Talk:Watts Bar Nuclear Plant

Annual generation 10,050 GWh ???

1. This likely refers to gross (brutto) generation (as opposed to net output), which imo ought to be made clear 2. Where does this number come from ? -- One reactor rated at 1,121 MW producing at 100% of rating for 365*24 h would (iianmm) generate 9.82 TWh 3. Whole page doeth, to my eyes, look a bit like advertizing put out by the nuclear establishment. Wda (talk) 11:03, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Re: 10,050 GWh, note capacity factor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.101.124.26 (talk) 19:19, 17 June 2016

Let us look at one source. Go to the 2007 year row:

"Electricity Supplied [GW.h]"    = 10,049.69
"Reference Unit Power [MW]"      = 1123
"Annual Time On Line [h]"        = 8760
"Operation Factor [%]"           = 100.0% (2007)
"Energy Availability Factor [%]" = 100.0% (2007)
"Load Factor [%]"                = 102.2% (2007)

Note: Load Factor is also named Capacity Factor. Reference Unit Power is also the Net capacity.

Let us look at the glossary:

Operation Factor (OF): the ratio of the number of hours the unit was on-line to the total number of hours in the reference period (availability on the grid)

Energy Availability Factor (EAF): the ratio of the energy that the available capacity could have produced during this period, to the energy that the reference unit power could have produced during the same period.

Load Factor (LF): the ratio of the energy which the power reactor unit has produced over that period divided by the energy it would have produced at its reference power capacity over that period.

The EAF is some how tricky to explain, so I will skip it. Let us, instead, look at OF and LF. 2007 is a year with 365 days, so total hours would be 365 x 24 = 8,760. So, calculation of OF would be:

OF = hours on-line / hours 2007 = 8,760 / 8,760 = 100%

I.e., in 2007, the reactor was on-line without interruptions. At Reference Unit Power, producing full-time, the generation in 2007 (365 days) would be (in GWh):

1,123 x 8,760 / 1000 = 9,837,48

So, LF (Capacity Factor) results in:

10,049.69 / 9,837.48 = 102,16% ---> 102,2%

What is to be understood is simply that in 2007 the reactor was slightly pushed above his referenced capacity. Nothing exceptional (it happened three times with Watts Bar 1). --Robertiki (talk) 15:45, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Obviously the generation data is Net Output as calculated above and so we have a problem with the infobox plant output, if we take the data from the PRIS data base. --Robertiki (talk) 15:51, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Re: estimate of core damage frequency

The article refers to a core damage frequency as estimated in the agency study, and gives [14] and [15] as the source. Can somebody show me in the study cited where that number comes from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.101.124.26 (talk) 19:22, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

It comes from the NBC News source: "24. Watts Bar 1, Spring City, Tenn.: 1 in 27,778 chance each year. Old estimate: 1 in 178,571. Change in risk: 543 percent." I assume this is based on the SCDF tables in appendix D of the report, but I don't really think NBC is a reliable source for interpreting this data. Their number obviously has false precision for example. Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:20, 17 June 2016 (UTC)