Cooling towers, nuclear power plants

Nuclear Power Plant reactor building and cooling tower (left). (Field Mark Publications... 

Provides abstracts of worldwide research on design and performance of mechanical draft and natural draft wet, dry, and dry-wet combination cooling towers. Abstracts cover studies on size reduction, corrosion protection, and economic optimization of cooling towers primarily used with nuclear power plants and fossil fuel power plants. Also covered are abstracts which pertain to cooling towers used in waste-water treatment. It contains 305 abstracts, 65 of which are new entries to the previous edition. 

FIGURE 19.11 A nuclear power plant. The large structure on the left is a cooling tower the containment building is the smaller building on the right with the domed top. 

Figure 1.12 Panoramic view of the long scale spaying cooling system (SCS) of the Zapor-izhzhya nuclear power plant (South Ukraine) 1 - nuclear reactors 2,3- two channels that cool the circulating water through fountains 4 - two cooling towers for the additional water coohng.

Figure 8.9 Natural-draft cooling towers in a nuclear power plant. The packing occupies only the bottom section the rest of the tower acts as a chimney to create the flow of air. (Courtesy of Michael Rennhack, NukeWorker.com.)...

A nuclear power plant produces 1000 MW of electricity with a power cycle thermodynamic efficiency of 30%. The heat rejected is removed by cooling water that enters the condenser at 293 K and is heated to 313 K. The hot water flows to two identical natural-draft cooling towers, where it is recooled to 293 K, and makeup water is added as necessary. The available air is at 298 K with a wet-bulb temperature of 285 K, and it will flow at a rate 1.2 times the minimum. Specialized packing will be used for which Kya is expected to be 1.0 kg/m3-s if the liquid mass velocity is at least 3.4 kg/m2-s and the gas mass velocity is at least 2.75 kg/m2-s. Compute the dimensions of the packed sections of the cooling towers and the makeup water requirement due to evaporation. 

FIGURE 9-18 Many nuclear power plants have huge cooling towers that allow the steam to escape after passing through the turbines. 

Nuclear power plant. The cooling towers are the most visibly prominent feature in nuclear power plants. 

Nuclear Power Plant in this model of a nuclear power plant, pressurized water is heated by fission of uranium-235. This water is circulated to a steam generator. The steam drives a turbine to produce electricity. Cool water from a lake or river is then used to condense the steam into water. The warm water from the condenser may be cooled in cooling towers before being reused or returned to the lake or river. 

A solution for the cooling tower existing in the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant of the Portland General Electric Company (GEC) built in 1974. 

The giant natural-draft towers are used in Europe and in nuclear power plants in the United States. I ve only worked with these towers in one refinery in Lithuania, and their performance was poor. Air flow is generated by the air inside the tower being heated by the warm cooling water. Also, the molecular weight of the evaporated water is less than the molecular weight of air. A few tenths of an inch of water draft may be developed. 

As a safety measure, nuclear plants use great quantities of water to cool the fissionable material. Familiar sights at all nuclear plants are the huge cooling towers that vent steam into the atmosphere after water is used to cool the reactor cores. The first plant that employed nuclear power to make electricity went into service in Arco, Idaho, in 1955. Today 12 percent of the world s energy is produced through nuclear power plants. 

Thermal pollution is heated water discharged into lakes and rivers. By raising the ambient water temperature, aquatic plant and wildlife are often threatened. The industry that dumps the greatest amount of heat into lakes and rivers is thermoelectric power, which consists of coal, oil, and natural gas-combusting plants, and nuclear reactors. Because of the laws of thermodynamics, this waste heat cannot be eliminated, but it can be kept from waterways by means of cooling towers or cooling ponds or used in cogeneration industrial parks. 

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