I had a talk with an ex-employee of a nuclear power plant. He stated that in his experience, there were zero embedded controls in his plant; everything was done by hand. He was more worried about having outside supplies delivered than he was about inside problems. He said that the plants were on their way out anyway, since the cost of solar panels had come down so far. The cost of providing safe nuclear power is escalating as the plants age.

He also suggested that if the power grid were to fail, it could be brought up fairly quickly if at least one power company could go on line to provide a load for the grid. He mentioned a failure of the national power grid that was reversed because a small power company had managed to get off-line before the grid went down totally, and then provided the load to bring it back up.

Comments?

-- Anonymous, December 23, 1997

Answers

Nuclear Power: Those of you at BWR facilities (you know who you are) should be aware that the BWR Owner's Group (BWROG) has sch'd a conf call to discuss Y2k for Thu Jan 08 1998. As this will be a closed conf call, I will not give any other details. Contact your BWROG rep for more info on the call.

-- Anonymous, December 26, 1997

Boy, George, I'd like to know what the heck plant your friend worked at. And what department.

There are many, many embedded controls at a typical nuclear power facility (even the older ones). So that answer was flat wrong. If you need details on my experience for comparison, please go to my website and check the bio.

It's true that some older nukes are being retired. In fact, I'd bet you'd see a wave of plant retirements announced in the next year. But it isn't because of solar...solar makes power at a cost of about $.25/kw while nukes are down in the $.05 to $.10 range. Not even close.

Grid matters - I'm not a grid expert - but I can look at the regional failures out west last year to know that that 'little' plant can also *take down* a whole region. And to some extent it is true that you need power to make and transmit power. It's very complex; whole books have been written on the subject. You might want to to http://www.rmi.org for some background.

-- Anonymous, December 28, 1997