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Meanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The coolin

Meanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream. Everything would slowly cook in the rivers … Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power. France is like 80% nuclear power electricity. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/france-risks-winter-blackouts-as-nuclear-power-generation-stalls-11660315467 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/france-risks-winter-blackou...

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
Just use cooling towers... Edit: I'm getting rate-limited, so my answer to the genius observation below, that cooling towers also need water, is the following: Cooling towers evaporate water. Thus the concerns of OP do not apply about overheating the river downstream: >The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  Cooling towers require a coolant, which is normally water...
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. About 20x less for the same energy generation. And the water ends up in the atmosphere so usually will end up in additional rain elsewhere in France. You effectively get to use the same water twice, so instead of being 20x less water, it is infinity x less water.
    - joecool1029 4y ago
      >Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. Still uses a shitload. A coalition of states around me had the power generation companies install a reservoir so that in summer and drought they could keep the lower Delaware River navigable since so much was evaporated off in the cooling towers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir
      - londons_explore 4y ago
        a typical old 1 Gigawatt power station (ie. a big one) will produce about 2 gigawatts of waste heat. More modern tech could ~halve that. In an evaporative cooler, thats 800 liters of water evaporated every second. The Amazon river has 209,000,000 liters per second, so it wouldn't be an issue there. But in smaller streams, I could totally imagine there not being enough water even for evaporative cooling.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  > Just use cooling towers... Take the already most costly way of generating electricity and make it both less efficient (due to the cold side being warmer) and entail higher initial investment costs.
- Rexxar 4y ago
  You really think they don't already use cooling towers ?
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
    If you did any research on the subject, you would have known that they use cooling towers for some of their cooling needs, while others are using the natural waters as coolant. For instance, one of the plants that got a temporary exemption on hot water discharge, the Bugey nuclear power plant: “Some of the cooling comes from direct use of the Rhône water (units 2 and 3) while some is done by the use of cooling towers (units 4 and 5).” [1] Had they used cooling towers for units 2 and 3, they wouldn’t be in trouble with discharging hot water into the Rhône. I suggest next time you do some research before questioning others with offhand comments. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugey_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugey_Nuclear_Power_Plant
    - Rexxar 4y ago
      For information your initial comment is "Just use cooling towers..." (with 3 dots to show disdain) as if there isn't any cooling tower whereas everybody can see cooling towers nearly every nuclear power station (so much that when you ask people to draw a nuclear station, 95% of them draw a cooling tower). So your "If you did any research on the subject" is quite over the top. > I suggest next time you do some research before questioning others with offhand comments. Apply this suggestion to your first comment or at least don't be more exigent with the quality of other comment that you are with your own comments.
scythe 4y ago
The major concern going forward, with solar representing an increasing proportion of generation, is energy shortfalls in winter. Overheating is not likely to be a serious problem in this case.
Jansemon 4y ago
Yeah, and aren't like have the plants currently not working, either because it's to hot or they're in maintenance or it's too expensive to repair them? And EDF, the biggest company behind nuclear power generation has huge amounts of debt and needs (is?) to be nationalized? From what I can gather, nuclear power was never cheap. It seems no country calculates the real cost - everything's subsidized to be even competitive. In Germany, after the power companies reaped the profits, they said they need to be subsidized to dismantle them, as the costs were to high. The waste disposal seems to be also subsidized (be it that the state searches for locations and builds them?) or Building those new and plants seems to be a gigantic money pit - look at the UK. Didn't they surpass the 30 billion mark and no end in sight? And that they can't be built fast? And who talkes about the real environmental (even CO2) cost to even produce a fuel rod? Everybody points to France as the poster boy for nuclear power. But it seems that it is a total disaster. Unfortunatley in German, but can maybe translated: https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2022-08/deutschland-frankreich-atomstrom-energie-stromhandel/seite-2 https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2022-08/deutschland-fran...
- Jensson 4y ago
  Germany will pay hundreds of billions in electricity this year since they don't have enough. Nuclear would have been a bargain.
  - Jansemon 4y ago
    No, this seems to be false. France is importing electricity for years from Germany - at least since 2015. I'm not sure why you're saying that France only has an issue because of Germany? Where do you get that from? Even a french power grid operator is saying that they import more power from Germany, than they're exporting (https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electricity-trading https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici...). But you're not even responding to my main concern - that nuclear power is so expensive, that it is never competitive. Only when subsidized. And that is for power plants that are already built - not new ones (which seem to be an even greater money pit). Why is the biggest nuclear power company unable to make money in France and needs to be rescued by the government? I'd say if it makes sense and helps us in our current situation, just subsidize the heck out of it, even if it costs us as a country lots of money. But it absolutely doesn't seem environmentally friendly, not even regarding CO2. And it doesn't seem to be feasible to quickly build nuclear power. But yes, Germany fucked up regarding its dependency on gas (from one source and then it's even from a country like Russia).
frozencell 4y ago
panick21_ 4y ago
Yeah the main problem is France basically did amazing with nuclear for like 30 years and then in the last 20 they basically flat-lined in total production. And the dropped all their advanced nuclear and is still planning expensive PWR style reactors until 2050. France had developed a Sodium cooled reactor but because of anti-nuclear sentiment they only built one and killed it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix That we are still not using high temperature air cooled reactors is just an absolute shame. France did a great thing for the world by investing into nuclear and saving lots of CO2 before it was cool. However unfortunately they didn't do as good a job with advancing the technology.
- frozencell 4y ago
  > However unfortunately they didn't do as good a job with advancing the technology. Mostly due to anti-France lobbying from other nations (Germany and the US mostly).
stjohnswarts 4y ago
isn't that better than not having power at all with your energy infrastructure dependent on the whims of a madman?

