Emergency MELTDOWN Generators Shutdown: It's TOO DANG HOT at the Nuclear Plant

Prairie Island Minnesota Nuclear Plant had to shutdown emergency diesel generators because the outside air temperature was just too dang hot.

So what exactly is too dang hot? According to today's NRC event report Prairie Island Nuclear has to shut down its D1 and D2 generators when the outside air temperature get above 97 degrees F.

So on the hottest days of the year when the electrical grid is at its most strained and the chances of having a Station Blackout (SBO) are highest, the emergency backup generators which help keep the nuclear core from going Fukushima during a SBO have to be shutdown? That just sounds stupid doesn't it?

Of course now that Prairie Island Nuclear is aware of the problem surely they will get right on the ball and have the problem fixed before next summer?  Sadly that is unlikely given that they reported the EXACT same problems on June 8th of 2011.


Who knows? they may have been shutting down these emergency diesel generators during the highest Station Black Out risk periods for many summers. We only checked back one year; see these NRC event reports.

NRC Event Number: 48063


NRC  Event Number: 46934

So why don't the nuclear plants fix these issues, and why does the Nuclear Regulatory Commission not address the issue? Simple, the insurance company does not make them.

The fact is that no private insurance company would underwrite today's sorry state of nuclear affairs; but that is not a problem for the Nuclear plants because you and I are forced to be their insurance providers. And, its not a problem for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because they'll get their paychecks no matter how crappy of a risk mitigation job they perform, after all they have direct access to our wallet too.