Before I go ranting off about #NPT2015 and why Zarif and Iran postponed their speech indefinitely (my money is on Iran forgetting the script at home) I actually wanted to briefly cover something about nuclear power. Two weeks ago I was calmly doing my work in the VERTIC office, doing VERTIC intern things with my VERTIC friends, when a coworker poked his head over my screen and said “Yo Cervando, you know nuclear stuff right?” Well I wouldn’t be the NuclearFarmboy if I didn’t now would I? So I went over to his desk to help a brotha out, and he started asking me about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) and why in the bloody hell (thanks for that, London) did it not have cooling towers while other reactors do (it is NOT because it is too cool for school). To add more to the conversation, the Institute for Science and International Security recently released a brief outlining their belief that North Korea was once again operating their Yongbyon gas-cooled reactor and I immediately thought “there’s a reactor who had a cooling tower and now no longer has one!“. So for all you nuclear afficionados out there, let’s dive into what a cooling tower actually does for a nuclear reactor and how you can get away with not building one.
First things first. Have you ever Googled “nuclear power plant?” If you haven’t, then you should do it. I dare you. Or if you’d much rather I do it for you (you lazy bums) this is what comes up:
Notice how none of them have the atomic symbol from The Simpsons…except The Simpsons one.
Cooling towers are nowadays synonymous with nuclear power plants, yet a large number of them do not use towers. Why is that?
If you ask a nuclear engineer how a nuclear reactor works and what role cooling towers play, they’ll say some confusing mumbo-jumbo like:
“Well the answer is simple: let’s stop and think of the cooling process needed to cool a pressurized water reactor (PWR). You have your core, and in it cold water comes in, super hot water comes out, super hot water goes into a steam generator where it transfers its heat, that heat boils cold water, the steam turns turbine, steam goes to condenser where cold water pipes absorb the heat and make the steam condense back into water, and the water from the condenser goes to the cooling tower where it cools off and returns back to the condenser.”
(Pretend I said that all in a single breath, because I did. I saw spots.)
Thankfully you don’t have to try to understand that abomination of a run-on sentence, and instead (with the help of your own NuclearFarmboy) we can break it all down piece by piece. Let’s start with a nuclear reactor and a pretty picture courtesy of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission! (who for some reason chose Comic Sans as their font. It’s almost as if they hate happiness.)
It’s what I picture Wile E. Coyote’s blueprints for an ACME Nuclear Power Plant would look like
That visual pretty much summarizes what I said and clearly shows that your typical PWR has three loops of water: the core loop, the steam loop, and the condenser loop. Let’s focus on the third loop for a minute.
This cheeky bastard (Seriously, you’re killing me London)
As you see, the condenser loop brings cold water in and uses it to absorb the heat from the steam and condense it back into water (yeah water cycle! yeah science!) but what happens to that water that goes into the picture through the condenser and then back out?
Continue reading “Cooler Than Being Cool: Why Not All Nuclear Power Plants Use Cooling Towers”
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