Operating power plants

Just consulkted with my friends at a local hydro: You'd be lucky to get a month ... they require constant servicing and the automatic shut downs start kicking in and taking things off-line

To shut off power you don't do it at a power plant, you do it at the sub-stations that feed the neighborhoods.

What does your plot need to have?

Tsu Dho Nimh said:

Just consulkted with my friends at a local hydro: You'd be lucky to get a month ... they require constant servicing and the automatic shut downs start kicking in and taking things off-line

To shut off power you don't do it at a power plant, you do it at the sub-stations that feed the neighborhoods.

What does your plot need to have?

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A week if you're lucky, probably less. Bear in mind that there are varoius power statoins feeding the grid. In the Eastern part of teh US and canada the grid extends from Ontaio and Quebec all the way down the eastern Seaboard. All you need is a lightining strike and surges build up throughout the grid and the automatic systems start shuttting down and isolating secton of the grid since a serious surge can blow up substations. You'd have a cascade effect since you'd have the various power plants operating with no load so their automatic systems would start shutting down. For coal powerd plants, this means the coal feeding machinery would slow and stop, for hydro plants, the sluice gates would close and no water would get to the turbines, for nuclear plants, the control rods would be pushed into reactor absorbing the nuetron flux and stopping nuclear fission.

Now bare inmind as well that many of these in-plant systems, certainly the older ones, need human operators to shut down so you without anyone to shut them down you'll have a lot of wreaked turbines and post apocolypse, nobody would be able to repair them. I'm talking turbines longer that a foot ball fied, at least the low pressure ones.

You're best bet is a hydro dam. They are built to last about a century and most don't need much maintenance. Shut down for most of the newer ones is automatic.
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If people saw the 'biological calamity' coming, seeing the contagion spread or the death rate climb, and knew the likely outcome, is it not possible that dedicated workers in an outlying (less inter-connected) plant might try to do a controlled shut-down? Going down with the ship, so to speak, the faithful technicians might do what they could to preserve 'their' plant in hopes that it might be restarted in the future?

frimble3 said:

If people saw the 'biological calamity' coming, seeing the contagion spread or the death rate climb, and knew the likely outcome, is it not possible that dedicated workers in an outlying (less inter-connected) plant might try to do a controlled shut-down? Going down with the ship, so to speak, the faithful technicians might do what they could to preserve 'their' plant in hopes that it might be restarted in the future?

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When I worked at the Douglas point Nuclear station in Ontario that's certainly what our techs and engineers would have done. Shoved in all the control rods. Any engineer worth his salt would do that.