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In Hot Water: The Effects of Even Modern Nuke Plants On Water
Harperdog writes "Dawn Stover has a fascinating article on the newest nuclear power plant to get approval: the Blue Castle Project on the Green River in Utah. Stover details the enormous damage done by nuke plants on local water systems, and points out that the 1-2 punch of climate change and cooling systems is already taking a toll on the ability of nuclear power plants to operate, because in summer the water they use to cool systems with is too hot even before they use it (Tennessee Valley Authority is the example). "
Considering that we're finally seeing liquid fueled molten salt reactors built (in China) based on cutting edge state-of-the-1960s technology can we stop calling pressurized water and boiling water reactors "modern"?
Point i) is a thermodynamics fail.
According to TFA: "more than one billion aquatic organisms" are killed annually by NY's Indian Point plant.
No definition of what they mean by "aquatic organism" is given. Blue whales? Minnows? Paramecium?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
All modern power generating plants that use fuel (as opposed to hydro, wind, etc.) work basically the same way. They use a fuel to generate heat (burn coal or gas, create nuclear fission), heat water to steam, and use steam to turn turbines. The water is then cooled and returned to its source, usually a river or lake. All such power plants have problems when the incoming water is too warm or they cannot cool it sufficiently before discharging it.
The only difference between a nuclear plant and a coal/gas plant is that a nuclear plant can concentrate more generating capacity at a single location, which then can require more water.
Point i) is a thermodynamics fail.
Only in the American South. Seriously. Not even a weird anti-science joke.
You blow water thru the air or air thru the water and the water temp, air temp, and dew point of the air all eventually converge to the same number, usually dropping the temp of the water considerably. Works really well in a low dew point area like a desert. Of course low dew point areas usually don't have the spare water to waste evaporating it away. So the cost is a lot of extra water evaporation and quite a bit of electricity to run the pumps. You don't have to get all aquarium tube-y, this can be as simple as an artificial pumped waterfall or a really elaborate water fountain appearing thing. Oxygenates the water too.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Why else do you think we're seeing a massive "positive" publicity campaign to warm our hearts towards Hyrdraulic Fracturing? Pennsylvania will be sorry... They'll get a few thousand quick and short-term high paying jobs. Peoples real estate values in some areas will go up drastically. High school kids with no education will be making 6 figures and then spending themselves into a hole. Then the boom will end. Property values will drop, unemployment, local communities will be stuck holding the bag while the energy companies will skip town to the next boom.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water. You could drive a bunch of Stirling Engines. You're not interested in the power from the Stirlings, just their use of the excess heat. How much would that cost though?
There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water. You could drive a bunch of Stirling Engines. You're not interested in the power from the Stirlings, just their use of the excess heat. How much would that cost though?
The need for "cooling" is a bit of a red herring. It's not strictly about keeping things from getting too hot, but about providing a sufficient temperature (and therefore pressure) differential. Such differentials would also be required to drive a Stirling Engine, and while they will function at a much smaller differential than a steam turbine, they will still have cooling requirements, otherwise they would achieve thermal equilibrium. And since Stirling engines are more useful for performing relatively slow mechanical work (you can gear them up, but gears have parasitic losses), you may well end up using more energy to create the same amount of electrical power as a steam turbine. That's just my armchair analysis, though I trust that the engineers who designed the plant have made optimal decisions in generator selection, so the fact that they're using steam turbines speaks for itself in that regard.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The aren't worried about water being removed from the environment, they're worried about it being removed from the ecosystem (or changing the ecosystem by heating the water around the plant). It's great that the water doesn't disappear and re-enters the water cycle, but that isn't any consolation to the people and creatures who were relying on that water downstream.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Water used in steam turbines is distilled water - as few particulates as possible at they will erode the turbine into junk.
The heat source heats water into steam to drive the turbines. That water is then cooled by external water before being returned to the heat source.
The external water may be pass through or recycled, but it never ever gets to the turbines.
And water really doesn't expand during heating (under 1%) until it boils and becomes vapor.
The Nuke Haters will always hate.
There will always be something that damages some part of the environment.
There will always be some scenario that could possibly result in the end of us all.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Keep in mind those same laws of thermodynamics dictate that the larger the temperature difference, the higher the efficiency. Now, temperature isn't the same thing as heat, so that doesn't automatically put limits on small-scale operations. However, in practice it tends to do so. Generating high temperatures in a huge furnace is a lot easier than doing it in a small one, which is why a coal plant is more efficient than a car engine.
That would be true if you were trying to cool the water with the energy you extracted *from the water*. But a nuclear reactor does not conserve energy, it has input from the nuclear fuel. The only reason you need to cool the water at all is because the fuel is generating more heat than you can extract in your turbines, either because of their design or because of the limited electricity demand. If you have a place to dump the extra heat, using some of that electricity to get it from point A to point B is not thermodynamically implausible.
The reason this is a stupid idea is completely unrelated, though. If the reactor design requires active refrigeration, this is even more likely to fail than simple pumps, and you run a much higher risk of melting down. And if it is not required, no one would want to pay extra for a redundant overly-complicated system unless there are other reasons not to use the passive system in normal operation.
The trouble is that dammed rivers are (at least in CA) generally warmer over all (due to lower flows and a larger heating surface on the surface of the lake). Then you do a release from the dam (bottom of the lake) and dump a bunch of frigid water into the stream. Huge temperature swings for the organisms to deal with.
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Actually, it was an endangered tortoise, not a lizard. And it wasn't shut down, the company behind it had to acquire more land to manage habitat for displaced animals.
So really, nothing actually happened to that particular solar plant. I swear, sometimes I think environmentalists are the new all-powerful bogeyman. Everything goes wrong is their fault, even the stuff that doesn't go wrong.
One source: http://energy.gov/articles/department-announces-loan-guarantee-brightsource-energy-inc 2 minutes of googling finds you load more.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yes, since they use exactly the same process at all points past the "fuel->heat" stage. But you get more attention if you say "nuke" in the headline.