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Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Nuclear Power Plants To Shut Down (qz.com)
Europe's heatwave -- which led to wildfires in Greece and Sweden, droughts in central and northern parts, and made the normally green UK look brown from space -- is forcing nuclear plants to shut down or curtail the amount of power they produce, local media reports. From a report: French utility EDF shut four reactors at three power plants on Saturday, Swedish utility Vattenfall shut one of two reactors at a power plant earlier last week, and nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, and Switzerland have cut back the amount of power they produce. Thermal power plants, such as nuclear or coal, use high-temperature steam to turn turbines, which convert heat energy into electricity. In the process, the steam's temperature falls, so it can no longer be used to move the turbine again. [...] Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures.
It's a terrible summary.
The problem is that the water is chilled... but it's chilled by running it through colder water, usually pulled from a lake or a stream. Usually this isn't a problem, because the waste heat doesn't disrupt the ecosystem too much.
Right now, however, the environment is so warm that adding the waste heat would push temperatures above acceptable levels, killing the local ecosystem. Instead, the reactors are shut down to minimize the amount of heat they have to dissipate.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?
Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
In Germany, recently, nuclear was a steady producer while wind was barely producing.
https://www.energy-charts.de/p...
Poor design. All over the world there are nuclear plants operating just fine in hot tropical and subtropical climates, including the USA. Never has been a problem. So the Euros are doing something wrong with their designs.
Almost all the European nukes are running just fine, full output. Only a few have cut back due to discharge heat limits.
"No longer cool?" I've been on Slashdot and it sure seems to me that most people I've talked to here never read past the second sentence of the summary, much less the article.
Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's fun when we have this exchange:
MD Solar: Fucking Trump screwing everything up again.
Me: The first sentence of the summary is "In 2015, the TSA stripped searched 4,800 people". Can you read the first two words? I didn't know Trump was running the TSA in 2015.
You should of learned in high school physics
And you should've learned in elementary school how contractions work.
Germany produces 3 times more power from wind than from nuclear. Moron ...
Which is pretty clearly visible on your cherry picked graph.
You miss the point. Germany has stupidly shut down nuclear plants, but nuclear is still available when needed, unlike wind. One chooses charts to illustrate points, I chose one illustrating what is happening during a heat wave. Sorry you don't like that.
For the heat wave weeks, nuclear generated more than wind. Even with 58 GW installed wind vs 9.5 GW installed nuclear.
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
" You should of learned in high school "
Have. They also teach that in high school.
Its a German and EU political and environmental problem. eg Thermal pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The cooling water drawn from rivers, lakes, or seas will get more warm in hooter weather as more cooling water is needed.
German laws put limits on how hot cooling water can be when returned to such "rivers, lakes, or seas".
Laws limited the exisiting cooling engineering.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Korea is even started up nukes that were scheduled to be down for maintenance to help during their heat wave.
http://www.world-nuclear-news....
Humans run at about 100W. We're pretty efficient
100W, not 1000. And it's only a threat to life in rivers if they live in them, and even given the propensity to build on floodplains, that isn't really happening.
This is europe, we do that even in the cold weather.
I design HVAC systems (among other things) for a living.
For an average office worker we assume about 250 btuh (75 watts±) of sensible heat and 200 btuh (60 watts±) of latent heat (evaporating sweat) for a total of a little less than 135 watts.
For heavy exercise, about 700 btuh (210 watts±) of sensible heat and 1100 btuh (320 watts±) of latent heat, for a total of about 530 watts per person.