Comment by moffkalast
3 years ago
Ramping it up is likely the problem, since all plants can reduce power on a dime by just varying the generator coil current I think.
You could just keep it spinning nonstop without a load I suppose, but for anything but nuclear it's not gonna be economical.
A nuclear power plant can't just "keep spinning without a load" - all that energy has to go somewhere! If a nuclear plant is disconnected from the grid (tripped), the nuclear reaction must be stopped (eg: by inserting control rods into the core).
Of course it can, just short the generator coils and you have a free brake. The turbine should then still have resistance and shouldn't overspeed. Or just idk, use it to pump some water in a loop or discharge through some resistors. Getting rid of power isn't that hard if you want to do it. Simplest solution would I suppose be to just have an outside radiator that brings the steam to cooling tower levels of manageability so you can throttle the turbine with just a valve.
The thing is, they don't really want to do it if they can save fuel by shutting down.
> "just short the generator coils and you have a free brake"
You'll soon end up with a burning/melted generator.
> "pump some water in a loop"
OK, but you're going to need huge pumps (1000+ MW!). Expensive.
> "or discharge through some resistors"
Again, you'll need extremely large resistors, and a way to dissipate an awful lot of heat. We're talking about a huge amount of energy here!
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