Nukes impacted by Global warming

[greenman3610]

For all the arguments made by the opponents of nuclear power -- that it is uneconomical, unsafe, a potential boon to terrorists, poses waste-disposal issues, and all the rest -- nuclear's biggest threat may come from the one problem it is purported to address: climate change.

If, as many climatologists suggest, the heat waves in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere are an indication of shifts in global climate patterns, it could spell doom for nuclear power, whose viability is directly linked to the availability of adequate water supplies.

Consider what's happened lately on both sides of the Atlantic.

"The extended heat wave in July aggravated drought conditions across much of Europe, lowering water levels in the lakes and rivers that many nuclear plants depend on to cool their reactors,"

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004803.html

[Toots]

1. And I thought the big fear from Global Warming was too much water

Water levels are supposed to rise by over twenty feet or are you suggesting that sea water won't work for cooling the reactors? :shrug: I realize there are quite a few nuclear reators built on river banks and they depend upon river water but that doesn't have to be the case.

[MadHound]

2. Running sea water through the plants both for cooling

And also as the steam to power the turbines would be pretty damn close to economically prohibitive. The water that has to run through a nuke has to be pretty clean, at least of deposits, sediments and minerals. Start running sea water through, you start getting a salt build up, and pretty soon you've got a plant going BOOM. Thus the water would have to be desalinated, a damn expensive process, which would add onto the costs of that electricity pretty heavily.

It is better that we start to power our country with wind and solar. Clean, cheap, renewable alternatives that can indeed power our entire country for decades to come.