if it needed it and your toaster and TV would be off instead.

      Also, nuclear power plants have their own generators. So don't panic just yet, unless Belgium is the epicenter for tsunamis and earthquakes and power plants are not capable of handling that.

      As for stable power grids without nuclear power? Sure. Very possible. For example around here in this part of Canada, 99+% of all power is hydroelectric and another 50% hydro capacity is untapped. But if you don't have that, and you don't want fossil fuels spewing poisonous gases, nuclear is the only thing you have. Like France indicated - no coal, no oil, no gas, no choice.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:42PM (#97826)

      "A nuke colocated with a solar plant sounds like a real good idea."
      you don't shit where you eat ... but the rest is pretty much spot on : )
      nukes need hydro (dam) to be "reliable".

      srsly ... all solar talk is about trying to shoe-horn a unlimited source into a "limited" grid system.
      there's no such thing as too much solar. if we ever get there then *boom* new solutions will turn up.
      you might think that when they decided to go AC instead of edisonDC that they already knew all about fridges and air-conditioners and pc datafarms etc.etc.
      no they didn't just give up.
      with all solar critic it sounds like: "let's not go shopping and get free stuff today because there might not be enough parking space." (maybe soembody else can come up with a better analogy).
      it's utterly crazy-brainwash.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:10PM (#97204)

    Off topic, so sue me, but.....
    IEEE Spectrum looks like one of those click bait crap fests that everyone links to on farcebook. On a 24" 1900x1200 monitor greater than half of the width of the page, or about 70% are all pictures and links to other articles. Then the left hand side is the article which forces your head to look left to read. One column isn't enough? 70% of your page is not content? Does every article have to be a front page? WTF were they thinking? No wait! Don't answer that one. It was a rhetorical question.

    What is happening to my internet? Have we all gone mad with web 2.0 (or whatever its called) disease? Maddening page design dripping with javascript and css flunkie code. Stop the madness.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:38PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:38PM (#97259) Journal

      Guessing that the mobile version also plays a part in this.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:18PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:18PM (#97205)

    Oh and this part is funny:

    "U.K. grid operator National Grid this month began seeking emergency power supplies for the winter."

    Up to a couple years ago you'd just spin up the natgas turbines, but now that UK is post peak natgas by a couple years, they are so far past peak that they're net natgas importers now for the first time since the 60s or so when north sea fields opened up.

    Up till peak a decade ago, they were exporters so you can always spin up the turbines and export less. Now they're so far declined they don't have the import capacity (flow rate) to handle this. So spinning up a natgas turbine to serve city A means city B gets cut off from natgas for heat. Whoops.

    UK is pretty much F'ed from an energy perspective. Hmmm not even "pretty much" weasel words. They are in fact totally screwed. Its not gimmie (tax) money or get blackouts shakedowns, or "if" they have blackouts, but inevitable EE fact they're going post-electrical grid real soon now, maybe first of the first world countries to slip back into 3rd world electrical utility standards.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:30PM (#97218)

      It was well known in the industry a decade or more ago that this was coming - and the government did nothing in UK to fix it. Cowards who didn't want to face up to the question of nuclear new build... but they didn't get reelected anyway...

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:41PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:41PM (#97262) Journal

        A blackout crisis will cure both voters and politicians from status quo ;-)

        • (Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday September 23 2014, @08:46PM

          by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 23 2014, @08:46PM (#97331)

          Burning politicians keeps the voters warm through the winter?

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          • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:19PM

            by meisterister (949) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:19PM (#97368) Journal

            I hear that they can generate enough hot air to heat things up without the need for fire. Whatever floats your boat though...

            --
            (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:44PM

            by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:44PM (#97379) Journal

            If they are fat enough . . ;-)

    • (Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:12PM

      by gallondr00nk (392) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:12PM (#97278)

      The last nuclear reactor built in the UK was back in 1995. Since then, the privatised energy companies found gas to be a far more profitable endeavour than nuclear, despite the pretty obvious shortfalls now that North Sea gas is beginning to dry up.

      Last year we actually approved a nuclear power station, but the govt. had to promise EDF a minimum unit price that's nearly double the current wholesale price. That's a pretty shitty deal unless the wholesale price manages to double before 2023 when it comes online.

      As far as I understand, our current energy policy seems to be crossing our fingers and hoping that fracking doesn't poison the water table, no doubt while handing over absurd amounts of money to whoever is doing it.

