Europe’s heatwave is forcing nuclear power plants to shut down (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s heatwave is forcing nuclear power plants to shut down (2018)

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25 pointsphotochemsyn22 comments

It's a non-subject really. NPPs are technically very well able to function under such heatwave. Regulations limiting the upstream/downstream water temperature difference and the maximum stream temperature are the limiting factor.

Derogations are in place to allow NPPs bypassing these limitations. And tne allowed temperature increase is... pretty anecdotal. Typically, the max downstream temperature is increased by one (1) degree, and the up/downstream temperature difference limits stay the same, if not decreased [1].

What's sad is that the topic is waved by fear-mongering "ecologists" who are all too happy to showcase nuclear power under a seemingly bad light.

[1] https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1548983324961607681

Being concerned about "is nuclear being painted in a bad light" is not the right thing to focus on here, especially in a country that supports nuclear, like France. The real question is what France will do for power.

I would consider this a huge issue, especially in a warming world.

Also more important than being worried about the public image of nuclear, which is quite popular in France, is figuring out if and how France can construct new nuclear in the future. Even with their supportive population and regulatory structure, their Flamanville project is facing the exact same cost and delay issues as the recent projects in the US at VC Summer and Vogtle.

All this undermines the idea that public image or "ecologists" are the ones holding back nuclear power. The reality is that the industry, or technology itself, is not delivering.

It's only fear-mongering if you silently presuppose that the regulations of the amount and temperature of water is arbitrary.

In reality, these regulations are necessary to a) not kill the river and b) to have acceptable safety margins for the cooling.

Running these reactors is technically possible - just barely - but complety reckless.

One degree doesn't seem like much to you because you're a land mammal. Aquatic life is much more sensitive to temperature differences.

While this is a recurring problem, the article itself is from 2018. Here is a more recent article about the same subject https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/french-nu...

This was a 2018 issue, but today's issue in 2022 is extremely concerning, as production is less than 50% of capacity right now:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/french-nu...

Their fleet is aging out, is experiencing long down times to check on the reactors.

Also concerning is that their attempts at new construction have been failures, in Flamanville and Olkiluoto. They might future it out, but it will take multiple decades to build again, there is no quick fix for building new nuclear.

That quick fix for building new nuclear existed once and was called "The Manhattan Project" and involved about...half of the world's sickest geniuses coming together and putting that shit show on the road, and get that shit show going STRONG.

It's like a lost art.

That was the era of big government. Since then we've evolved towards limited government and the brainpower is put to more efficient uses like social media and designing financial abstractions, both of which pay much better than government work.

The physics is easy. Economical and on-time construction is the hard part.

No they're intertwined. Recall that von Neumann, the beautiful one, was intended by his father to follow in his banker footsteps. He wanted to be a mathematician "instead."

As if it were so different. The best physicists will also make economical designs, that was Fat Man, an economical bomb design these Yankees could actually build with their own smarts. Come on. It's money, energy is money, uranium is better than gold, golden bullet, you want plutonium, lead bullet. Ultimately literally lead.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

Nuclear physics has nothing to do with the construction logistics of massive construction projects that take a decade and requires miles upon miles upon miles of piping with high-precision welding. It's all about management of thousands of people, massive construction plans that can't fit into a single person's head, and execution.

You seem to be performing some sort of free association on elements and lots of hero worship of physicists. But in the end we need shovels in the ground, rebar in formation, high precision concrete pouring, and high precision welding that gets validated and checked and can last 40-60 years under extreme conditions.

The reality of nuclear power isn't some physics miracle, it's just a bunch of piping and steam and pushing construction accuracy far beyond what is usually needed, because the heat source is so toxic, even if it's kind of cheap. In the end nuclear is a cheap source of heat for boiling water, but engineering and construction to contain it is pretty damn excessive and expensive.

If any of these people you idolize were still alive today, I think they would be far more enamores with the quantum physics of solar. The physics of solar are just better all around.

> massive construction plans that can't fit into a single person's head

They fit great in von Neumann's head. You realize the first nuclear reactor took 18 months to build? Without accidents.

I think you are underestimating just how much brains the Manhattan Project had. Plutonium bomb wasn't even the state-of-the-art when it was dropped, it was just what von Neumann considered Yankees to be capable of pulling off.

The economics of the Manhattan Project were unbelievable. Crazy return on investment for tax dollars, just insanity, like I don't know, 1000-to-1 return in ten years. Nobody knows it exactly, in fact the problem "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" comes from the Manhattan Project problem "How many kilotons of TNT did the Trinity Bomb produce?"

They ended WW2, biggest war in History. And you can't respect that?

The problem France has is that most of its nuclear power plants are not built along the coast but along rivers. Since the plants discharge warmer water into those rivers, which may have an environmental impact there are strict legal limits on how much water may be warmed.

Previously, and in a 'normal' year this was all fine but during recent heatwaves rivers' water was already very warm so that legal limits were exceeded and consequently power plants have to shut.

Lack of cooling water was an issue in the last couple of years already. Especially for plants along the Rhine and not just nuclear power plants.

Not that costal power plants have a huge advantage so, pretty sure there limits on the eater temp fed back into the sea as well. Either way, the location of those plants cannot be changed anymore.

Can they build bigger cooling ponds? The South Texas Nuclear Generating Station is on the Colorado river in an area where ambient temps are 90-100F daily year around but it has an absolutely massive cooling pond.

I actually learned just recently that most of our energy consumption goes to creating heat or cooling, like 70% or something. So right now we are creating electricity to convert to heat or cooling, while we technically could just store the heat instead. A large enough pool of water could store heat for long periods (months) with minimal energy loss. So the notion that energy from renewable sources such as the sun can't be stored effectively is not true, and in fact the big part of our energy needs could be stored this way.

Article says that powerplants in Finland have reduced power output, but as far as I can determine, that's just not true at all. Olkiluoto 1 had extra maintenance break recently because of faulty fuel assembly, but is now on full power since last weekend. OL3 is still in testing phase, some issues with turbines were discovered and are being worked on and it's currently not producing any power. Testing program should continue within a week or so.

Edit: article is from 2018, can't recall if power output was reduced then.

My understanding is that plants with cooling towers don't have this problem. The question is how expensive the towers are to build.

Also, some newer nuclear reactor designs don't have this problem as they would operate at much higher temperatures, therefore making air cooling possible (e.g. liquid salt reactors).

Cooling can be extremely expensive, in the wrong locations. Diablo Canyon in California uses once-through ocean water for cooling, which is not allowed in new licenses because of environmental damage. Building cooling towers in the challenging geography there would cost somewhere between $5B-$15B (I can't remember the exact numbers, nor find the source document with all the options evaluated since 2020, the decision was made many years ago). At that cost they decided to shut down the nuclear plant rather than try a cooling retrofit.

This is probably an extreme case for costs, however.

Could you use a different coolant instead? Presumably primary coolant is reused not dumped (water flowing around the actual nuclear fuel). So the question is, what do you cool that with. What about CO2?

Source from 2018??

Article from 2018

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