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posted by
martyb
on Monday August 06 2018, @08:56PM
from the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlUH40ZEYZo dept.
from the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlUH40ZEYZo dept.
EDF has halted four nuclear reactors at three power plants in France because of the current heatwave affecting Europe, a spokesman for the utility said on Saturday.
High temperatures registered in the Rhone and Rhine rivers, from which the three power plants pump their water for cooling, led to a temporary shutdown of the reactors, the spokesman said.
The Associated Press story at The Reading Eagle explains that excessive heat is harmful to fish.
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France's EDF Halts Four Nuclear Reactors due to Heatwave
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It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @12:03AM (3 children)
How is temperature an issue? I mean this from a technology/engineering perspective, not a social or political one. Specifically, see What-If XKCD, Toaster vs Freezer [xkcd.com]:
These nuclear power plants need to reach temperatures of thousands of degrees. Why would a paltry extra few-dozen degrees from weather make any substantial difference at all in their operations?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @12:30AM
Fish kills, the discharge of the plant is raising the temp of the rivers. Since the rivers are already hot, the same temp of discharge increases their temp even more. This temp can both directly kill the fish and lower the oxygen content of the water.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:41AM
You're thinking about the perspective of the toaster in your analogy, but you should be thinking about the freezer.
As your link notes, operating the toaster inside the freezer will cause the freezer's temperate to rise a bit. It will have to work harder to stay cool.
The nuclear reactors in question use natural rivers as a heat sink. Unlike the freezer, however, they can't just run the compressor more when the toaster is present. Instead, their water temp rises a bit when the cooling water returns to the river. Under normal conditions most times during the year, a few degrees of temp rise in the river water causes no problems. But now the water is already warmer than fish and other life are used to. The temp will rise even further due to the plant, which can harm life in the rivers.
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Tuesday August 07 2018, @10:50AM
Because they don't operate at thousands of degrees, some don't even superheat the steam beyond 350C. At those small temperature differences cooling towers (consumptive water use) give a couple percent increase in thermal efficiency over river cooling (technically non-consumptive). Using a million degree nuclear reaction to boil water is ridiculous.