3 ms·

Doesn’t the power has to go somewhere. I don’t know what would happen to a nuclear power plant operating without a load to take the generated power. Maybe the

• lumost 5y ago
  Reactors can be shut down gracefully. The generated power can be shunted to ground from the turbines without risk.
• cesarb 5y ago
  > I don’t know what would happen to a nuclear power plant operating without a load to take the generated power. The same as any other power plant: the generator is automatically shut down by its safety systems (if it didn't shut down, the generator would overspeed and violently break apart). Once the generator shuts down, the safety systems for the reactor itself should either automatically shut down the reactor too, or somehow bypass the steam to the generator and reduce power to idle (I thought they would always shut down, but recently there was a failure on the generator of the nuclear power plant near where I live, and the reactor went to idle instead of shutting down, so it seems nuclear power plants have this mode too). The issue is what happens after a shutdown; as seen at Fukushima, the cooling pumps in the reactor need external power for a couple of days until the decay heat reduces enough that passive cooling is sufficient. Without power from the outside, the emergency generators take over; if these are damaged or out of fuel, and backup generators can't be brought by truck from outside after a couple of hours, disaster happens.