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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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(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday August 07 2018, @04:27PM
District heating from nuclear has a long history. Both as discontinued (Ågesta/Sweden), current (Bilibino/Russia, Bezneu/Switzerland) and proposed (China*, Finland) (all of those just what I remembered at the top of my head).
Many forms of cogeneration (in particular using heat, and not rarely to aid in hydrogen production (some chemistry is more amenable at high temperatures) are proposed in lots of upcomming designs.
In canada a couple of years ago it was proposed to build a pair of nuclear plants for the sake of generating steam to aid in the explotation of the tar sands (tells you a bit about the heat requirements for that)
But the main reasons why it isn't used are legal or location. For district heating it needs to be placed near-ish to cities and quite frankly cities are usually sited at places that are suboptimal for the cooling needed for thermal plants (of non-trivial scale, up to a couple of dozen of MWt/about 100MWt the land cost is the main issue). The legal issues are however due to a failure of understanding nuclear with the lawmakers (and their greens).
For instance the occurance in Ågesta (the 1969 incident) is the reason why such things are forbidden in sweden, but it operated just fine for a couple of years after that (last two at a profit) before being forced to shut down (1974) - and that reactor was vastly different to the kind sweden built later.
(* The chinese proposal is interesting in that they propose a low temperature pool-type reactor for heat only, this removes most engineering issues with nuclear plants)