      I have no doubt that some slimy future energy minister will manage to grease the EDF deal more between now and then.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by pvanhoof on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:21PM

    by pvanhoof (4638) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:21PM (#97211) Homepage

    We have already taken precautions: http://pvanhoof.be/files/20140827_003.jpg [pvanhoof.be]

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:27PM

      by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:27PM (#97216)

      I understand this is the only workable solution for you guys ATM, but damn if everybody goes back to burning oil for power and heat the environment can go suck it. I await with bated breath the solar-power guys coming to grandiosely proclaim that rooftop solar is gonna save us, ignoring the fact that in the winter, it's all but useless.

      • (Score: 0) by pvanhoof on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:35PM

        by pvanhoof (4638) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:35PM (#97219) Homepage

        Rooftop or otherwise mounted solar-power panels don't work when the electrical grid is shut down. They are connected to the grid to which they deliver their energy. Not to the powerplugs of your house directly (not unless you have batteries to store the energy and a whole lot of otherwise pointless investments that would make it possible to consume power from solar-power panels without a working electrical grid).

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by stingraz on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:46PM

          by stingraz (3453) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:46PM (#97227)

          More (solar) generators online may however help to keep the grid from going down in the first place; after all, we're witnessing here what happens when you put too many eggs in not enough baskets, and rely on few central generating stations of similar design. Once you have millions of separate generating units in the grid, you won't see a drop by several GW at once.
          GP is right that solar is not going to be much help in the middle of winter, with the risk of snow and the daily peak generally being just after sundown. That's why any reasonable design for a renewables-based electric system relies on a mix of wind and solar, in more or less equal parts (and a powerful, wide-area grid to reduce the need for storage, and some sort of backup for emergencies, like inefficient-but-cheap gas turbines or all-but-decommissioned old coal or fuel power plants).
          It just seems that Belgium and its constituent parts are not far enough along in their renewables buildout.

          • (Score: 5, Interesting) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:45PM

            by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:45PM (#97266)

            Once you have millions of separate generating units in the grid, you won't see a drop by several GW at once.

            Actually with more solar you'll see tens of GW going offline every day, sometimes numerous times (cloud cover can easily drop power output from a big solar array by 10-20% in a few minutes, doesn't matter if it's arranged in a single plant or in a dense city - it's the proximity of the panels that creates this).

            That's why any reasonable design for a renewables-based electric system relies on a mix of wind and solar

            Wind won't help either. There are nation-wide and even close to continent-wide week-long wind lulls, so no amount of grid transport is going to help - the power just isn't there. The amount of storage required to bridge that gap simply doesn't exist. I did a bunch of modeling on data from Germany and even assuming a 5x expansion of installed wind & solar capacity to a combined >300GW, this week-long power insufficiency happened three times during three consecutive months last winter. Bridging that gap would have required over 500 pumped hydro plants of the largest variety (Goldisthal) and there simply aren't enough suitable locations in Germany to set them up. And the required total installed generation power during that insufficiency period was still around 60GW, so pretty much no existing fossil generation infrastructure could be removed (you'd run it less, but not that much less, maybe you'd achieve a 50-60% cut in emissions).
            You know, you can spend a lifetime coming up with brilliant solutions to the wrong problems. What we need is a great deal more research into hard-dispatchable zero-CO2 generators like nuclear, hydro and geothermal - those don't require us to rebuild the entire bunch of infrastructure we already have. Solar & wind can play a role, but only as additions to these baseload generators.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:59PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:59PM (#97237)

          Thanks for being completely wrong.
          My neighbor's solar panels keep his house running every time our local utility subjects us to the consequences of under-investing.
          He's got a box that senses of the grid is down, and just cuts it off automatically. Why that isn't standard in the US is absolutely baffling to me (cost, I know).

