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At 23:42 -0700 03/19/2011, Bernard Cleyet wrote:
The water drawn into the cooling tower from a
I thought it was a much smaller amount recycled,
as is in an automobile's radiator.
reservoir is sprayed over the pipes to condense
the steam from the low-pressure side of the
turbine, is mostly evaporated. So the water usage
of 20 million gallons a day is evaporated water.
Of course much of it comes down further downwind
as rain--some of which falls into the ocean and
is, for all practical purposes, lost--but it is
certainly no longer available at the location
where it was used to cool the steam. So the
reservoir of cooling water must be replenished
daily by that amount--20 million or so gallons
for each reactor it serves.
Reactors that use a once-through cooling system
pass about 100 million gallons a day through
their condensers. The don't use cooling towers
and there is little evaporation, but the water
discharged is much hotter than when it entered
the condenser--by 20-30 °C. This can have
detrimental effects to the downstream ecology of
the river, or sea that the water is discharged to.
So you pay your money and you take your
choice--use a cooling water reservoir and the
cooling towers and lose 20 million gallons a day
to the atmosphere, or use a once-through system
and dump 100 million gallons a day of hot water
into the downstream waterway.
I think there have been some air-cooled reactors
proposed and perhaps a pilot plant or two built,
but air cooled reactors are not used in any
commercial power generating systems today.
Hugh
--
Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net
It isn't easy being green.
--Kermit Lagrenouille
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