It was so hot last week, a twin-unit nuclear plant in northeastern Illinois had to get special permission to continue operating after the temperature of the water in its cooling pond rose to 102 degrees.
It was the second such request from the plant, Braidwood, which opened 26 years ago. When it was new, the plant had permission to run as long as the temperature of its cooling water pond, a 2,500-acre lake in a former strip mine, remained below 98 degrees; in 2000 it got permission to raise the limit to 100 degrees.
The problem, said Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon, which owns the plant, is not only the hot days, but the hot nights. In normal weather, the water in the lake heats up during the day but cools down at night; lately, nighttime temperatures have been in the 90s, so the water does not cool.
Asked whether he viewed Braidwood’s difficulties as a byproduct of global warming, Mr. Nesbit said: “I’m not a climatologist. But clearly the calculations when the plant was first operated in 1986 are not what is sufficient today, not all the time.”
—At the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that is generally critical of nuclear power safety, David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer, said the commission was supposed to grant exemptions from its rules if there was no increase or only a minor increase in risk, and if the situation could not have been foreseen.
The safety argument “is likely solid and justified,’’ he wrote in an e-mail, but “it is tough to argue (rationally) that warming water conditions are unforeseen.’’ That is a predictable consequence of global warming, he said.
19 November 2007—We’ve all heard those stories about some tiny endangered creature holding up a big engineering project. Sometimes concern about the fish or toad is really at the heart of the dispute. Sometimes it’s just an excuse in the hands of people who really want to stop the project for other reasons entirely. One of the most memorable examples was the 1970s controversy that pitted a big hydroelectric dam that was to be built on Tennessee’s Clinch River against the snail darter, a little endangered fish native to eastern Tennessee.
This story, however, is not about an endangered species torpedoing a big project; it’s about some endangered mussels actually protecting a nuclear power plant. It’s also a story about the drought afflicting the southeastern United States, the imminent threat to Atlanta’s water supply, and the danger that as lake and river waters fall, there might not be enough cooling water for the four nuclear power plants that provide much of Georgia’s and Alabama’s electricity. And it’s a story with a lot of unusual names in it.
Much of the drinking water for greater Atlanta’s 3.8 million residents comes from Lake Lanier, a huge reservoir north of Atlanta and one of five built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along the Chattahoochee River system. As it flows south, the Chattahoochee feeds into the Apalachicola River in North Florida, home of the fat threeridge and purple bankclimber mussels, the former of which is ”endangered,” and the latter ”threatened.”
In recent months, despite Atlanta’s dwindling water supplies, the corps has had to release enormous amounts of water into the Chattahoochee-Apalachicola system to protect the mussels. But at the end of last week, on 16 November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that the Army can cut back on the amount of Lake Lanier water it’s diverting to save the small-fry, in effect preserving water for Atlanta. Naturally, Georgia’s Governor Sonny Perdue hailed the decision. Naturally, Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist will challenge it. (Florida depends on Chattahoochee water to protect not just its mussels but also a whole seafood industry.)
Florida isn’t the only state that might suffer to slake Atlanta’s thirst. Alabama’s Joseph M. Farley nuclear power plant, a two-unit complex on the Chattahoochee that provides Alabamans with about 20 percent of their electricity, depends on the river system for cooling water and other water needs. Up to now the Army’s diversion of Lanier water into the Chattahoochee-Apalachicola system to protect Florida’s mussels has coincidentally guaranteed the Farley nuclear station enough water. But if water reductions in that system get really drastic, might the plant have to power down?
Water for cooling thermoelectric power generation, coal, gas and nuclear, represents 49 percent of US surface water withdrawals. The numbers are similar world wide. (One reason why the envisioned total coal-a-fication of China ain’t gonna happen, but that’s a story for another post..)
A recent study in Europe warned of the possible effects of climate change on thermoelectric power generation.
A European Commission-funded study conducted in part by the Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands predicted thermoelectric power generating capacity from 2031-60 will decrease 6-19 percent in Europe because of a lack of cooling water.
The study, released Monday, also predicted the likelihood of extreme reductions in thermoelectric power generation will, on average, jump by a factor of three during the period.
Thermoelectric power plants — those that burn fossil fuels or use nuclear fuel — rely on consistent volumes of water at particular temperatures to prevent overheating. Thermoelectric plants supply 78 percent of the electricity in Europe and account for 43 percent of the continent’s surface water use.
Because of that, reduced water availability and higher water temperatures caused by rising ambient air temperatures triggered by climate change will present significant potential problems for electricity supplies, the authors warned.
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