I don't argue the fact that fish like the warm waters on the exit side. Of course, like what happened last week at Oyster Creekm when the nuke goes off line when the surrounding water is cold, all the fish die.
I don't want to argue your technical info either. But the point is that the EPA, PSEG, NJDEP, US Fish and Wildlife, the Versar Group (1992 independent report) all admit and acknowledge that the two Salem Nukes kill billions of fish and other marine life. Dennsi Hart, DEP's head of the Division of water Quality said, "The Salem Nuclear plants have an adverse impact to the environment". No one argue that fact.
What is argued are: (1) the economic cost benefit analysis of building cooling towers, and, (2) whether in the bigger picture, the fish/marine life kills really do have an adverse impact.
In 1992, the NJ DEP wrote a permit requiring cooling towers. Then PSEG
and the NJ DEP cut a political deal that allowed PSEG to rebuild supposedly
degraded salt marshes instead of building cooling towers. Minor
improvements to intake screens and buckets, and sound deterrent studies
were allowed.
You appear to be arguing that I am not being accurate about the fish/marine life kills. Perhaps I just have not communicated well. All once-through cooling systems kill marine life. That is a fact.
norm
RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:
In a message dated 11/16/01 1:49:56 PM Mountain Standard Time, ncohen12@HOME.COM writes:
2a) Part of the concern is the volume of water used by the intake
system. Salem Units 1 and 2 together use 3.024 BILLION gallons of water
EACH DAY to cool the plants. In one year, water equal to the entire
volume of the Delaware Bay is used in cooling Salem 1/2. I suggest that
other examples of cooling water use many have mentioned, do not use such
tremendous volumes of water.(3) Thermal shock; There is a difference of about 10 degrees F between
intake and exhaust water. This is high enough to kill marine life. No
one, including PSEG, argues this.As it happens, we deal with thermal water pollution in our textbook (Vesilind, Peirce, and Weiner Environmental Engineering) and I taught water quality and the associated lab for a couple of decades (that's by way of qualification). All states have some sort of regulation governing the temperature of water that is released into a natural waterway, and that also depends on the flow rate of the waterway -- how much water is available and at what ambient temperature , for mixing with the hot effluent so that the ambient temperature standard is not exceeded, In a nuclear plant (just as in any thermal generating plant) as much of the heat as possible is used to generate steam to turn the turbines to produce the electricity. At present, coal plants are, on the average, about 20% more efficient (in terms of conversion of heat to electricity) than nukes, but that is largely a mat! ter of technological refinement. Nukes (like anything else) (a) try to use as much of the generated heat as possible, and (b) must abide by the effluent and ambient temperature standards in any case.
Moreover, it is not the total amount of water that any single industry uses (and it's not necessary to capitalize either -- we can read "billions" just as easily as "BILLIONS") but the amount of water used for cooling relative to the amount of water in the stream (First Law of Thermodynamics -- the law of conservation of energy). I used to live in Bellingham, WA, where a pulp mill, a chlor-alkali plant, an alcohol plant, a primary aluminum smelter, and four oil refineries all emitted process cooling water into Bellingham Bay, which fortunately is pretty big. I might point out that the fish loved the warm water!
Moreover, the Second Law suggests that the greater the temperature difference between the high end and the low end of an engine cycle, the more efficient the engine. This again bolsters the argument that any thermal energy conversion process uses the maximum amount of heat and rejects the minimum amount.\
Cold water does damage too. Washington State water quality regulations, for example, address the "too cold" question as well as the "too hot" question.
I would only reiterate that hot water effluent is a weak (there. is that better than stupid?) argument to bring against nuclear power plants, and bringing it hardly bolsters the anti-nukes' credibility.
Maury -- what else are you serving at the fish fry?
Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruthweiner@aol.com
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