Prompted by the Doosan Enerbility-TerraPower sodium-cooled SMR equipment contract, an electrical engineer’s look at how SFR protection trip logic and instrumentation signals differ from those of a light water reactor.
Prompted by ZiaCore’s high-temperature, low-power criticality, an electrical engineer compares when microreactors and SMRs win from a grid load-following perspective.
With the IAEA’s ATLAS project for floating SMRs and nuclear-powered ships under way, a grid connection safety interlock checklist for offshore platforms, from an electrical engineer’s view.
Saeul Unit 3 was manually shut down during commissioning after a leak in condensate drain piping. How level and differential-pressure interlocks can cover secondary piping leaks that sit outside radiation monitoring.
KEPCO E&C and Doosan Enerbility surged two days in a row on news that Korea and the U.S. are discussing building eight large reactors in the U.S. The AP1000’s fully passive cooling, the APR1400’s passive auxiliary feedwater system and their different U.S. track records, compared from an electrical engineer’s standpoint.
Hanbit Unit 2 stops for about 10 months because its design life expired before review ended; Hatch secured its licence 8-12 years early. The difference is institutional design, not equipment.
PWR and BWR compared by where the radiation boundary sits, with decision criteria based on maintenance organization, power control, and supply chain.
Natural uranium and on-power refueling weighed against spent fuel volume and fueling machine burden to show when CANDU or LWR comes out ahead.
Nuclear heat extraction framed as an electricity-for-heat exchange, with criteria on temperature, pipeline distance, and backup boilers.
Nuclear power is often framed as opposed to renewable energy, but in practice the two serve different roles as generation sources. The key question is whether output can be held steady regardless of weather.