What goes on at a nuclear plant outage?

Carrington Dillon at Clean Energy Insight wrote a very informative piece on the answer.

In the nuclear power industry, an “outage” does not primarily refer to a power outage or blackout. Every Spring and Fall, when power demand is at its lowest, the nuclear industry shuts down some of their plants for maintenance and repair.

This could mean packing up and going to a nuclear power plant for the next three months, or staying at their home office and working the night shift. We will try our best to keep you updated on nuclear news and interesting nuclear power facts [while we're away tending to outages]. However, all of our focus will be on our work in order to be as safe as possible and as productive as possible during these critical outages. Plus, working on an outage can help an engineer gain priceless experience in the field and in the industry, which will make Clean Energy Insight better equipped to bring you voices of experience.

Be sure to check out the rest, pictures and videos and all!

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Fluor Invests in NuScale

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Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

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