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:29PM

            by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:29PM (#97257)

            He's got a box that senses of the grid is down

            This is the box most rooftop solar installations don't have. It's effectively a UPS with a converter-inverter for the battery pack and galvanic isolation from the supply side. Of course, these components need not be in a single box, it can be split up differently. For example, DC solar PV to switched PSU for 12V battery pack, from there to inverter to ~220V AC output, into switch box with relays and power electronics which can cut over in case of overvolt/undervolt on the primary supply bus or other conditions (e.g. batteries full, start using them); plus a few sizable capacitors to smooth out the transition. You need to have pretty hefty batteries for that to work reliably (probably your standard issue lead-acid car batteries), otherwise when you switch to your solar PV rig and the Sun isn't at optimal conditions and/or your power draw isn't matched to generation, you'll get overvolt/undervolt on the switchbox output bus and your home electronics goes bye-bye.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:56PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:56PM (#97270)

              This is the box most rooftop solar installations don't have

              Sounds like bullshit in context of the OP's claim "Rooftop or otherwise mounted solar-power panels don't work when the electrical grid is shut down.".

              PV panels put out DC. The grid is AC. Connecting solar panels to the grid requires something like that box.

              • (Score: 2) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:47PM

                by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:47PM (#97318)

                Putting up a simple DC-AC inverter and having a whole isolated grid regulation system is quite different. The power electronics to a solar panel isn't super simple for sure, but it's not the same thing as running your house off of a local high-powered UPS.

              • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:54PM

                by sjames (2882) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:54PM (#97322) Journal

                The inverter in many homes can only synchronize with the grid and then lead it a bit to drive power back into the grid. If the grid goes down, they simply stop. The more advanced ones can also disconnect from the grid (to avoid excess load from other homes and injuring line workers) and run on their own internal sync. Those must also have overload cutoff capability.

            • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:16PM

              by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:16PM (#97281)

              I've been assuming that his box is smart enough to sense the instant draw of the house compared to the available inverter(s) output(s). That's not rocket science (the Prius is 14 years old).

              If you draw more than your panels produce, I'm pretty sure the inverter cuts you off.

          • (Score: 1) by pvanhoof on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:31PM

            by pvanhoof (4638) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:31PM (#97291) Homepage

            That box that senses if the grid is down is precisely what I wrote down as "not unless you have batteries to store the energy and a whole lot of otherwise pointless investments that would make it possible to consume power from solar-power panels without a working electrical grid".

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:09PM

            by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:09PM (#97337) Journal

            The problem is most new solar install are simply a grid tie using micro inverters. Micro inverters are small inverters that are attached to each panel directly converting the DC into AC. They force energy back into the grid by keeping their output voltage slightly above the grid voltage, usually by only a few hundred mV. Each panel is a little AC generator that are wired in parallel and tied to the electrical service with minimal wiring. You bank your excess power with the power company using a special meter and they credit you for the excess on your bill. It is the most practical system cost wise for people living in urban or suburban areas with reliable power.

            So what's that problem? Simple: they can not function during a blackout. Why? Since they are grid tie they have no transfer switches or disconnects in the home wiring. So in order to prevent them from back feeding a blacked out grid they shut down. So your house with all those expensive, shiny panels is sitting there as dark as everyone else. Even at high noon in the middle of the summer with a clear sky. And they can't compensate for fluctuations in sunlight which could cause the voltage to drop or completely shut off if the load is greater than the sun can sustain. So even if you could isolate them from the grid, there is no buffer to compensate for fluctuations.

            The systems that ties to the grid AND stores power are grid interactive systems. They are like on-line UPS systems: they convert the incoming grid AC into DC which feeds a DC bus which connects the inverters, charge controllers, batteries and other DC devices. If the AC drops out, and the sun is down ... no sweat. The batteries will continue to supply power without you or appliances ever noticing. The batteries are your buffer. Good controllers will charge the batteries first using whatever source is available and then dump the excess back to the grid to bank power. You can also source DC from multiple sources such as a wind turbines or water wheels. So you can have multiple sources of electrical energy all stored by batteries and excess dumped back to grid. Grid interactive systems are also capable of going completely off grid. They are ideal for people who live in remote locations where grid power is not reliable or even available.

            The downside to grid interactive is they are much, much higher in cost. They also need batteries and a more invasive installation process requiring a possible re-wiring of your home's electrical system and a place for all the batteries. You now also have battery maintenance to worry about as well since the batteries are flooded lead acid. They need periodic maintenance including watering and when they wear out, changing. I don't know how often they need to be changed out but a friend who has a grid tie system was told 2 years by his solar installer (If anyone knows real numbers, please post. I think 2 years is not true, should be longer). But after a quick search, it seems that lithium batteries are also becoming an option which can eliminate or reduce battery maintenance.

