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). "

Is "nuclear" really applicable?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can see in the article linked, this is a problem with heating the cooling water. All power plants require cooling to work. Does it matter that the proposed plant is nuclear?

Re:There are other options I guess

[vlm]

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.

Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

We had a big solar power plant shut down in california because it infringed on the habitat of a local lizard. It was in the middle of the desert... nothing around it for miles.

They always have a reason not to build something or shut something down. I don't care what it is or how you build it. They have a reason for shutting it down.

What they'll say is you can't build it right there. Then you say okay, how about over there? Nope that won't work either. Then you say, okay how about this other place? Nope.

After awhile the only place you can build something is some place where they don't have authority. If they can stop you they'll try.

Call that cynical but that's what we've seen. We can't build anything. Try it. Ask them where you can build something. They'll promise to get back to you with an answer. Twenty years later you'll ask them if they've made progress and they'll respond "what are you talking about?"... the point is to do nothing.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[CastrTroy]

I guess the best idea would be to have many smaller reactors that could be faster to build. The only problem there is that the nuclear fuel would be spread all over the country. If they can fit a nuclear generator on a submarine, I don't see why they couldn't build small reactors and have them easily dispersed all over the country. A standardized design would mean that it would benefit from economies of scale. Also, because each station only contains a small amount of nuclear fuel, meltdowns would be much easier to contain. The grid would become less centralized, and a lot less energy would be lost due to long transmission distances.