Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station is a two-unit nuclear power plant located approximately five miles northeast of Oswego, New York on the shore of Lake Ontario. The 900 acre (3.6 km²) site is also occupied by the Fitzpatrick Nuclear Generating Station.
Nine Mile Point is operated by Constellation Energy Group. Constellation is also the sole owner of Unit 1, and owns 82% of Unit 2 (Long Island Power Authority owns the remaining 18%).
Both units are General Electric boiling water reactors. Unit 1, a BWR-2, went online in 1969 and has a rated capacity of 609 MW. It is one of the two oldest nuclear reactors still in service in the United States; Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station is the other. Unit 2, a BWR-5, has been in operation since 1988 and has a rated capacity of 1,148 MW. Construction of both units, along with neighboring Fitzpatrick, was commissioned by Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation. Fitzpatrick was sold immediately upon completion, while Niagara Mohawk retained its share of the Nine Mile Point units until 2001, when it sold them to Constellation.
On October 31, 2006, Constellation announced that the NRC had granted 20-year license extensions to both units. Unit 1 is now licensed to operate until 2029 and Unit 2 is licensed until 2046.
Constellation intends to build a new nuclear reactor either at this site or at Calvert Cliffs. See Nuclear Power 2010 Program.
The Nine Mile Point cooling tower is visible from Chimney Bluffs in Sodus, New York nearly 30 miles away.
On 13-Aug-1991 a "site area emergency" (a classification only one level down from the "general emergency" that occurred at Three Mile Island) was declared at the plant. According to Time magazine, this was the third occasion a SAE had been declared at a US nuclear plant. [1]
From NRC INFORMATION NOTICE 91-64, SUPPLEMENT 1:
The facility was operating at full power when a phase-to-ground electrical fault occurred on phase B of the Unit 2 main power transformer. This resulted in a trip of the main generator, main turbine, and reactor. The fault also caused the voltage on electrical distribution phase B buses to drop to about half of its nominal value for approximately 200 milliseconds, after which it returned to normal.
This momentary voltage drop resulted in the simultaneous loss of power output from each of the five Non-Class 1E uninterruptible power supplies. Exide's UPS units have internal continuously charged back-up batteries to prevent a loss of control logic power. Exide's UPS control logic circuitry receives, processes, generates, and sends electrical signals essential for proper UPS operation. However, in this incident the back-up power battery packs were apparently past their useful life and were completely discharged.
The loss of power from the UPS units caused a loss of all the following: the control room annunciators, the safety parameter display system computer, control rod position indication, the plant process computer, the core thermal limits computer, the feedwater control system, some of the lighting for the plant, the plant radio and paging systems, some instrumentation for balance-of-plant systems, and some instrument recorders.
The loss of control room annunciators concurrent with the plant transient resulting from automatic tripping of the main generator, main turbine, and reactor caused the licensee (Niagara Mohawk Corporation) to declare a site area emergency in accordance with the site emergency plan. The loss of control rod position indicators and other equipment losses burdened the operators in implementing the emergency procedures. However, the operators shut down the plant in accordance with emergency procedures. About 13 hours after the plant trip, the reactor was placed in a cold shutdown condition; and approximately 1 hour later, the licensee ended the site area emergency.
- Pickering Nuclear Generating Station - located on the opposite side of Lake Ontario
- Darlington Nuclear Generating Station - located on the opposite side of Lake Ontario
- Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station is at coordinates Coordinates:
 |
This article about a United States power station is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |