re what do nuclear site s cooling towers do in article qlg o d q sequoia ccsd uts edu au writes i really don t know where to post this question so i figured that this board would be most appropriate i was wondering about those massive concrete cylinders that are ever present at nuclear poer sites they look like cylinders that have been pinched in the middle does anybody know what the actual purpose of those things are i hear that they re called cooling towers but what the heck do they cool i hope someone can help this is definitely the wrong newsgroup for this but never mind any machine powered by heat motor steam or gasturbine steamengine thermoelement etc work the better the bigger the temperature difference between input and output is because you never get all thermic energy out of the powering medium steam burning gaz etc you have to eliminate the rest of the energy to keep the efficency high a thermal electric power plant coal oil or atomic power works just the same way you heat water steam to power the turbine and generators because you don t get the whole energy out of the steam efficency is never you have to cool down this steam again by something else most power plants use cooling towers for this purpose some type of mega refrigerator others use water of a river ecologically not unobjectionable got it cheers robert hb nby robert ganter universitaet basel i am a fan institut fuer informatik of my plan basel switzerland ganter ifi unibas ch amateurradio hb nby packet hb nby hb eas che eu
