4 ms·
Maybe a dumb question but can you recapture the evaporated water from stream turbines? Like, I dunno, put a hat on it to condense the water? Does it necessaril
by bigyikes 3y ago
Maybe a dumb question but can you recapture the evaporated water from stream turbines?
Like, I dunno, put a hat on it to condense the water? Does it necessarily need to be boiled off to the atmosphere?
(Not that I think retrofitting a nuclear plant is trivial)
- pfdietz 3y agoThis isn't water that goes through the steam turbines. It's water that's used on the other "side" of the condenser to condense the water that went through the steam turbines. This water is, in turn, allowed to evaporate, carrying away the waste heat (as latent and sensible heat) into the environment. Recondensing the evaporated water would just produce that heat again. The water going through the steam turbines themselves is highly purified and gets reused many times. It would be possible to design a nuclear power plant that's air cooled, but it would be more expensive, and would likely require a reactor operating at a higher temperature with a higher exhaust temperature.