Honestly curious, what do you see as a solution to the heat problems reactors are experiencing? There was discussion about the combination of lack of sufficiently cool water and droughts in the new heatwave cycles.
Most of those problems are related to fish populations and their tolerance of warm water. I think we will probably need to either adjust the regulations and/or somehow keep the fish farther away from the discharge so that they don't get injured.
Cooling a 375°C core with ambient water can be done even well into climate change conditions.
As for drought, if reactors are cooled by rivers that can dry up rather than oceans or large lakes, then they'll have to consider switching to dry cooling, which is less efficient but works with almost zero water usage. This would work better with higher temperature reactors than typical water cooled ones.
I also am a huge proponent of using reactors district heating and cooling, so we can put that warm water to good decarbonized uses.
acidburnNSA|3 years ago
Cooling a 375°C core with ambient water can be done even well into climate change conditions.
As for drought, if reactors are cooled by rivers that can dry up rather than oceans or large lakes, then they'll have to consider switching to dry cooling, which is less efficient but works with almost zero water usage. This would work better with higher temperature reactors than typical water cooled ones.
I also am a huge proponent of using reactors district heating and cooling, so we can put that warm water to good decarbonized uses.
hexnuts|3 years ago