#comanche peak

[tetramodal]

Horn Peak Sunset Acrylic on canvas 8x8". Charles Morgenstern, 2023. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains seen from Westcliffe, Colorado.

[neva-borne]

Emmaline Lake, Comanche Peak Wilderness, CO

August 12 2020

[man-and-atom]

I was deeply disappointed to realize that I had missed out on attending not one, but two recent public hearings on the subject of the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement for the re–licensing ― a very preliminary stage, but one which the antinuclear crowd has already used to make their usual noise.

There is still a little time for you to submit a comment, which can be done here.

My full comment can be read on Patreon (without paying), and on the government site once it’s processed, but here’s the first part of it.

As a resident of Fort Worth, Texas, I benefit directly from the operation of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.

In my opinion, to remove 2200 megawatts of dependable, emissions-free, reasonably-priced electrical generation from the Texas grid, without some truly urgent cause, would be an act of deliberate injury to the public health and welfare. People would die. The scope of any Environmental Impact Statement relating to the renewal of the operating licenses for Comanche Peak must include the risks and harms of inadequate power supply, even of total grid collapse, in its scope.

My household did not lose power during the crisis of February 2021, which was a very good thing for my 98-year-old grandmother. Since then, we have repeatedly seen warnings from ERCOT, some of them during periods of fair weather and moderate demand, that there is inadequate generating capacity margin on the Texas grid, and curtailments have been undertaken to protect grid stability. This is contrary to the ethos of the central-station electric utility system, which is to supply power so dependably that large users will not feel the need to install their own supplies, and then leverage economies of scale to provide near-universal service at prices everyone can afford. The social benefit inherent in this model is immense, and one might reasonably say it is the foundation of our modern world.

[thechernoblog]

Comanche Peak Reactor Trips During Testing

"Unit 2 of the Comanche Peak nuclear plant in Texas went offline Friday after routine testing set off safety systems. According to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, workers at the Luminant plant near Fort Worth were using a blocking circuit to test a slave relay that can trip the unit's main turbine and feed water pumps under certain abnormal conditions. The relay actuated unexpectedly, according to the NRC, and the reactor shut down from full power automatically after the turbine tripped. All safety systems responded as designed. Unit 1 continued to operate at full power, and unit 2 was back up to 45 percent power as of Monday, according to figures provided to the NRC. Both units are 1,150 megawatt Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactors first licensed in the early 1990s"

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