For what it's worth, here is my count of nuclear plant shutdowns since December 1998. As source reference, I used:

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/DAILY/drlist.htm

My criteria for exclusion were:

Refueling Outage;

Storm Outage (hurricane, flood, lightning strike, etc.);

Biological Cause (seaweed, fish, turtle, etc., clogging of intakes);

Shutdowns occuring for or during planned maintenance;

Shutdowns occuring during a startup cycle after an earlier shutdown.

Dec98: 7 shutdowns Jan99: 6 shutdowns

Feb99: 4 shutdowns

Mar99: 6 shutdowns

Apr99: 11 shutdowns

May99: 12 shutdowns

Jun99: 14 shutdowns

Jul99: 7 shutdowns

Aug99: 9 shutdowns

Sep99: 10 shutdowns

Oct99: 4 shutdowns

Nov99: 6 shutdowns

Dec99: 8 shutdowns

Jan00: 16 shutdowns

Note: The plants counted here do not mean that they were shut down permanently; rather, they were shut down suddenly (and usually for only a few days or weeks) because of a variety of unexpected technical "gliches". These data are presented for month-to-month comparison only.

Enjoy!

Spindoc'

-- Spindoc' (spindoc_99_2000@yahoo.com), February 10, 2000

Answers

Sorry for the lousy formatting. Anyone want to try their hand at graphing this, just for fun?

Spindoc'

-- Spindoc' (spindoc_99_2000@yahoo.com), February 10, 2000.

I wonder who has the data at their fingertips that might correlate high shutdown rates (April, May, June, September) with Y2K upgrade deadlines set by the NRC. If I remember correctly, June 30 was a final upgrade deadline for nuke facilities: June, here shown with 14 shutdowns.

These figures for January 2000 don't seem to establish much -- unless some of the highs for the preceding months can be ignored as reprsenting these upgrade shutdowns. In that case, the January figures are 2-4 X the average -- that would be significant. Recall that John Krempasky said that if there were more than 9 shutdown in January he would absnet the Board and never repost, etc. S**t, this is not a lot to go on, and nuclear things seem to have grown much quieter over the last two weeks .....

-- Squirrel Hunter (nuts@upina.cellrelaytower), February 10, 2000.

Squirrel Hunter,

You might want to check out the large number of "refueling" outages occuring during October 1999, in comparison with other months.

Spindoc'

-- Spindoc' (spindoc_99_2000@yahoo.com), February 10, 2000.

So what's your point? Went through a bunch of these Event Reports and didn't see the first one blamed upon an "unexpected technical glich". I'm sure you put in quite a bit of work compiling this info but perhaps you should provide a detailed listing (at least for Jan 2000) so that the true cause is examined before people start drawing the wrong conclusion (which they probably already have).

Nukieman

-- Nukieman (dude@glow-in-the-dark.com), February 10, 2000.

Refueling outages are usually done in Mar/Apr or Sept/Oct because those are the times of least demand on the utility--not the hottest or the coldest months. That's why you'd find so many then--it's simply a matter of load and economics. There's usually an 18-month gap between RFO's, so if you shut down in Mar. of one year, it'll be Oct. of the next until you do it again, and so on.

-- NIMBY (heckno@Iwon't.glow), February 10, 2000.

Yea, there was a lot of 'refueling' goin' on in January, 2000.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), February 10, 2000.