101–110 of 252 posts
You can totally retrofit existing nuclear power plants for closed loop cooling. I'm not sure what the cost would be, though, but it might be worth doing.
If only there was a power source that would excel during sunny and warm days, huh Then we could stop the nuclear plants when needed for cooling and maintenance
The problem is we don't have enough storage to use it after dark.
Of course a 1960's design isn't adapted to current weather conditions. That doesn't mean the whole technology is useless, like so many commenters imply. Any new build can and will include cooling adapted to hotter conditions.
There's a nuclear reaction in the sky beaming free energy to us, let's just use that
This is happening all across Europe right now - Romania, France too. https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/07/13/france-shuts-do... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea... We keep having folks here argue that nuclear, not renewables are the path to take to get rid of fossil fuels. I have strong doubts - it feels like that doesn't account for the sad realities of climate change.
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Would a cooling pond with controlled discharge into the river maybe mitigate this problem? One could also cycle the water from the cooling pond through the plant's cooling loop. The worse that could happen is evaporate the water from the cooling pond which is gets replaced with new water (sans fish) from the river.
There's plenty of work happening with adapting non evaporative cooling loops for data centers. Maybe that can be applied here too, even if to mitigate some of the cooling needed?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a nuclear reaction in the sky beaming free energy to us, let's just use that
Hungary is already using that (today we were 90% carbon-free thanks to solar), the problem is what to do when it gets dark.
Starting this year, in Romania you cannot put new PV capacity online without the storage for it, is mandatory. Possibly for existing ones, but I am not sure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hungary is already using that (today we were 90% carbon-free thanks to solar), the problem is what to do when it gets dark.
Batteries? Starting this year, in Romania you cannot put new PV capacity online without the storage for it, is mandatory. Possibly for existing ones, but I am not sure.
Here in Switzerland during some heatwaves they have to shut down nuclear plants too because the river water is too warm and adding warm water to it would kill the fish.
Would a cooling pond with controlled discharge into the river maybe mitigate this problem? One could also cycle the water from the cooling pond through the plant's cooling loop. The worse that could happen is evaporate the water from the cooling pond which is gets replaced with new water (sans fish) from the river.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hungary is already using that (today we were 90% carbon-free thanks to solar), the problem is what to do when it gets dark.
Batteries? Starting this year, in Romania you cannot put new PV capacity online without the storage for it, is mandatory. Possibly for existing ones, but I am not sure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a nuclear reaction in the sky beaming free energy to us, let's just use that
Hungary is already using that (today we were 90% carbon-free thanks to solar), the problem is what to do when it gets dark.
Batteries (or pumped storage hydro, which is more like a gravity-driven capacitor)