On 23/01/14 12:57, Capitol wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I wonder how much cooling the Cam could do in summer...;-)

Enough for half a gigawatt perhaps?




A few years back I went boating in March (Tubing, they lied about
how fast they wouldn't go.) in an Illinois lake used for reactor
cooling. The lake was fed by two rivers which had a dam built to create
the lake. The water temperature was around 80F, just like a warm bath!
You could fish there as well as play with boats and water ski. However I
didn't see anybody eating the fish! I think the Cam would boil.


Its a simple enough calculation. Those illinois plants are IIRC bloody
HUGE..


It would seem to be the Clinton plant you are talking about which dumps
about 2GW thermal into the lakes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton...rating_Station

Cambridge wouldn't need that much to run it ;-)

worst case flow at Jesus lock is 1 cu m a second and it average
generally better than 2 in June, so if we take 2cu m/s as a figure and
allow say a 20C rise..

http://www.firstandthird.org/frames/...camwater.shtml

that is 40 x 10^6 calories a second or 160MW ...so theoretically able to
cool a 80MWe reactor reasonably well, even in June, if it were throttled
back a bit (they do that in France in summer to avoid overheating the
rivers)


IIRC Cambridge and its environs is about 100,000 inhabitants so that's
1.6KW apiece..and free hot water in the town centre too. What's not to
like? And warm outdoor swimming pools all year round!

Of course skating on the CAM would be a thing of the past,. but you
could farm trout downstream.

It's a fun exercise.. and does show what even a small river can absorb
in terms of cooling. And small modular reactors of that sort of power
output are definitely being constructed right now.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.