Very interesting post. I would like to read that article. I'll try to to answer the best I can in a simple manner that doesn't involve a lot of technical gobbly goop that many wouldn't understand. And in the interest of full disclosure I'll state up front that most steamers like myself find that when it comes to base load solar is a joke. Base load is what keeps the grid stable. Solar definitely has it uses. I'm building a back up solar system for my house as we speak. But for base load solar just wont work. To try and make that work everybody's electric bill would be 5 grand a month.
1. They called them boilers but they were not like a regular drum boiler. They were a series of tubes all connected in groups. There were super heater sections and reheater sections ect ect. Normal operating parameters were 5000 psi 1000 degree F. That was what was delivered to the high pressure turbines. The engineers actually called it "stuff" because it was almost a plasma. Then that steam went back to boiler tubes to be reheated and then delivered to the Low pressure turbines which operated around 750 degrees F and 3500 psi. It's been 12 years since I left there so my numbers might be off a little. It was the reheater line that failed that day. I was there that day and missed getting fried by about 15 mins or so. Not an Indiana Jones close call but close enough that I never liked being in that area again. But I had to because a lot of instruments I worked on were there.
2. The engineer was correct. All good systems are designed with a safety factor. What the solar guy said was flat out wrong. He actually got it backwards. Before the steam line failure they used to often run the plant maxed out above what was considered safe. It was determined that was contributing factor to the steam line coming apart. In those days we had the old control system which wasn't very good. I saw main steam temps as high as 1100 degrees. Swinging all over the place. And pressures unstable because of sloppy control valves. We had by today's standards enthalpy and entropy control circuits that were ancient. They often didn't trip when they were supposed too as I recall. To try and make the way we ran before understandable was like running your car engine red lined all time with rpm's. It will fail sooner and often. As far as the entropy and enthalpy control computers and how they worked if I told you I understood that with any degree of certainty I would be lying. The relay test tech's took care of those.
3. No we didn't curtail production to raise prices. After we upgraded to the new DCS control system we actually increased production. In fact the day we shut down for good we had never run better. In the old days if we stayed on line for 30 days the company would throw us a BBQ to celebrate. After we were getting run times of 90-100 days. That's because the tubes would get brittle and come apart. That's about the most you could get out of the tubes with the temps and pressures we ran at. Another thing...we were a regulated utility. What we were allowed to charge for the electricity was basically what it cost to produce it...essentially a wash. Where the company made its money was thru capital depreciation and other such financial wizardry which I still don't understand to this day.
4. What the engineer said about running above limits in the old days was correct. That was to get max power. The managers bonuses were partially determined by megawatt production. At least that's what I was told. But a major factor in the failure was excessive cycling. Hot cold hot cold ect ect. It would have been better to run 95% all the time than to cycle from hot to cold. The constant contraction expansion of the welds was what caused it to fail IMO.
5. Conspiracy. There is some truth about that. But not about production. There was some in my opinion but it was nothing like a Jason Bourne movie. It mostly involved legal matters and financial stuff. I know the people who got payouts from being injured had to sign NDA's. Again that's what I told. When the steam line blew the company told us if anybody took pictures they would be fired. Remember this was 20 years before smartphones. They couldn't control that these days. Also in the late 70's one of the station managers ask to have the welds x-rayed because of concerns he had. The company said no. He did it anyway and was fired. They tried to hide that fact but it came out anyway the way it was explained to me.
6. Solar. If your considering going solar for your house I can talk to you about that but that and any further discussion about my power plant we should probably move it to the off topic section. The mods might want to move this post too. I can give you my take on solar on whether its worth it or not. If have any further questions on this topic I'd be happy to answer any I can. We had no process control engineer on my station so we had to design and install many of our control systems. I know something about this stuff but at the end of the day I was a mere technician and not an engineer. Cheers.
P.S...a pic of the rupture that somebody snuck out.
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