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| ▲ | derriz 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Happens regularly. Last year’s heatwave caused a bunch of reactor shutdown across Switzerland and France - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s... |
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| ▲ | hunterpayne a day ago | parent [-] | | All thermal plants have this same issue, not just nuclear. And if you lose the natural gas peakers (which are also thermal and thus has this issue), you lose your baseload renewables too. Not that it matters, renewables used for baseload make more CO2 than just using FFs. Variability is a terrible quality in an energy source. | | |
| ▲ | sehansen a day ago | parent | next [-] | | No, natural gas _peakers_ don't need water for cooling, since they don't have steam turbines like combined cycle gas plants. Cooling is only necessary in thermal plants to condense the steam on the low-pressure side of the steam turbine. And excessive stability is also a terrible quality in an energy source. The only reason we used to put up with base-load power plants was because they were cheap; if they weren't we might as well have used peaker plants all the time. | |
| ▲ | tialaramex a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, so rather than "We should have more thermal plants" what you want is a non-thermal electrical generator, and what do you know all the major renewable sources qualify, whether that's a wind turbine, hydro-electric or PV. Do you know what else you'd get a lot of if it's so hot in the summer that you can't use lake and river water for cooling? Sunlight to run your PV. Because that's exactly why the water was heating up. |
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| ▲ | mayama a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Problem isn't nuclear cooling per se. It's the designs of these nuclear reactors which expected to work with mild European weather. India and China have nuclear reactors working in desert without any cooling issues. Of course, as most of EU and west atrophied in building nuclear reactors in general, building new reactors or modifications won't be economical. |
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| ▲ | psychoslave 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That said, cooling does have an effect on ecosystems. Not the worst energy plant impact on that regard, but still not like it's all environmental friendly. And of course, there is the what to do with the waste dilemma. And at least with current French park, there is a dependence on the rarer kind of uranium. |
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| ▲ | izacus 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| No, I'm not - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s... A lot of NPPs in France are cooled with river water and they need to be kept at low output if the rivers are too warm. |
