What is a scheduled outage period at a nuclear power plant?
Typical refueling outage duration for U.S. nuclear plants is 25 days, among the shortest average in recent decades.
What is an outage at a nuclear plant?
The shutdown of a generating unit, transmission line, or other facility for inspection, maintenance, or refueling, which is scheduled well in advance (even if the schedule changes).
How many gallons of water does a nuclear plant use every minute?
Reactors with once-through cooling (without cooling towers) use 500,000 gallons and more per minute.
How long will a nuclear reactor last?
Most nuclear power plants have operating life- times of between 20 and 40 years. Ageing is defined as a continuing time-dependent degradation of material due to service conditions, including normal operation and transient conditions.
What is a refuel outage?
Refueling Outage means temporary suspension of power production of the nuclear power system to conduct actions, including refueling the reactor.
What happens during a refueling outage?
The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is permanently removed.
How often do nuclear power plants refuel?
every 18 to 24 monthsU.S. nuclear power plants typically refuel every 18 to 24 months, mostly during the fall and spring when electricity demand is lower. During a refueling outage, plants typically optimize downtime by scheduling facility upgrades, repairs, and other maintenance work while the nuclear reactor is offline.
How long does it take to refuel a nuclear reactor?
Reactors run smoothly and reliably for up to two years at a time, but they need maintenance and inspection. Some of this can only be done when the reactor isn't running. So, the refueling periods—three weeks or so—are periods of intense activity.
What format is the nuclear plant outage schedule?
The nuclear plant Outage Schedule is emailed in MS Excel (.xls) format to business's and Adobe PDF format to non-business clients. The Business/multi-user license agreement limits the sharing of information to within your company. The non-business license limits the use to a single person, no sharing of information is allowed. The Excel format is not locked, so you may edit the file to suit your needs.
When do you get the Spring Outage?
If it's December - May, you will receive the Spring outage schedule, even if all of the outages are over. Because that is the CURRENT outage schedule. If it's June - November, you will receive the Fall outage schedule, even if all of the outages are over. Because that is the CURRENT outage schedule.
