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> rather water that is too warm to cool the reactor.

No, it is still cold enough to cool the reactor. They can't use it because the warm water that the plant would release would be too warm w.r.t. ecological regulations.

If for some reason the plant had to work right now, it could still do it, but would damage the downstream ecosystem.

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Are the ecological impacts of warm water seriously worth the increase in fossil fuels from reducing nuclear output? This seems like a nuclear-obstructionist kind of environmental policy.

Isn't that what cooling towers are for? An alternative to warm water emissions. I am no expert admittedly.

They are, but not all nuke plant feature cooling towers. The problem here is for those without: they use water as a cooling fluid, but then just pour it back into the river instead of evaporating it. The advantage is that they don't consume/move the water, the inconvenient is that they can't spit out 40C water without hurting the river's ecosystem.

It's not 40C at all! It's only a 2 of 3 degrees more than it started.

Water temperature issues are very rare, and only happen a couple days out of the year.

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