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago

Just use cooling towers... Edit: I'm getting rate-limited, so my answer to the genius observation below, that cooling towers also need water, is the following: Cooling towers evaporate water. Thus the concerns of OP do not apply about overheating the river downstream: >The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream

_Algernon_ 4y ago
Cooling towers require a coolant, which is normally water...
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. About 20x less for the same energy generation. And the water ends up in the atmosphere so usually will end up in additional rain elsewhere in France. You effectively get to use the same water twice, so instead of being 20x less water, it is infinity x less water.
  - joecool1029 4y ago
    >Cooling towers (evaporative chilling) use far less water than cooling directly with river water and returning hot water to the river. Still uses a shitload. A coalition of states around me had the power generation companies install a reservoir so that in summer and drought they could keep the lower Delaware River navigable since so much was evaporated off in the cooling towers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Creek_Reservoir
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      a typical old 1 Gigawatt power station (ie. a big one) will produce about 2 gigawatts of waste heat. More modern tech could ~halve that. In an evaporative cooler, thats 800 liters of water evaporated every second. The Amazon river has 209,000,000 liters per second, so it wouldn't be an issue there. But in smaller streams, I could totally imagine there not being enough water even for evaporative cooling.
Gwypaas 4y ago
> Just use cooling towers... Take the already most costly way of generating electricity and make it both less efficient (due to the cold side being warmer) and entail higher initial investment costs.
Rexxar 4y ago
You really think they don't already use cooling towers ?
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  If you did any research on the subject, you would have known that they use cooling towers for some of their cooling needs, while others are using the natural waters as coolant. For instance, one of the plants that got a temporary exemption on hot water discharge, the Bugey nuclear power plant: “Some of the cooling comes from direct use of the Rhône water (units 2 and 3) while some is done by the use of cooling towers (units 4 and 5).” [1] Had they used cooling towers for units 2 and 3, they wouldn’t be in trouble with discharging hot water into the Rhône. I suggest next time you do some research before questioning others with offhand comments. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugey_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugey_Nuclear_Power_Plant
  - Rexxar 4y ago
    For information your initial comment is "Just use cooling towers..." (with 3 dots to show disdain) as if there isn't any cooling tower whereas everybody can see cooling towers nearly every nuclear power station (so much that when you ask people to draw a nuclear station, 95% of them draw a cooling tower). So your "If you did any research on the subject" is quite over the top. > I suggest next time you do some research before questioning others with offhand comments. Apply this suggestion to your first comment or at least don't be more exigent with the quality of other comment that you are with your own comments.

scythe 4y ago

The major concern going forward, with solar representing an increasing proportion of generation, is energy shortfalls in winter. Overheating is not likely to be a serious problem in this case.

Jansemon 4y ago

Yeah, and aren't like have the plants currently not working, either because it's to hot or they're in maintenance or it's too expensive to repair them? And EDF, the biggest company behind nuclear power generation has huge amounts of debt and needs (is?) to be nationalized? From what I can gather, nuclear power was never cheap. It seems no country calculates the real cost - everything's subsidized to be even competitive. In Germany, after the power companies reaped the profits, they said they need to be subsidized to dismantle them, as the costs were to high. The waste disposal seems to be also subsidized (be it that the state searches for locations and builds them?) or Building those new and plants seems to be a gigantic money pit - look at the UK. Didn't they surpass the 30 billion mark and no end in sight? And that they can't be built fast? And who talkes about the real environmental (even CO2) cost to even produce a fuel rod? Everybody points to France as the poster boy for nuclear power. But it seems that it is a total disaster. Unfortunatley in German, but can maybe translated: https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2022-08/deutschland-frankreich-atomstrom-energie-stromhandel/seite-2 https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2022-08/deutschland-fran...

Jensson 4y ago
Germany will pay hundreds of billions in electricity this year since they don't have enough. Nuclear would have been a bargain.
- Jansemon 4y ago
  No, this seems to be false. France is importing electricity for years from Germany - at least since 2015. I'm not sure why you're saying that France only has an issue because of Germany? Where do you get that from? Even a french power grid operator is saying that they import more power from Germany, than they're exporting (https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electricity-trading https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici...). But you're not even responding to my main concern - that nuclear power is so expensive, that it is never competitive. Only when subsidized. And that is for power plants that are already built - not new ones (which seem to be an even greater money pit). Why is the biggest nuclear power company unable to make money in France and needs to be rescued by the government? I'd say if it makes sense and helps us in our current situation, just subsidize the heck out of it, even if it costs us as a country lots of money. But it absolutely doesn't seem environmentally friendly, not even regarding CO2. And it doesn't seem to be feasible to quickly build nuclear power. But yes, Germany fucked up regarding its dependency on gas (from one source and then it's even from a country like Russia).

frozencell 4y ago

panick21_ 4y ago

Yeah the main problem is France basically did amazing with nuclear for like 30 years and then in the last 20 they basically flat-lined in total production. And the dropped all their advanced nuclear and is still planning expensive PWR style reactors until 2050. France had developed a Sodium cooled reactor but because of anti-nuclear sentiment they only built one and killed it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix That we are still not using high temperature air cooled reactors is just an absolute shame. France did a great thing for the world by investing into nuclear and saving lots of CO2 before it was cool. However unfortunately they didn't do as good a job with advancing the technology.

frozencell 4y ago
> However unfortunately they didn't do as good a job with advancing the technology. Mostly due to anti-France lobbying from other nations (Germany and the US mostly).

stjohnswarts 4y ago

isn't that better than not having power at all with your energy infrastructure dependent on the whims of a madman?