Safety

An email written by the team leader of an ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspection being conducted at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant suggested that the facility’s staff were “overwhelmed by just trying to run the station.” The wide-ranging NRC inspection began on Nov. 28. It is the third and largest inspection conducted as part […]

[Note: This article first appeared online on November 1.] The discovery of widespread carbon segregation problems in critical nuclear plant components has crippled the French power industry—20 of the country’s 58 reactors are currently offline and under heavy scrutiny. France’s nuclear safety chairman said more anomalies “will likely be found,” as the extent of the contagion […]

Nine people, including the chairman and chief engineer of the Fengcheng power plant, have been arrested following a scaffold collapse that killed 74 construction workers on November 24. The scaffold platform had been erected to facilitate work on a cooling tower that was being constructed at the plant located in Yichun City, Jiangxi Province. According […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is beginning a comprehensive three-week inspection of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass., as a result of the plant’s repeated performance deficiencies, the agency said in a November 28 statement. The inspection, planned for more than a year, is part of the NRC’s heightened oversight process, begun […]

This September, Puerto Rico suffered an island-wide blackout that left 1.5 million utility customers without power for more than 50 hours and reportedly resulted in multimillion-dollar losses for its already troubled economy. The blackout in the U.S. territory with a population of about 3.5 million occurred on September 21, when a blaze erupted in a […]

Security is taken very seriously at most power plants. Fences and other barriers are usually installed before construction of a plant even begins to keep curious busy-bodies, thieves, protestors, and—at the far end of the spectrum—saboteurs and terrorists out of sensitive locations. Some plants have dedicated security staff patrolling areas both inside and outside of […]

When a gas turbine goes down, recovery can be an expensive, time-consuming process. Knowing what can go wrong and how to anticipate turbine failures can help you avoid a difficult unplanned outage. Gas-fired power is hot and getting hotter. The Energy Information Administration estimates that 2016 will be the first year ever that the U.S. […]

For all its record-breaking achievements for speed, innovation, and efficiency, the 3,960-MW Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project should have been a POWER Top Plant. But the unique project has been plagued by serious setbacks—including loss of life—that show how perilous the plant construction journey can be. A decade ago, India was suffering a power crisis […]

Talen Energy’s two-unit Martin’s Creek Power Plant in Mount Bethel Township, Penn., was forced offline as a result of a transformer fire Sept. 11, the company said. The incident occurred Sunday evening at a transformer yard adjacent to the plant. The fire was extinguished by local firefighters after about three hours. The plant was not […]

A massive fire broke out at DTE Energy’s St. Clair Power Plant in the early evening on August 11. Firefighters reportedly received the call for assistance at around 6:30 p.m. and fought the blaze well into the following morning. Video taken during the incident shows flames in several spots on the north end of the […]