March 1, 2021
by Michael Steinberg
Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.
By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press
Deep Freeze Shuts Down Texas Nuke
On February 15 the South Texas Project nuclear plant shut down after arctic weather descended on the region, Arctic Insights reported. A spokesperson for the plant said 1350 Megawatt reactor #1 shut down at 5:37 a.m.. The shutdown “resulted from a loss of feedwater attributed to cold-weather related failure of pressure sensing lines to feedwater pumps causing a false signal, which in turn caused the feedwater pump to trip (shut down).”
According to a February 16 Nuclear Regulatory Commission report, the shutdown was due to “low steam generator levels. The low levels in turn were due to loss of Feedwater pumps 11 and 13 (cause unknown).
Translation: Unprecedented subfreezing temperatures caused uninsulated equipment to crap out. This shutdown added to the catastrophe in the region that left millions without heat, water or leadership as other electrical generators failed as well.
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February 19, 2021
by Source
By Bill McKibben / Reader Supported News – The New Yorker / February 18, 2021
Sometimes, all you need is a map. In the wake of this week’s power failures in Texas, which have left millions without heat in subfreezing conditions, right-wing politicians and news networks decided that the emergency was down to “frozen wind turbines,” a phrase that has now been repeated ad infinitum on all the various ganglia that make up the conservative “information” network.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which has managed to be wrong about energy and climate for more than four decades, put it like this:
“Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines.”
Governor Greg Abbott took time out from failing to deal with the emergency that had imperiled many in his state to tell Fox News that “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”
Not to be outdone, on Tuesday afternoon, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican who represents Texas’s second congressional district, including parts of Houston, tweeted that “this is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source.”
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