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:40PM

          by sjames (2882) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:40PM (#97314) Journal

          There is no technical reason a house with solar couldn't operate isolated from the grid, they're just usually not set up for that for cost reasons.

          Depending on cost sensitivities, they could run with or without batteries for emergencies.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:00PM

        by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:00PM (#97238) Journal

        > ignoring the fact that in the winter, [solar is] all but useless.

        Actually, solar works fine in the winter. PV uses light, not heat, so if there's enough sunlight to see then energy is being produced. Same applies for cloudy weather - you don't need to be in a desert to benefit from solar.

        OK, there are less daylight hours in winter than in summer, but that's still a long way from "all but useless".

        • (Score: 2) by subs on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:18PM

          by subs (4485) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:18PM (#97250)

          In Belgium, the seasonal variation is about 5x and common winter power demand is about 30-50% higher than in the summer, so you either overbuild your solar rig by 7-10x for your demand, or it's not gonna give you much power at all - which is why I wrote "all but useless".

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:00PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:00PM (#97273) Journal

          On a sunny day you get ~900 W/m². Out of that you get perhaps 135 W/m² under the same conditions as electricity. If it's winter you get half of that at perhaps 75 W/m². If snow hits your panels or sun is low on the horizon you perhaps get like 40 W/m². So it may not be as useful as you think.

          For anyone living in sunny places like Sahara or California it's more like 1000 W/m². In space it's 1500 W/m².

          So to get like an average of 6 kW of household electricity on a winter day you need 80 m² of solar panels at least. Which is equal to a 9 x 9 meter square. Quantum dot technology etc may get this up but it's the price/(W/m²) that matters in the end unless you have lot's of money and little space. If you need to use this level of power during night you need to double the amount of solar panels to charge for the night.

          Btw, If one has a solar panel facility that provides at least in the ballpark of ones needs. It seems like a waste to not exploit the opportunity with electrical inverters to be independent of the public grid.

          • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:16AM

            by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:16AM (#97561) Journal

            6 kW seems a bit steep. Are you working on American average consumption by any chance? this is an article about Europe. Average consumption in the UK for example is more like 3.5kW

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:26PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:26PM (#97212)

    I think the bigger story here is that someone sabotaged a nuclear reactor. However, with no information or accusation of a responsible party at all it sounds to me like pure bullshit.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by pvanhoof on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:42PM

      by pvanhoof (4638) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:42PM (#97223) Homepage

      An oil valve was opened for which a lock had to be unlocked first. Locks don't magically unlock and valves don't magically open. This was sabotage. It's just that the authorities don't know yet who did it and the investigations on this are ongoing (so they won't quickly disclose information on the subject until investigations are finished). The cracks aren't assumed to be sabotage of course. Although it's weird that only Belgian's nuclear power plants have this problem. Either other countries are keeping it silent or there must be something related to Belgian politics that metal simply can't withstand. Understandable though, no material in the world can cope with aggressive political incompetence (there is indeed a political component to why all nuclear power plants in .be are starting to fail, at least in my opinion).

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by tonyPick on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:24PM

        by tonyPick (1237) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:24PM (#97285) Homepage Journal

        Although it's weird that only Belgian's nuclear power plants have this problem

        From the Spectrum article:

        as one Belgian nuclear policy specialist has noted, none of the other reactors have been examined using the wider ultrasound testing performed
        in Belgium.

        So the reason they haven't been found, is that they're not looking, or at least not looking using the same testing level.

    • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:23PM

      by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:23PM (#97253)

      LEOs don't normally talk about active investigation until they have a "person of interest". Given that the oil valve could have been opened weeks ago they have to first figure out when it was done, then they start looking at the people who could have done it.

      There is even a possibility that it was an accident. The valve might have been left unlocked and not completely closed the last time there was maintenance. It might turn out that this was just negligence by someone and not malicious intent.

      And I doubt we will hear about it anywhere outside of Belgian news services.

      --
      "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:43PM (#97264)

      Inside job, police are investigating.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:39PM

    by hoochiecoochieman (4158) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:39PM (#97260)

    Now it's a golden time to be in a pissing contest with our main gas supplier. We, the Europeans, are so great at shooting our own feet at the whims of Uncle Sam.

    Fortunately, I live in Portugal, we import our gas from Algeria. But Central and Eastern Europe are so fucked...

