How can any country find enough water to cool nuclear power plants?
January 1st, 2010 | 
Author: During the past few years of draught, several nuclear power plants were close to closing for lack of cooling water. Since every nuclear power plant needs enormous amounts of water, how can we even think of making it a major source of power when we need the water more than we need the electric power? Moreover, these plants significantly raise the water temperature at a time when we worry about global warming. Surely this alters the kinds of creatures that can live in those environments. Despite this concern and the lack of safe disposal or the production of plutonium, Mr. McCain wants 50 more plants in the USA. Any thoughts?
Posted in Green Q&A | 
Tags: cooling water, creatures, draught, environments, global warming, mr mccain, nuclear power plant, nuclear power plants, plutonium, water temperature
Remove all the salt from sea water, collect rain water, clean waste water, etc….
cooling a nuclear power plant temporary consumes the same amount of water as any fossil fuel plant and the same as a high efficiency solar plant that generates steam to make power. A pv plant consumes less but costs 10 times as much and use 90% less water.
your choice, temporary use water and cut power costs or maximize costs to save water for a few days?
a nuke plants make a swimming pool worth of waste over its life time, deal with it!!! you personally maked that much in a decade.
Getting cooling water will require better use of the water.
Notice that a car has a radiator that dissipates excess heat from the engine without loss of a lot of water. The heat is moved into the air from a container that stays hot to give off heat into air more effectively, with less loss of water.
When Nuclear facilities have a nearby source of volumes of cold water, that is low cost cooling. But we can cool a reactor much the same way we cool a car engine, into the air.
Choosing to dump waste heat into the air has its own problems. It would be best to make use of that heat to create power rather than discarding it into the atmosphere.
Well, the same for cooling a car engine. But with a nuclear facility we have a much more concentrated opportunity to tap into that heat for energy.
the ocean is full of water…is the salt a problem??