4 ms·
Not really, a large reactor is way too power dense. An EPR reactor has a thermal output of 4.6GW. And the tertiary is cooling steam turbines so it's below boili
by masklinn 3mo ago
Not really, a large reactor is way too power dense. An EPR reactor has a thermal output of 4.6GW. And the tertiary is cooling steam turbines so it's below boiling, you'd need something like 10 sqkm worth of surface, per reactor, with an environment cool enough that this could actually radiate.
Even using industrial air-cooling design you'd need on the order of a million sqm or two (for reference a good quality computer heatsink is about a third of a square meter worth of fins)
- philipkglass 3mo agoThe German THTR-300 reactor operated with air cooling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 But it was admittedly a huge cooling system for a reactor that only produced 750 megawatts of thermal energy.
- leonidasrup 3mo agoMochovce nuclear power plant, with evaporative cooling towers, uses around 21.6 to 24.8 million m³ per year depending on operating units and seasonal weather demands. (About 0.7 m³ per second) https://www.seas.sk/wp-content/uploads/a3/b4/2023_SE_NPP_ENG.pdf https://www.seas.sk/wp-content/uploads/a3/b4/2023_SE_NPP_ENG...