    • (Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:07PM

      by Blackmoore (57) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:07PM (#97275) Journal

      So i expect you'd be fine capitulating Ukraine to the Russians?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:17AM (#97408)

        Or... should Russia let Ukraine capitulate to the US.
        US is waving his dick in Russia's backyard, no the other way around.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:09AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:09AM (#97482)

          If you haven't noticed, the Ukrainians started revolting over their former government's plans to abandon plans to turn to the EU. The US would, of course, love for Russia to lose a trade partner to the EU, but the US doesn't drive everything that happens in the world. Some people genuinely want to be part of a united, free Europe.

          The people of Ukraine have much more agency in this than you're assigning them: they want to be part of the EU. They want to sing about schöner Götterfunken, not about rockets' red glare or bombs bursting in air. They have plans for themselves. Not everything is a grand chess game between the US and Putin. Maybe Ukraine doesn't want to capitulate to Russia or the US, just to enjoy European freedoms and the European lifestyle.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hoochiecoochieman on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:59AM

            by hoochiecoochieman (4158) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:59AM (#97571)

            I wish I had a simplistic and naive knowledge of the world and black-and-white glasses like you. I'd be a lot happier.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @02:33PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26 2014, @02:33PM (#98574)

            It went like this:

            1) there where some protests in Ukrain
            2) US-trained and supported neo-nazi miltias (organised groups of 100 ) start making trouble including burning down police stations
            3) The US-government managed to manipulate the Ukranian government into pulling back the cops 'to let things cool down'
            4) The neo-nazi militias seezed that opportunity to perform a military coup
            5) The day after the coup the US officially recognized the coup-government as the 'official' government
                    => This by itself tells you that it was a US-pushed regime change, this never happens this fast otherwise
            6) The post-coup government now has 4 openly neo-nazi ministers, and the neo-nazi militias got transformed into the 'volunteer battalions' of the Ukranian military
            7) the coup government starts introducing legislation that outlaws the use of Russian in interactions with the government
            8) this naturally leads to protests in the eastern part of Ukrain (as that region is ethnically russian, and 80+% of the population speaks russian as first language)
            9) the neo-nazi volunteer battalions (who remember are now official part of the Ukranian military) start brutally abusing and attacking those protesting
            10) the russion-speaking parts of Ukrain now revolt and attack those volunteer battallions

            [sarcasm]Ofcourse the US governement is squeeky clean in the entire affair, and it's all Putin making trouble[/sarcasm]

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:13PM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:13PM (#97279) Journal

      Right, Its a US problem.

      Putin will be perfectly happy just biting off Ukraine. Surely he won't have any other demands.
      He just wants a little living space after all.

      Long as your feet are toasty, that's all that matters.
       

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:22PM (#97307)

      So you're saying the ruskies did it? Could be, could be.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:01PM (#97299)

    That's ok Europe can just make up the difference this winter with natural gas. Imported from Russia. Oh - wait...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:14PM (#97303)

      and it begins to unwind...

      http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/09/21/194213 [soylentnews.org]

      As I pointed out yesterday the timeframe for that article was too short. Basically 1-2 years. Where long term effects do not kick in for ~10+ years. They are now starting to see the erosion of their productivity.

      Like all economic theories it is sunshine and roses at first. Then the long term effects kick in.
      http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap05p1.html [steshaw.org]
      http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap06p1.html [steshaw.org]
      http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap17p1.html [steshaw.org]

      The taxes they imposed diverted profits from fixing their machinery to playing stock market games.

    • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Tuesday September 23 2014, @08:23PM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 23 2014, @08:23PM (#97328) Journal

      Well the US asshats (government etc.) kept saying they had it covered. Lies as usual of course.

      I'm not sure if the average American realizes how disliked the US and/or the US government was in western Europe before all this Ukrainian nonsense and not only among socialists/leftists but among the (often rightist) surging euroskeptic parties [wikipedia.org] many of which are fairly outspokenly pro-Russian (particularly the really big ones like UKIP and Front National).

      --
      Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:19PM (#97305)

    "If we can't have millions of nukular reactors the grid goes down..."

