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Nuclear power stations work best by the coast, rather than on rivers due to the water required for cooling, and as France discovered you can't dump hotter water

Nuclear power stations work best by the coast, rather than on rivers due to the water required for cooling, and as France discovered you can't dump hotter water back into a river and kill the wildlife when the country is "hot" - compared to Australia, a French "hot" day is 'only' 38-40C. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/weatherwatch-nuclear-power-plants-feel-the-heat https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/weatherwatch-nu... So geographically, that likely means that nuclear power stations would still be close to Australian coastal cities.

JPLeRouzic 4y ago
> a French "hot" day is 'only' 38-40C. In the place I live (Brittany/west part of France), a hot day is more like 25°C.
- DrBazza 4y ago
  Yes. I was referring to the heatwave in 2018 where the temperatures hit 40C in a few places in (central?) France, vs. "typical" Australia where it's 45C+. Also Australia doesn't have anything like the number of size of major rivers that France, and continental Europe has.
skywal_l 4y ago
Doesn't Australia have underground water? With a cursory search I can see that the Great Artesian Basin[0] could be a good source of cooling water. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Thus people could drink the water warm directly from the nuclear powerplant. Water is a essential resource, and in a higher level than electricity.
- deleted 4y ago
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b112 4y ago
Except the ones in the article, which don't use water for cooling.
- deleted 4y ago
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- empiricus 4y ago
  Well, they use gas for the primary cooling, but my understanding is that the gas heats water -> vapor turbine -> condense water -> repeat. It is unclear to me how do you condense much water without cooling towers.. Normally lets say 40% of the thermal energy is transformed to electricity, and the rest is lost (needs to be cooled). So basically you still need to cool a lot of water, maybe 200MW worth of heated water. But this is a conventional issue, a gas or coal generator has similar cooling requirements.
hpkuarg 4y ago
> that likely means that nuclear power stations would still be close to Australian coastal cities. There are still unending miles of coastline in Australia that aren't peppered with big cities ;-)

JPLeRouzic 4y ago

> a French "hot" day is 'only' 38-40C. In the place I live (Brittany/west part of France), a hot day is more like 25°C.

DrBazza 4y ago
Yes. I was referring to the heatwave in 2018 where the temperatures hit 40C in a few places in (central?) France, vs. "typical" Australia where it's 45C+. Also Australia doesn't have anything like the number of size of major rivers that France, and continental Europe has.

skywal_l 4y ago

Doesn't Australia have underground water? With a cursory search I can see that the Great Artesian Basin[0] could be a good source of cooling water. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin

pvaldes 4y ago
Thus people could drink the water warm directly from the nuclear powerplant. Water is a essential resource, and in a higher level than electricity.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

b112 4y ago

Except the ones in the article, which don't use water for cooling.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
empiricus 4y ago
Well, they use gas for the primary cooling, but my understanding is that the gas heats water -> vapor turbine -> condense water -> repeat. It is unclear to me how do you condense much water without cooling towers.. Normally lets say 40% of the thermal energy is transformed to electricity, and the rest is lost (needs to be cooled). So basically you still need to cool a lot of water, maybe 200MW worth of heated water. But this is a conventional issue, a gas or coal generator has similar cooling requirements.

hpkuarg 4y ago

> that likely means that nuclear power stations would still be close to Australian coastal cities. There are still unending miles of coastline in Australia that aren't peppered with big cities ;-)