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Science

Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Nuclear Power Plants To Shut Down (qz.com) 281

Europe's heatwave -- which led to wildfires in Greece and Sweden, droughts in central and northern parts, and made the normally green UK look brown from space -- is forcing nuclear plants to shut down or curtail the amount of power they produce, local media reports. From a report: French utility EDF shut four reactors at three power plants on Saturday, Swedish utility Vattenfall shut one of two reactors at a power plant earlier last week, and nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, and Switzerland have cut back the amount of power they produce. Thermal power plants, such as nuclear or coal, use high-temperature steam to turn turbines, which convert heat energy into electricity. In the process, the steam's temperature falls, so it can no longer be used to move the turbine again. [...] Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures.
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Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Nuclear Power Plants To Shut Down

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  • by foxalopex ( 522681 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @05:18PM (#57088354)

    The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

    • by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @05:35PM (#57088446)

      The problem with climate change isn't so much as our planet breaking but everything we depend on breaking. Somewhat wacky that nuclear reactors aren't designed to handle this heat but then again I would have never imagined the crazy kind of temperatures Europe has skyrocketed up to. So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

      Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]

      In Germany, recently, nuclear was a steady producer while wind was barely producing.

      https://www.energy-charts.de/p... [energy-charts.de]

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Only in places where there is limited cooling water

        You make it sound like they just built the plants in the wrong place.

        Nuclear plants have some pretty difficult requirements for location. You need somewhere that is geologically stable, where there is sufficient space and isolation to build the plant, waste storage and security apparatus. It needs a supply of water for cooling. It needs to be sheltered from severe weather and natural disasters as far as possible. And it has to have good infrastructure to keep it supplied, connect it to the grid and allow st

        • You make it sound like they just built the plants in the wrong place.

          No, I never hinted they were. They operate at very high capacity factors even in the very few places where very infrequent restrictions come in to play.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Nuclear reactors can handle high temps just fine. Only in places where there is limited cooling water and cooling releases rise above local environmental limits are they cut back.

        Nuclear plants have specific cooling requirements. The problem is that the cooling water they use, as it gets warmer, they need more water in order to perform at the same cooling level. As such, either they max out the amount of water they can draw at the intake (either through environmental limits to limit the heat released into

    • It depends on how the nuclear power plant is designed:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        That was the old rule. The new rule is, it depends upon how many batteries were in the system. So I would design the burbs with every millimetre of roof as a solar panel and one battery pack for the home and one battery pack for the grid. A distributed power station, where the power station and it's grid is already built, all you need to do is add the generators (solar panels and smaller low noise vertical axis wind turbines) and batteries. You get the system in place, by people directly investing in their

        • As I understand it (relative who worked in the sector, as my work related to the energy sector was only with regard to large wind turbines) is that domestic wind is mostly not worth it due to shadowing from other buildings, unless you live on a hill, but that ground source heat pumps can be viable. If you place a large insulated block under ground you can dump heat into it in summer, draw it out in winter, but it's a huge cost and disruption, not least to the environment.
    • The problem isn't that the water is too warm to run the plant. The problem is that heating lake water to 100+ degrees (F) will kill just about everything that lives in the lake (except algae, which will bloom like crazy and suffocate whatever the higher water temperature didn't kill directly), so they throttled back the plant to avoid overheating the lake.

    • Nuclear production has reduced by less than 1GW in Germany as a result of this. In the meantime the daily cycle from solar goes from 28GW to 0. Wind was 9GW 3 days ago and 2GW the day before that.

      I think we'll be just fine with things "breaking".

    • So one has to wonder, what other stuff is going to break?

      If you live in Europe you had better hope the Gulf Stream [wikipedia.org] isn't one of the things that "breaks". If that happens just remember that the northern parts of the USA are roughly the latitude of Spain. The weather would get... interesting to say the least.

    • Cooling towers don't cool the water enough. Need more cooling tower surface area, or a larger reservoir to dump the warmed water back into.

      • Cooling towers are used in many plants, nuclear and coal, and seem to work.
        • Cooling towers are used in many plants, nuclear and coal, and seem to work.

          Cooling towers work to specifications they are built to. I believe what the parent is saying, is that the current heat wave is driving things past those specifications. Cooling towers would work, as would large water reservoir but they'd have to be rebuilt, perhaps from the ground up and the current conditions would probably be over by time the money was paid and the work done. That's assume they had the money and available water, but they certainly don't have the time.