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by nukkel on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:49PM

    by nukkel (168) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:49PM (#97319)

    The problem in Belgium is that gullible leftist politicians have been in charge of Energy for the past 30 years. First they forced through a law mandating phase out of nuclear power by 2015. Then they arduously resisted any investments in baseload capacity to compensate for this. These leftists, not hampered by any technical baggage, probably thought the entire country would somehow magically convert to 100% wind&solar by 2015. Since the latest elections these politicians have finally been forced out, and now it is up to the new (center right wing) government to clean up the mess.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:46PM (#97380)

      Really? Socialists are to blame?

      In New Zealand, we have had a deregulated (neoliberal-controlled) market for quite a number of years. What we've found is that our power prices keep going up - one of the fastest increasing power prices in the world - yet new infrastructure is not being created on a sufficient level to explain the price increases. What's actually happening is that existing resources are being revalued upward, and prices are increasing to reflect that.

      I recall at least two significant increases, with the explanation that it was to be used to create new power generation capacity. This never happened, as the price increase was called profit.

      A few years back now, the CEO of one power company pushed up prices a fair bit, and then received a multimillion dollar bonus. Their customers nearly took up arms, leaving in droves and protesting when it was revealed that his bonus was coincidentally exactly as much as the expected price increase take.

      For as long as I can reliably recall, we've had a government-funded push to save electricity. Buy laptops not desktops, they're more efficient. Buy whiteware with more stars, they're more efficient, yet our power generation capacity has remained the same.

      It's not socialists causing the problem. It's neoliberals in power, wanting to take as much as they can get.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday September 23 2014, @11:17PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 23 2014, @11:17PM (#97394) Journal

        Look at the obstacles to new plant construction, then get back to us. Sounds a bit like the California electricity crisis which was a combination of obstruction of new plant construction combined with bad market rules that encouraged market manipulation.

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday September 23 2014, @11:54PM

          by sjames (2882) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @11:54PM (#97404) Journal

          And, of course, inadequate regulatory oversight of Enron. Sure;y you don't hold Enron blameless here.

          • (Score: 2) by khallow on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:01AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:01AM (#97458) Journal

            Let us note that regulations actually enabled and worsened Enron's market manipulation of the California electricity market.

            • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:25AM

              by sjames (2882) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:25AM (#97470) Journal

              I would say more like incompetent regulation. They 'deregulated' half of the market and left it with no oversight so the other half got caught between the remaining regulations and the unregulated crooks.

              • (Score: 2) by khallow on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:42AM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:42AM (#97475) Journal

                Well, sure. But that incompetent regulation firmly stayed put for the better part of a year after the flaw was revealed (the California governor of the time, Gray Davis rationalized it as protecting consumers) until a second utility (out of three which were subject to the regulation) was on the verge of bankruptcy. This blatant gift to the market manipulators is why he got voted out in a recall election.

      • (Score: 2) by EvilJim on Tuesday September 23 2014, @11:17PM

        by EvilJim (2501) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @11:17PM (#97395) Journal

        Would you like to name and shame the power company for me? my bill is getting a little large with very little actual usage, so looking to shop around at the moment.

  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:13PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:13PM (#97340) Homepage

    Power Blackouts in Europe?

    As per Betteridge, the answer is, currently, no. But, perharps not deliberately, that headline is skirting close to clickbait.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:05PM (#97362)

    From your link about "cracks",

    An Electrabel spokeswoman told World Nuclear News that the second ultrasonic examination of Doel 3's pressure vessel could indicate that the new examination technology has simply given false results.

    and from electrabel's website,

    Electrabel confirms that the test results on the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 power plants are expected in autumn 2014. Contrary to the information that recently appeared in the media, the tests are making good progress and it is totally premature to draw conclusions from them. The first partial results do not in any case allow us to anticipate a definitive shut down. Once the tests are completed, a report will be sent to the Belgian Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (AFCN), which will in turn decide on the restart of the power plants.

    So why are we sensationalizing stuff we know very little about? What's the point? There is always some "crisis" around nuclear news even when there is nothing to report. Maybe reporting "maintenance shutdown in progress" does not draw too much attention. Is there some report about real results or just speculation??

    http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Electrabel-reschedules-Tihange-1-outage-2208144.html [world-nuclear-news.org]

    Meanwhile, Electrabel has said that Doel 4 will remain out of operation until at least the end of this year following "significant damage" to its turbine resulting from a loss of lubricating oil. Initial inspections found that the lubricant had been discharged through a valve which had probably been left open by a worker.

    Which does not mean sabotage. Unless someone is arrested and charged, this could be nothing but a mistake.