Folks--
I want to thank all y'all for the responses so far; they're helpful. The more the better. The clone thing would be ok, as long as he didn't do anything I'd get in trouble for. I tend to get blamed for enough things as it is.....
As you've seen, I'm just trying to educate myself on this stuff, and you can go to the NRC and you can go to the industry trade groups and you can go to the licensees, but I've always found that it's generally best to go to the men and women who actually do the work.
I'm just trying to figure out what reliable (and bullet-proof) indicators there are that show a plant's health over time -- or even if that is a valid way to look at things. It may not be, for all I know at this point. That's one of the reasons I'm trying to educate myself.
Trying to track down the capacity factor thing (and we're talking about net capacity here) may give you an indication of why I wanna pull my hair out. Again, using Monticello as an example, the licensee reported to the NRC that the capacity factor in '01 was 81.6. EIA says it was 74.1. NEI says it was 76.5. When I take Monticello's figures from Xcel's 2001 FERC Form 1 and use the equation FERC told me to use, I come up with 90.6. Allegedly, all of them are the same thing. Frankly, I don't give a hoot which one it is. I'm just trying to figure which one is accepted industry-wide.
(Incidentally, I screwed up in my original e-mail to Michael; the '97 figures I gave him for Monticello were actually '01 figures. The real '97 figures are Total installed capacity: 568.8 MW; plant hours connected to load: 6618; and net generation: 3.6 billion KWh. I've since double-checked all my math on everything else.)
I do want to assure you folks that I really try to get things right. When it comes to understanding complex technical stuff, the average reporter really isn't well-prepared, the average editor even less so. (And I'm talking about print reporters here. Maybe it's my bias, but TV reporters seem to be even worse.) Anyway, I know the stuff is technical and there are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" and "maybes" and subtleties and nuances, and I want to try and understand that without simplifying it. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but by way of introduction so I'm not a total stranger to y'all, I'll mention that I won a Pulitzer in '89 in the explanatory journalism category. I was working in Dallas at the time, and spent 22 months inside the NTSB, following them as they investigated the crash of a business jet. I was the first and, to date, only reporter the NTSB has ever allowed to view an air safety investigation from the "inside." And believe me, I learned pretty quick that when it came to aviation, journalists screwed up with some frequency, so I had to overcome a lot of anti-media feelings and prove to the folks I was in it for the long-haul and just wanted to get it right and explain what was going on to my readers.
I know all of this is long-winded, but I just want to know what facts, figures and statistics the folks who do the work look at when you're gauging whether a plant is working efficiently or not.
Any help/guidance/insights/warnings would be helpful. Just so we're on the same page, I won't print anything posted on this forum in the paper I work for, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, without first checking with and interviewing the author of the post. So I just wanted to put you guys at ease on that point.
Again, thanks.
David Hanners