from the you're-a-fool-if-you-can't-keep-cool dept.
Nuclear power plants are struggling to stay cool:
From its humble start as a glacial trickle in the Swiss Alps, the Rhône River quickly transforms into one of the world's most industrialized waterways. As it winds through the south of France toward the Mediterranean Sea, its chilly water is drawn into boilers, sucked through pipes as coolant, deviated for agriculture. Among its biggest customers is a battalion of nuclear reactors. Since the 1970s, the river and its tributaries have helped generate about a quarter of France's atomic energy.
But in recent weeks that hasn't been the case. Amidst a slow-burning heat wave that has killed hundreds and sparked intense wildfires across Western Europe, and combined with already low water levels due to drought, the Rhône's water has gotten too hot for the job. It's no longer possible to cool reactors without expelling water downstream that's so hot as to extinguish aquatic life. So a few weeks ago, Électricité de France (EDF) began powering down some reactors along the Rhône and a second major river in the south, the Garonne. That's by now a familiar story: Similar shutdowns due to drought and heat occurred in 2018 and 2019. This summer's cuts, combined with malfunctions and maintenance on other reactors, have helped reduce France's nuclear power output by nearly 50 percent.
Of all the low-carbon energy sources that will likely be necessary to fight climate change, nuclear power is usually thought of as the least perturbable. It's the reinforcement that's called in when the weather doesn't cooperate with other zero-carbon energy sources, like wind and solar. But the nuclear industry faces its own climate risks.
Problems with water—too much of it or too little—are more commonly associated with hydroelectric dams, which have struggled to maintain output in drying places like the American West. But as the Swedish historian Per Högselius puts it, much of present-day nuclear engineering is not about splitting atoms, but about managing larger-scale aquatic concerns. Nuclear technicians are known to refer to their craft as a very complicated way of boiling water, producing steam that spins turbines. But much more is usually required to keep the reactor cool. That's why so many facilities are located by the sea and along big rivers like the Rhône.
[...] Nuclear plants are also built to last well into the future, with lifespans that extend a half-century or more. Many were constructed in the 1970s and '80s—long before regulators thought to factor in climate-related threats they would eventually encounter, explains Natalie Kopytko, a researcher at the University of Leeds who has dug into nuclear regulatory frameworks to look for climate considerations. "I saw absolutely nothing about climate change, which was quite scary," she says. Where Kopytko did see the climate invoked, the plans assumed that current weather patterns would hold well into the future.
(Score: 3, Funny) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 26 2022, @04:29PM (1 child)
At Sizewell B on the English coast, they have a "loss of North Sea" as an issue on their risk register.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday July 26 2022, @09:11PM
How do they lose the North sea? Are they expecting glaciers to refreeze and reduce the world ocean levels?
(Score: 5, Informative) by SomeRandomGeek on Tuesday July 26 2022, @04:55PM (8 children)
Reading TFS makes is sound like nuclear power is no longer viable due to climate change:
But TFA (eventually, near the very end) explains that the problem is not with nuclear power in general, but with specific reactors that were designed with the wrong assumptions.
Either way, it shows just how hard it is to do nuclear power correctly.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilPapa on Tuesday July 26 2022, @05:06PM (3 children)
When those reactors were built, did they know the assumptions were wrong? And do we know that the current generation of reactors being designed don't also rely on wrong assumptions?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Tuesday July 26 2022, @05:20PM (2 children)
It looks like the assumption was 'there will be excess grid capacity to account for maintenance etc, so it's not worth the extra money' so money was saved, and then money was saved again by not building enough extra surge capacity.
You seem to me implying this is a plant safety issue. It's not. It's a budget, planning, cost compromise issue affecting power reliability.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by crafoo on Tuesday July 26 2022, @07:12PM
It was a weakness that the environmental activists exploited ruthlessly, successfully.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Thursday July 28 2022, @02:04AM
And have all those issues now been solved by the nuclear industry?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Spamalope on Tuesday July 26 2022, @05:17PM (3 children)
Yep! They cheated on the cooling, and made a reactor that can't be run during a drought. Now they need to build a cooling tower or the like.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Tuesday July 26 2022, @05:56PM (1 child)
Yes, here is one Saint-Alban with no cooling towers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Alban_Nuclear_Power_Plant#/media/File:Centrale_Nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Saint-Alban.jpg [wikipedia.org]
So you could solve the problem by building simple concrete structures if you wanted to.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2022, @06:29PM
Yeah, well, you want to be careful with that. Capsizing Europe would be a whole lot worse than capsizing Guam!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hank-johnson-worries-guam-could-capsize-after-marine-buildup/ [cbsnews.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 26 2022, @06:13PM
It's not just the money, cooling towers have a visual impact on the surrounding countryside and increase political resistance to the construction of the plants.
The fact that using river water is also cheaper than building a cooling tower makes it a double bonus, although there are issues of biofouling, and of course what we are seeing with discharge over-temp, which bring back some costs.
My question is: how long before the river is over-temp with no (direct) industrial input whatsoever? The Rhone glacier is a sad shadow of its former self just 30 years ago.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Hauke on Tuesday July 26 2022, @06:20PM (2 children)
This would appear to be just another wake-up call. Even if we were able to eliminate fossil fuel use and excessive CO2 in the atmosphere tomorrow, we will eventually have to contend with other forms of atmospheric heating. As our need and subsequent production of energy increases, new technologies will be required to distribute waste heat.
The laws of Thermodynamics are a harsh mistress.
From https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2012/10/01/waste-heat-part-iii-climbing-kardashevs-scale/ [psu.edu]
TANSTAAFL
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday July 26 2022, @06:57PM (1 child)
At this exponentially increasing pace.. we will need the output of the entire galaxy [ucsd.edu] in less than 2500 years.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by Hauke on Tuesday July 26 2022, @07:00PM
Oh thank FSM, I can let my kids worry about it then.
TANSTAAFL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2022, @07:25PM (1 child)
Repeated paragraph leading with "Of all the low-carbon energy" could use a trim.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 26 2022, @08:54PM
Done, thanks.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday July 26 2022, @08:09PM
The issue is .... "NIMBY for big cooling towers". There is some basic info here about them,
https://nuclear.duke-energy.com/2017/07/24/blog_post-20170724 [duke-energy.com]
but in general, most nuclear power plants don't use cooling towers because NIMBY crowd and their "spoiled views". Same people that oppose wind farms too for same reasons. But regarding nuclear, or regular, power plants, using cooling towers makes for much reduced water usage and environmental impact. It's a shame these are not listed as solutions.