“Hardening refers to physically changing the infrastructure to make it less susceptible to damage from extreme wind, flooding, or flying debris. Hardening improves the durability and stability of energy infrastructure, making it better able to withstand the impacts of hurricanes and weather events without sustaining major damage.”
“Resiliency refers to the ability of an energy facility to recover quickly from damage to any of its components or to any of the external systems on which it depends.”
Nuclear is a sound energy source in the sense of resiliency. There have been no accidents for over 2 decades putting the public at any risk in the United States, but in Fukushima, Japan, after the tsunami, a nuclear meltdown devastated the area. Sites automatically shut down 2 hours before hurricane force winds for safety. If offsite power is ever lost, sites all have backup diesel generators to power safety systems until power is brought back online. Hurricane Sandy demonstrated a plant’s backup abilities when the Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey ran off backup power for over 2 weeks with no issues. Hurricane Sandy had 34 reactors in its path; 10 shut down successfully and all returned to full capacity.
Coal plants are being decommissioned all across the US and the world. Coal is a pervasive power source that feeds baseload energy needs along with nuclear. Plants reach 25% running capacity three hours or less after generation start up and can control emissions in the same amount of time.
Woody Biomass has a similar system to coal. Plants have at least a month store fuel in the yard that is rotated making transportation of fuel to the plant less of a problem. Ice and other natural events can shut down plants but reboot time is shorter than that of coal (Harleysville employees).
All plants are subject to wearing parts that impede ability to generate electricity. Extreme cold or heat can cause timings to vary and performance to suffer. When these conditions happen, added stress could cause the parts to break, such as a circuit not tripping and preventing a short circuit or pipes to fracture and lose pressure. This can happen at any large scale facility regardless of preparedness.
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