Yeah, the big problem is the death of coal power. Coal power plants can stockpile enough fuel to run for a good while no matter the weather. Natural gas power plants cannot; they rely on a continuous supply of gas, and it turns out that every part of the Texas natural gas supply chain is vulnerable to cold weather and power outages. Fixing this will be slow, incredibly expensive, probably increase CO2 emissions and decrease the cost-effectiveness of gas (because they need to rely on natural gas to compress and pump the gas rather than cheaper electricity from wind power that might not be there).
A nuclear plant went offline due to the recent event. Pretending this has anything at all to do with the type of power generation, instead of properly weatherizing infrastructure is absurd.
If the grid frequency is not stable enough (i.e. demand outstrips supply) any type of power plant will trip off line when the protection circuitry kicks in. Anything else risks damage to transformers and industrial machinery downstream.
The nuclear plant's turbines were literally on the "roof" of the reactor complex completely in the open. Nuclear regulations only require the reactor itself to be enclosed and protected.
No shit the turbines froze over. They ignored reports advising them to fully enclose the plant for years.
The turbines have superheated steam flowing into them directly from a source of practically unlimited heat. The only way for them to freeze over would be for the plant to have already shut down.
Loss of cooling water to the condencer is bad news for any thermal power plant. It can lead to damage to the LP turbine through poor steam quality.
I was perhaps a bit too hasty in my initial statement, clearly this reactor tripped because of the cold. I'm not an expert but given a nuclear power plant produces literally gigawatts of low grade waste heat it feels like that should have been possible to work around i.e. for example by bleeding cooling water back at the intake.
>Yeah, the big problem is the death of coal power. Coal power plants can stockpile enough fuel to run for a good while no matter the weather.
I read that multiple coal plants went offline due to weather related issues including problems with the water supply needed to operate the steam turbines and freezing of coal piles.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063727799 has some good details including that 38% of coal generation capacity was offline during the worst of the recent freeze in Texas.
I think this all just comes back to the point made up-thread: preparing power infrastructure for bad weather is essential, and the size of the relative advantage of coal vs. other forms of generation is dominated by the improvement in availability that comes from that.
