3 ms·
TL;DR; The cracks were expected and are well within the safety margin. > The tubular graphite bricks, each about a metre high, moderate nuclear reactions and a
by lucaspiller 12y ago
TL;DR; The cracks were expected and are well within the safety margin.
> The tubular graphite bricks, each about a metre high, moderate nuclear reactions and are essential to safe operation. However, they cannot be replaced.
Can anyone comment on why they can't be replaced?
- asuidyasiud 12y agoRe "well within the safety margin": > EDF was granted permission by the regulator in the summer to relax its graphite weight-loss limit at the Dungeness reactor in Kent from 6.2% to 8% after it came close to breaching the original safety margin. > Hinkley-B and Hunterston-B are also getting close to their higher 15% limits, too.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jackgavigan 12y agoYou'd have to disassemble the entire core and rebuild it with new bricks. Kind of like replacing the bricks in a brick house. More information: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7810.pdf http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport...
- wastedhours 12y agoExcept you can replace bricks in a brick house individually...
- 7952 12y agoNot every discussion about nuclear power has to be just about safety. I don't think anyone is seriously sugesting that these stations are dangerous. And most of us lack the expertise to have an opinion on the technicalities of the particular issue anyway. This does demonstrate an interesting aspect of large nuclear stations. Technical issues can remove large amounts of capacity from a grid. And as stations age the long term wear and tear make outages less predictable.
- ninjaoxygen 12y agoI think it is because the rods are inside the sealed reactor core, it's all radioactive. There's no way of opening them up in a way that would allow replacement of the rods.