3 ms·

What has this to do with building? Summer gets you cheap PV battery electric energy anyhow. Lack of cooling towers etc. gives you trouble....

hef19898 3y ago
French reactors suffered a lack of suffciently cool water, what little water they had was too hot. Cooling towers numbers actually are sufficient.
- lucioperca 3y ago
  There is still plenty of water, the problem is that you have to limit heating the river. With a cooling tower can cool with or without evaporating water depending on the design but always without heating the river. But it is cheaper to directly dump the heat into the water.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And you cannot empty the river neither, especially during a drought, can you?
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      My hunch is evaporative cooling uses not very much water. You could also fill a small dam when the water flow is higher. All means higher cost, of course.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        It generally helps to no use hunches when it comes to hard technical questions.
        actionfromafar 3y ago
        Ok, the hard technical answer is that a phase change from liquid to gas eats a lot more energy than just heating the liquid however many degrees. :-) My back of the envelope calculations say it's about 10 times less water to evaporate.
        hef19898 3y ago
        There are detailed diagrams and formulas to calculate that. Engineering, not back of the envelope highschool physics. But guess what, people designing an building power plants know this. And whatever is built is the best compromise possible at the time. Backnof envelope calculus in 2023 or not.
    - lucioperca 3y ago
      Dry cooling tower exists but they are more expensive. Natural cooling with the evaporation eventually runs into the problem due to built-up of salts which forces you to replace non-evaporated cooling water with fresh river water and lets you dump the heated water into the river (which is limiting factor due to environmental concerns). The less water is flowing and the higher the temperature of the river are the sooner this point is reached
- roenxi 3y ago
  Related and interesting thing - China appears to be building a trial reactor in the Gobi desert [0] because they think they have air cooling sorted out. Or at least close enough. I haven't checked if it is technically in the desert. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1

hef19898 3y ago

French reactors suffered a lack of suffciently cool water, what little water they had was too hot. Cooling towers numbers actually are sufficient.

lucioperca 3y ago
There is still plenty of water, the problem is that you have to limit heating the river. With a cooling tower can cool with or without evaporating water depending on the design but always without heating the river. But it is cheaper to directly dump the heat into the water.
- hef19898 3y ago
  And you cannot empty the river neither, especially during a drought, can you?
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    My hunch is evaporative cooling uses not very much water. You could also fill a small dam when the water flow is higher. All means higher cost, of course.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      It generally helps to no use hunches when it comes to hard technical questions.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Ok, the hard technical answer is that a phase change from liquid to gas eats a lot more energy than just heating the liquid however many degrees. :-) My back of the envelope calculations say it's about 10 times less water to evaporate.
        hef19898 3y ago
        There are detailed diagrams and formulas to calculate that. Engineering, not back of the envelope highschool physics. But guess what, people designing an building power plants know this. And whatever is built is the best compromise possible at the time. Backnof envelope calculus in 2023 or not.
  - lucioperca 3y ago
    Dry cooling tower exists but they are more expensive. Natural cooling with the evaporation eventually runs into the problem due to built-up of salts which forces you to replace non-evaporated cooling water with fresh river water and lets you dump the heated water into the river (which is limiting factor due to environmental concerns). The less water is flowing and the higher the temperature of the river are the sooner this point is reached
roenxi 3y ago
Related and interesting thing - China appears to be building a trial reactor in the Gobi desert [0] because they think they have air cooling sorted out. Or at least close enough. I haven't checked if it is technically in the desert. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1