re what do nuclear site s cooling towers do wayne alan martin wm h andrew cmu edu writes excerpts from netnews sci electronics apr re what do nuclear site s by r tim coslet cup portal from r tim coslet cup portal com subject re what do nuclear site s cooling towers do date fri apr pdt in article qlg o d q sequoia ccsd uts edu au swalker uts edu au s s walker man wrote 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 great explaination however you left off one detail why do you always see them at nuclear plants but not always at fossil fuel plants at nuclear plants it is prefered to run the water closed cycle whereas fossil fuel plants can in some cases get away with dumping the hot water as i recall the water isn t as hot thermodynamically in many fossil fuel plants and of course there is less danger of radioactive contamination actually fossil fuel plants run hotter than the usual boiling water reactor nuclear plants there s a gripe in the industry that nuclear power uses vintage steam technology so it s more important in nuclear plants to get the cold end of the system as cold as possible hence big cooling towers oil and gas fired steam plants also have condensers but they usually are sized to get the steam back into hot water not most of the way down to ambient some plants do cool the condensers with water rather than air as one canadian official asked about thermal pollution de icing a river said up here we view heat as a resource everybody runs closed cycle boilers the water used is purified of solids which otherwise crud up the boiler plumbing when the water boils purifying water for boiler use is a bigger job than cooling it so the boiler water is recycled john nagle
