nuke events in Spain and here in US

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?smp=&lang=eng

Area: Spain, Castille and León, Santa María de Garona NPP, Burgos

The nuclear reactor at the Santa María de Garoña power station in Burgos suffered an unexpected shut down overnight as the power created by the main generator was rejected by the system. A statement from the CSN, the Nuclear Security Council, said that there was no risk to workers in the centre at any time as safety systems all worked correctly. It comes a week after the CSN announced that a series of sessions at the plant would be held to analyse its possible future closure, as the Ministry for Industry had requested a report on procedures before June 5, a month before its activity licence is due to expire.



Area: USA, State of New York, Indian Point 2 Nuclear Power Plant, Buchanan

Federal regulators say a nuclear reactor in the New York suburbs has been manually shut down after the failure of a pump that feeds water to a steam generator. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says there was no release of radioactivity and no threat to workers or the public at the Indian Point 2 reactor in Buchanan. The shutdown left the entire Indian Point plant idle because its second reactor, Indian Point 3, is down for refueling and won't be back online for a couple of weeks. When both reactors are working, they provide 2000 megawatts of electricity to the metropolitan area. Entergy Nuclear, owner of Indian Point, said the cause of the pump failure was not immediately known. The reactor had been running for 304 continuous days.
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is there some special meaning to it 'running for 304 continuous days' ?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Special meaning?

No, I don't think so.

[TheMadMonk]

2. Without incident. But otherwise, not particularly significant.

And neither incident would have merited mention if they'd happened in any other type of power plant. There was no involvement of the reactor cores or any radioactive material whatsoever.

In the first the power generation equipment got out of sync with the grid and was correctly isolated before it could damage the grid or possibly consumer's appliances.

In the second, a pump failed cutting off the supply of steam that is used to generate power.