  • by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @05:29PM (#57088410) Journal

    On the "bright" side, there's a lot of sun right now for the PV panels!

    • Solar PV output drops with heat.
      https://energytransition.org/2... [energytransition.org]

      One reason the situation wasnâ(TM)t worse in Germany, of course, was the large number of solar arrays. But even their output is negatively impacted during heat waves; efficiency drops by up to 0.5 percent per degree Celsius â" and the panel temperature counts, not the air. Fortunately, temperatures in Germany still do not rise as much as they do in Spain, where the effect was greater.

  • by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @05:34PM (#57088438)

    From TFA, the reason why the reactors were shut down (which wasn't included in the summary) is:

    Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures. Regulations protecting wildlife mean that the usual water sources drawn on by nuclear plants cannot always be used for cooling, leading to shutdowns. It's not the first time this has happened: Heatwaves forced nuclear shutdowns or curtailments across Europe in 2003, 2006, and 2015.

    Yeah, I know that reading TFA is no longer cool on Slashdot, but someone has to help out the editors. :P

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      From TFA, the reason why the reactors were shut down (which wasn't included in the summary) is:

      Europe's heatwave, however, hasn't just increased air temperatures but also water temperatures. Regulations protecting wildlife mean that the usual water sources drawn on by nuclear plants cannot always be used for cooling, leading to shutdowns. It's not the first time this has happened: Heatwaves forced nuclear shutdowns or curtailments across Europe in 2003, 2006, and 2015.

      Yeah, I know that reading TFA is no longer cool on Slashdot, but someone has to help out the editors. :P

      At /., accuracy and completeness isn't as important as the narrative.

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @06:40PM (#57088670) Journal

      "No longer cool?" I've been on Slashdot and it sure seems to me that most people I've talked to here never read past the second sentence of the summary, much less the article.

      Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's fun when we have this exchange:

      MD Solar: Fucking Trump screwing everything up again.

      Me: The first sentence of the summary is "In 2015, the TSA stripped searched 4,800 people". Can you read the first two words? I didn't know Trump was running the TSA in 2015.

      • "No longer cool?" I've been on Slashdot and it sure seems to me that most people I've talked to here never read past the second sentence of the summary, much less the article.

        Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's fun when we have this exchange:

        MD Solar: Fucking Trump screwing everything up again.

        Me: The first sentence of the summary is "In 2015, the TSA stripped searched 4,800 people". Can you read the first two words? I didn't know Trump was running the TSA in 2015.

        Second sentence of the summary?

        I barely even finished the second word of the title!

  • Seriously, NuScale's new SMRs can actually run without water just using an air-based cooling tower.
    Of course, it is far better to not and instead use the waste heat to desalinate water.
  • by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @12:47AM (#57089874)

    "Europe's Heatwave is Forcing Coal Power Plants To Shut Down" is just as valid for the title, but nuclear is so much more click-baity...

    And the reason they are being shut down is to avoid pumping too much waste heat into the environment, since that would be bad for the ecosystem. It's not some kind of generator failure we should all lose sleep over.

    • Also no mention of reduced wind energy production from the heat wave. It doesn't take much to find news articles on European wind output dropping, especially in UK and Germany that made large investments in wind power recently.

      Here's one example of such a news report:
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

      When temperatures rise every electrical generation system we have in common use is affected. Thermal plants that boil water will often have to reduce output or shutdown because the cooling water exceeds minimu

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's interesting because some people are promoting nuclear power as the solution to "base load" and CO2 emissions. Unfortunately they are not actually very good at either of them.

      Coal is affected too but no-one except Trump is suggesting that we use more coal, so the fact that coal plants also suck is less interesting (and also very well understood).

      As well as solar, natural gas is doing very well too since it doesn't need nearly as much cooling as nuclear or coal.

  • The upside of this weather is that solar energy production has gone up massively. July boosted my record month to 15% over the previous record getting more than 20% more than my average july month.
  • ... is going to save us from global warming. ...

  • High temperature molten salt solar [solarreserve.com] is quickly developing into an excellent base-load power option. We know that the sun will be shining in the future or we'd have much bigger problems.

    It looks awesome too!

  • It's not often we get a chance to see the GW Denier trolls and the "nuclear will solve every problem" trolls all partying together on the same page.

    This is a real treat.

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