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This is a bit confusing to me for a few reasons but makes sense if they meant "the datacenter" instead of "the nuclear plant" Why would the datacenter care (w/
by AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
This is a bit confusing to me for a few reasons but makes sense if they meant "the datacenter" instead of "the nuclear plant"
Why would the datacenter care (w/r/t the ISA) if the nuclear plant had backup generation?
Moreover, the nuclear plant MUST have backup power because in the event of a grid failure causing a shutdown, the cooling pumps must continue to run for a specific period of time.
Modern reactor designs have made it so that reactors don't need as much cooling, or for as long, and can even use waste heat from the reactor for that purpose, or have designed things such that even without active cooling they "fail" in a safe way but none of these are good and a reactor needs backup power. No way the NRC or any sane designer/operator would allow a reactor without it.
If they are talking about the datacenter not being allowed to have "automatically running backup power generation" this still seems very odd to me. Why would the nuclear plant operators care if the datacenter has generators or not? It won't materially impact the amount of energy they buy and as long as the plants can supply power to the datacenter (regardless of which reactor its from) they won't even notice or care about it.
The whole situation seems unnecessarily obfuscated to me and it's very hard to see if it's a case of PJM being annoyed that this load will bypass their grid and therefore bypass their "tax" on it, or, a case where Talen and Amazon are trying to pull a fast one by relying on the grid without paying their fair share of grid costs.