Check out this article: Comments?

By Jeffrey Parker

TAIPEI, July 30 (Reuters) - Taiwan suffered its worst electrical outage in decades on Thursday, an island-wide blackout that pounded key industries.

But authorities quickly ruled out any link to a tense sovereignty dispute with China.

After several hours, some lights in parts of the island of 22 million were flickering back to life, and well before dawn on Friday much of the capital Taipei had returned to its usual neon-bathed self.

The cause of the blackout was under investigation, but the armed forces swiftly ruled out foul play involving China, noting that all military command and communication systems were operating normally and relying on independent power supplies.

"All of our military systems are normal. There is no cause for alarm," top military spokesman Kong Fan-ting told Reuters by telephone from his home.

The island's three nuclear power stations were shut down along with other conventionally powered plants, a normal procedure when the island-wide power grid is incapacitated, officials of state utility Taiwan Power Co said.

Premier Vincent Siew, making an emergency visit to Taipower headquarters, said the operators hoped to restore most power sometime during Friday, though authorities said the big nuclear plants would require 15 hours or more to power back up.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Answers

Reuters have now reported that the cause was a high tension pylon failing as a result of a landslide.

My guess is thatthis pylon carried multiple circuits, the loss of which would cause a cascade type incident.

Malcolm.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

So in this case it would be similar to our own NE ice storm power outage, where towers collapsed under the weight and cut off huge areas for weeks.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Question: Since the whole grid went down, how did they have the power to cool the nuclear plants, as we have seen discussed here? Backup generators, or is their system different? Did the power get restored before this became a critical issue? Or do they have an acceptable work around to prevent problems if it had stayed off? Just wondering if this situation had any application to the potential problems previously discussed here about cooling the nukes if the grid goes down. Thanks for considering my questions. (I'm a short time lurker who is not trolling, just seeking to understand.) Please be gentle. :)

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

About the question regarding nuclear plants... here is a snippet from the Reuters article:

Friday July 30, 7:39 am Eastern Time...Power slowly returns after Taiwan blackout (Reuters)

``Power rationing is needed because the six generators in the island's three nuclear power plants, which account for a quarter of Taiwan's power supply, were still unable to supply electricity,'' a Taipower official said.

[huh? Is this saying that the nuclear plants back-up generators didn't work?]

The three nuclear power stations were shut down along with other conventional-powered plants late on Thursday, a normal procedure when the island-wide power grid is incapacitated.

Officials said rationing would be lifted later in the evening when demand drops to around 15 million kilowatts and the island's three nuclear power plants are expected to be back up.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

I THINK that post was only saying that because the nuke plants were still down, and because they supply a quarter of the power, they needed to ration electricity until the nukes came back online. I don't think they meant the back-up generators.. I THINK they meant that there are 2 generating plants at each of 3 nuclear facilities. But the wording was a little unclear. If that is the case, the article gives no indication how the nuclear plants managed without grid power... but so far there is no indication of an "incident".

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Let me try to answer a few of the questions this thread poses.

LauraA: Taiwan actually has 6 operating reactors at 3 sites (see http://www.ca nnon.net/~gonyeau/nuclear/taiwan.htm). 4 of the 6 reactors are General Electric BWR's; two are Westinghouse PWR's. All appear to be based on accepted American design practices. This would include redundant emergency diesel generators. Most certainly, if power was lost to the entire island, the plants would have been supplying internal shutdown power requirements from their EDG's. There are procedures for dealing with loss of offsite power at every nuclear plant in the world, as far as I know.

Linda: No, this does not mean that their backup EDG's did not work. What it means is that it takes a lot longer to start a nuclear power plant back up after a shutdown than it does a fossil fired plant. There are logistics and nuclear physics reasons for this (if you'd like a more detailed explanation of the physics reasons, try http://www.c annon.net/~gonyeau/nuclear/xe135-1.htm ). A 24 to 48 hour turnaround time for restart (if no other maintenance is required) is not unusual.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Linda,

Just curious here. I got a vague idea that maybe you, or perhaps others, may have the idea that the "backup generators" are there to supply the electricity that the nuke plants normally supply.

The backup generators are there to only supply electricity to the nuke plant for it's internal operations.

The backup generators don't transmit electricity to any users outside the plant.

Just curious if you might have thought something like that.

Steve

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Steve - no I didn't think the back-up generators could replace the power generated by the nukes. I was just briefly confused by the wording.. saying that the six generators at 3 plants were out SOUNDED like they meant the back-up generators, when they really were referring to the nuclear power generators - the power plants. That's why I posted again. Hope I didn't cause too much confusion in trying to clear up my confusion.

So... to answer the question.. apparently the nuclear plants went down - as planned - when the grid went down, and APPARENTLY they were serviced by their back-up generators without incident. And then they will come back online after they go through their start-up routine. (unless we hear otherwise of course).

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999