Davis-Besse Nuclear Reactor Restarted, Equipped to Handle Fukushima-Sized Disaster

FirstEnergy Nuclear Society has restarted its nuclear reactor Davis-Besse after a two-year closure for refueling, inspection and maintenance.

908 megawatts plant operated at 60 percent of the power of this later and is expected to reach full capacity during the week. One megawatt is 1 million watts, is enough to power homes 800-1000 electricity.

During stop 44 days, the company completed construction of a new building water supply and emergency power designed to meet federal standards for emergency and industry that have developed since the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March 2011.

Built next to the reactor containment building, three floors of the hardened structure has been built on the rock below the plant and contains more than 130,000 square feet of space.

The construction of storage tanks households containing 290,000 liters of water and two large generators gas turbine feed pumps that will push the water into the reactor in the event of a major disaster eliminated all emergency plants redundant systems which it is what happened in Japan after the tsunami.

The 290,000 gallons of stored water would be sufficient to cool the plant for 24 hours while emergency crews set up pumps and lines to draw water from Lake Erie.

There is also enough space in the new building to store those extra portable pumps and large generators, said Jennifer Young, a spokeswoman for FirstEnergy.

Davis-Besse has two diesel very large emergency generators, also in hard buildings but to present standards Fukushima Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires plant owners to take diesel engines were removed as well as all other systems of vital importance, as they were in Fukushima, Young said.

During the ongoing disaster in Fukushima, emergency teams lost the emergency diesel generators for each reactor, the power transmission lines, and the ability to pump water into the reactor cores to prevent fusion of.

Since the Fukushima disaster, the NRC and the nuclear industry in the US have developed standards to be met by plant owners to address these cases of extreme urgency

"It is fair to say that buildings and equipment costs millions of dollars," Young said. "It's part of our strategy to protect the plant against unexpected events. It is a facility that we hope to never have to use."

The building hardened equipment and also allow the company to reach new standards of the National Fire Protection Association Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved.

Meets NFPA is voluntary, Young said. "But it's something we wanted to do."

Also during the stop, other equipment replaced about one-third of the fuel rod assemblies 177 of the reactor, and two of the four electric motors factory 50 tons growing reactor coolant pumps very large