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How do shoreline nuclear facilities lower the temperature of wastewater generated by their cooling systems before it enters the ocean?

Air
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BUzzBuzz
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    Possibly helpful: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/power-plant-cooling-IB.pdf and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower – Carl Witthoft Aug 09 '16 at 14:15
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    Increase the volume of water through the cooling system and the water temperature rise will be reduced. That's the advantage, I presume, of a seaside site - unlimited water. – Transistor Aug 09 '16 at 18:56
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    Water is not dumped in the ocean during normal operation. The clean cool steam/condensate from the turbines is cooled in the large funnel shaped cooling towers and returned to be reheated in a closed system . The steam coming from the towers is from fresh water sprayed onto the tubes containing the turbine steam/water. Although , I did hear that Russia did have a few reactors that did use "once through" river water for the turbines, but this was stopped years ago. – blacksmith37 Jun 30 '18 at 19:01

2 Answers2

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One way is to use massive pond systems for evaporate cooling.

Turkey Point nuclear plant. Closed loop system explained here - https://youtu.be/qt9dtYC7RDE

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Phil Sweet
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In heat exchanger design, typically a maximum rise is specified by the end user - be it the environmental control groups, or the plant designer itself. The heat exchanger is then designed to remove the required amount of heat, which is known, by having the output have a certain temperature fall of the first stream, and a maximum temperature rise. The actual temperatures are then simulated in various selected heat exchangers, until a desired heat exchanger that matches the constraints is determined. Usually this comes with a desired flowrate on both the hot line and the cool line. The cool line flowrate would usually be a minimum to remain open, and conservatively additional flow would be designed into the system (larger pumps, larger pipes, etc).

Mark
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