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Comment by thinkcontext

7 hours ago

Maybe a non-event for safety but what about getting the plant operating again?

I don't know this plant. In navy submarine reactors like the S5W, you have 440V/3-phase power holding the clamp. If you dropped a rod due to a power or clamp malfunction, usually you'd simply shut down the reactor, drop all the rods and mechanically re-engage the clamp. It could take a few hours which isn't fun because no power which probably means submarine/snorkel depth to run the incredibly noisy diesel, but no step was particularly hard or dangerous.

  • Now I’m curious. What if it occurs when you’re like under the enemy and you can’t surface? Do you have to just chill at depth until you can get the reactor running again?

    • The ship can operate for a bit on decay heat. And they have battery banks to run major systems until conditions allow running at snorkel depth on the diesel engine.

      And rumor has it some of the nuclear subs may work with a Stirling engine which can operate systems on heat alone.

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    • Warships have a “battle short” on some critical equipment, which will bypass safety equipment like fuses. If your gun turret traversal motors pull too much current in the middle of a battle, you’d rather risk damage or fire to have them keep working rather than disable themselves to protect from a fault. Total speculation here, but it would make sense for military reactors to have something similar, to put them in a mode where the threat of a reactor accident due to a malfunction is less than the threat from the enemy if it goes down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleshort

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The final paragraph of the article

> According to NextEra Energy, Unit 1 at St. Lucie is back online at 100% power after operators safely resolved an equipment issue.

I wish the article had said where on earth St Lucie is. Never heard of it