NARORA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT UNIT 2 HAD A FORCED OUTAGE ON 29 MAY 2016 PROBABLY DUE TO DAM SURGES.

NARORA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT UNIT 2 HAD A FORCED OUTAGE ON  29 MAY 2016 PROBABLY DUE TO DAM SURGES.

© 2016 Ramaswami AshokKumar

THE DAM SURGE CAUSED A 7.2 MM MAJOR EARTHQUAKE NEAR VISOKOI ISLAND ON 28 MAY 2016. This led to the shutdown of Unit 2, applying the precautionary principle:

Narora Atomic Power Station Unit 2 was given a short reactor maintenance outage on 29 May 2016 at 10:27(IST). It remained in this state till 13^th June 2016. On 14^th June the unit was put on long reactor maintenance outage and has remained so since. Unit No. 1 was programmed to be shut down from June 1, 2016.   Instead ever since 1 June Unit No. 1 has been generating while Unit No 2 has remained shut, as of 17 June 2016 as of date of writing. See Screenshots of CEA Daily Generation Report extracts below for 29 May 2016, 13 June 2016, 14 June 2016 and 15^th June 2016 where Narora Unit performance data is seen.

The data on maintenance outages in June 2016 are in Table 2 as of 17 June 2016..

Table 2:

Notes for Table 2:

1. Narora Unit No, 2 was on short duration forced outage reactor maintenance from 29 May 2016 till June 13 2016. From 14 June the unit is on long duration maintenance.

2. TAPS U3 on Long duration forced outage Reactor Maintenance Works from 23-05-2016 till 15 June 2016, is on Planned Annual Maintenance from 23-05-2016 20:30 IST as on 16 June 2016! Is there an unreported incident here as well?

3. What was the forced outage at Kaiga U3 on 3 May 2016 due to? Dam surge may easily have caused it.

See screenshots of extracts of CEA Daily Generation Reports below for TAPS U3:

 

As Table 1(will be furnished on request) shows, the dynamics of surge waves created by dams is resulting in earthquakes and crippling hits to the nuclear reactors and other structures. On 28^th May 2016 there was a major 7.2 MM magnitude earthquake causing vertical ground acceleration about 1.35 billion meters/day/day at Narora U2. This was caused by a drop in level of 93 meters in 0.006 h(21.6 secs) at Narora NPP area. Since the surge passed through Narora NPP in 0.033 secs, the drop in level was about 13.5 cm during the 33 milliseconds the surge was passing through Narora NPP. This shock would have been probably enough to damage the reactor in some way.

The results of the investigation on the Unit during its outage converted from a short to a long duration outage may reveal the type of damage suffered by the unit.