The water leak occurred in thousands of tubes that carry heated water from the reactor core through the plant's steam generators.
Poseidon wants to build its desalination project adjacent to this power plant, a plant that cools its generators by piping in seawater from half a mile out at sea.
The power plant's backup diesel generators and their fuel supplies were destroyed by the tsunami.
The heat produces steam in a separate loop that drives the plant's turbines and generators.
Mr. Norvelle said the four diesel generators at the plant, 40 miles northwest of Richmond, can furnish enough electricity to run vital safety systems indefinitely at the two-reactor site.
Emergency generators at the plant became inoperable after a tsunami topped a seawall at the coastal facility and flooded the emergency equipment that was located in a low-lying area.
FORBES: Third Explosion Rocks Japanese Nuclear Plant; Radiation Levels Rise
The tsunami which followed knocked out the backup generators, leaving plant operators scrambling to keep the fuel units from overheating, melting down, and releasing radiation into the air and sea.
Some generators have switched off plant while others have defaulted on debt repayments and one has gone bust.
When I toured the island with National Park Service (NPS) staff in August 2010, Jim Calvinperez, the facilities manager and chief engineer, told me that 2, 000 gallons of diesel fuel had to be shipped to the island weekly in order to keep the generators in the power plant humming.
FORBES: Solar-Powered Microgrid Slashes Alcatraz Island's Dependence On Fossil Fuels
Japanese safety experts believed that backup generators at the Fukushima nuclear plant were more than adequate to withstand any earthquake.
FORBES: Agroterrorism: Managing Risk In The Food Supply Chain
Were generators forced to auction mothballed plant, so that marginal power stations were spread around more owners, there would probably be more coal burned and power prices would be lower.
Diesel generators were supplying electricity to the plant, which was stable, the NRC said.
KHIC, also widely known as Hanjung, had been in the Gulf since 1986, providing heat-recovery steam generators for the Jebel Ali thermal power plant in the United Arab Emirates.
FORBES: Arabia-Asia: The Mideast Is Prime Territory for Korea's Doosan Heavy
"To the generators, it felt like we turned on a peaking power plant, " says Healy.
To get this generation, many states now require fossil fuel powered generators to buy "green tags" from, for instance, solar generators, for every unit of power sold by that fossil plant.
Electricity dropped out at a nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, said fire spokesman Ed Bradley, but backup generators sprang into action.
Edison has said that because of manufacturing differences, Unit 2's generators did not suffer the extent of deep tube wear witnessed in its sister plant.
And then there was the lack of electrical power -- the quakes cracked a hydroelectric power plant, forcing authorities to shut it down, making even a nearby airport unusable until portable generators could go online.
It said Tepco staff at the plant were not trained to handle emergencies like the power shutdown that struck when the tsunami destroyed back-up generators, AP news agency reported.
应用推荐