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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"?
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.
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 ironic thing about this situation is that the entire problem could be solved (especially for newer reactors) by building cooling towers rather than using rivers for cooling. But cooling towers look scary, so nobody likes them.
Uh, no. Even if I hadn't RTFA I'd know you are wrong. Cooling towers are built to cool the water through evaporation, and said evaporation (and blowdown) of the proposed "closed-loop" cooling system is what TFA was complaining about, since none of the water taken would be returned to the river.
Also, a lot of cooling towers are built precisely to cool the used river water before returning it to the river, so, because of evaporation, they not only return less water to the river than taken, because the river is lower temperature than the typical ambient wet bulb temperature, what they return is warmer than the river (unless you had a really unusually hot river).