re what do nuclear site s cooling towers do swalker uts edu au s s walker man writes 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 the actual hourglass is hollow and is designed to generate a draft exploiting the venturi effect around the base of the hourglass is a ring of water towers warm river water coming from the steam condenser in the plant is sprayed over louvres the draft being pulled through the tower cools the water by both evaporation and convection the sensible heat extracted from the cooling water is the driving force for draft generation it should be noted that the hourglass shaped cooling towers are used on both fossile and nuclear plants it should also be noted that at locations where water is plentiful the cooling towers are only used part time when the discharge temperature would exceed some release limit it was once thought that the warm discharge water was damaging to fish fishermen know that is thoroughly incorrect nontheless stringent usually state regulations remain in some instances since it typically takes hp worth of pumping to move the volume of water needed to cool a mwe plant the cost of using the towers is not insignificant john de armond wd oqc interested in high performance mobility performance engineering magazine tm interested in high tech and computers marietta ga send ur snail mail address to jgd dixie com perform dixie com for a free sample mag lee harvey oswald where are ya when we need ya
