Re: Mook's quote about nuclear being a "low grade heat". Is it true?

From: Karl Johanson (karljohanson_at_shaw.ca)
Date: 07/07/04 

Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 01:37:40 GMT

"daestrom" <daestrom@NO_SPAM_HEREtwcny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:12IGc.23631

> It is easy to be dismissive and claim bias without offering any proof.
The
> plain truth is, nuc plants run a lot better than the average manufacturing
> plant. If I *really* wanted to be biased and pick the
'cream-of-the-crop',
> the reported capacity factor for some plants is >99.0 % for a
non-refueling
> year and >95% for a refueling year (the shortest refueling outage on
record
> is 15 days).

And apparently some of the Candus in Korea pulled off greater than 100%
capacity factor. The sea water for cooling turned out to be colder than
expected, allowing for higher than rated power output.

> The +90% is *not* for any single plant. It is the *industry* average.
You
> know, add up the capacity factor for all 104 operating plants and divide
by
> 104. This means *many* plants operate somewhat above 90% and only a few
> operate very far below.

Karl Johanson