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Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat?

Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat?  The New Republic  -Bradford Plumer 7 July 09 Via Climate Progress, the London Times reports that France’s nuclear fleet is once again running into water and heat trouble during the summer……………………….These summer shutdowns are becoming more and more common, and don’t bode well for the future, given that temperatures in Europe have been creeping up faster than the global average, according to a recent European Environmental Agency report, and will almost certainly keep climbing as the world warms. Some countries, like France, Germany, and Spain, have responded to this problem in the past by overriding their own environmental laws and allowing plants to dump hotter water into the rivers—the downside is that this can cause considerable damage to river life.

Nor is this just Europe’s problem: In 2006, Exelon had to cut the power at a nuclear plant in Illinois when the Mississippi River got too warm to be used as cooling water. According to the recent NOAA synthesis report on climate-change impacts in the United States, one of the things we can expect to see across the country in the coming decades is a much greater frequency of hotter-than-90°F (32°C) days—precisely the point at which France’s plants keep running into trouble. Meanwhile, as the AP reported last year, if droughts become more frequent, that could mean additional trouble for nearly one-quarter of the nation’s nuclear plants.

Can Nuclear Power Take The Heat? – Environment and Energy

July 8, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs, environment | antinuclear, nuclear, radiation, radioactive, uranium