On 23 Sep, 16:46, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:
On Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:32:11 +0100, tony sayer wrote:
Cannot that cooling water "heat" be usefully recovered?..

It could by piping it to the local community for space/water heating.
Large scale combined heat and power, used quite a bit in other
countries and should also be done in this country but you do need a
sizeable community, or a business that can use the heat, close to the
power station.

--
Cheers
Dave.

I have run heat and power systems. There are lots of operational
problems, the main one being heat is not required in Summer and it's
often low quality heat eg warm water & not very useful. I have yet to
see a successful system.
The main city wide sytems in use were in E Europe launched in the
sixties. as far as I know, they have all been shut down as inefficient
and uneconomical.
If you start from the premise that it is heat you want, there is a
chance. However as electricity generators, doomed to failure.