Judge rules Indian Point's fish-killing cooling process must stop

[bananas]

Source: NY Daily News

Officials at the Indian Point nuclear power plant - which has been called responsible for killing more than a billion fish each year - will have to figure out another way to cool its giant heated steam turbines, a state court has ruled.

The plant sucks in and returns more than 2.5 billion gallons of Hudson River water daily - 2 million gallons per minute - in a system that pulls in and kills fish, eggs, larvae and plant life.

The hot water flushed back into the river is fatal to some 1.2 billion fish every year, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The cooling system doesn't use radioactive water from the reactor core.

<snip>

Entergy has balked at the $1.4billion price tag for the new cooling system. Nappi said the plant already has spent more than $100 million to protect fish by installing special screens to reduce the number of fish pulled inside.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/03/2009-07-...

[DUlover2909]

1. There's a drawback I hadn't considered.

Spend the $1.4 billion you daddy warbucks fat cat bastards.

[Submariner]

2. Well that decision didn't take long.....35 years

I was studying the fish entrapment and impingement of fish in the Indian Point intake starting in 1974. It was killing fish then. Glad to see they are getting around to doing something to stop the problem.

[Snazzy]

3. great news!

(Tarrytown, NY) On June 22, 2009, The Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled in favor of Riverkeeper and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and dismissed Entergy’s petition to overturn a decision by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). That decision, released on August 15, 2008, determined that Indian Point’s cooling water intake system causes adverse environmental impacts on Hudson River fish.

In October 2008, Entergy filed a lawsuit challenging DEC’s determination. On behalf of Riverkeeper and Scenic Hudson, Riverkeeper Attorney Victor Tafur filed a motion to have Entergy’s suit dismissed on the grounds that the claims are premature, and that DEC established “adverse environmental impact,” in large part, by relying on Entergy’s data.

The DEC will now move to require closed-cycle cooling, which would reduce water usage and fish kills by 95 percent or more. Hearings on the new draft permit for the plant, which will now mandate closed-cycle cooling, are tentatively scheduled for 2010.

This marks a major victory for Riverkeeper, NY State and the other proponents of bringing Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant into compliance with the Clean Water Act.

http://www.riverkeeper.org/news-events/news/stop-pollut...

[Snazzy]

4. thermal image

Thermal Pollution
This 1988 thermal image of the Hudson River highlights temperature changes caused by discharge of 2.5 billion gallons of water each day from the Indian Point power plant. The plant sits in the upper right of the photo — hot water in the discharge canal is visible in yellow and red, spreading and cooling across the entire width of the river. Two additional outflows from the Lovett coal-fired power plant are also clearly visible against the natural temperature of the water, in green and blue.


http://www.switchstudio.com/waterkeeper/issues/Winter%2...

[seafan]

5. This seems to vindicate Sotomayor's "controversial" ruling in Riverkeeper vs EPA.

Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor rules for the environment in 2007... The Supreme Court reverses her ruling, April, 2009.


AP


From Keith Johnson at the WSJ blogs:

.....

But she also wrote the opinion in one big environmental case—one the Supreme Court just overturned.

In 2007, Ms. Sotomayor sided with the fishes and against power companies and the Environmental Protection Agency. That is, in Riverkeeper vs. EPA, she argued that the EPA can’t weigh costs and benefits in deciding what the “best technology” is for protecting fish that get sucked into power plants.

In a nutshell, there’s no point in tallying up the marginal costs of extra environmental protections when Congress has already decided they’re worth it. From her 2007 decision:

The Agency is therefore precluded from undertaking such cost-benefit analysis because the standard represents Congress’s conclusion that the costs imposed on industry in adopting the best cooling water intake structure technology available (i.e., the best-performing technology that can be reasonably borne by the industry) are worth the benefits in reducing adverse environmental impacts.

In April, the Supreme Court overturned that decision in a 6-3 ruling; justice David Souter, who Ms. Sotomayor would replace, was one of the dissenters. The Supremes ruled that the EPA could in fact tally up the costs of environmental protections.

.....

Judge rules Indian Point's fish-killing cooling process must stop, July 3, 2009



Not quite so *controversial*, it seems.

[2QT2BSTR8]

6. Screens? I guess they have never heard of the word suction.

[madokie]

7. Bananas I have a question for you

does a nuclear power plant use more cooling water than a coal or natural gas plant for the same electrical output? We have both, a natural gas and a coal plant near here and neither one discharges any hot water into the river. It seems to me like the Nuclear power plants use a lot more cooling water than either the coal or gas plants. Fresh clean water is not something we have an over abundance of.
TIA

[caraher]

8. It should be the same

There's nothing magical about the nuclear plant vs. coal or natural gas - they all run steam turbines that turn generators. The cooling system is a bit more complicated for a nuke plant since you need an extra loop of cooling water but the overall thermal waste should be similar.

Do the coal and gas plants have cooling towers? That's really the main alternative... dump the waste heat either into the water or into the air.

[madokie]

9. I wish I knew where to get that info

a couple stories I've read makes me wonder if the nuclear plants use a lot more cooling water. Why would they not use cooling towers like the others do? Its not like we have a bunch of cold water that we need to warm up in our rivers or anything. I'm still looking for an answer if anyone knows for sure.

[bananas]

12. Nuclear Engineering International magazine has some answers

"In determining the cooling requirement, these distinctions are not insignificant. For example, any power plant running at 33% thermal efficiency must discharge about 14% more heat than one at 36% efficiency."

Why not use closed-loop systems?
Because "recirculating cooling systems reduce the overall efficiency of a power plant by 3-5%".

Cooling of plants: a constraint on growth?
02 July 2008
An important economic and environmental consideration that needs to be taken into account when planning for new nuclear plants is their method of cooling. By Steve Kidd

<snip>

Nuclear plants currently being built have about 34-36% thermal efficiency, while one of the new reactor designs boasts up to 39%. In comparison, a typical new coal plant runs at 36%, while some new coal-fired plants approach 40%. In determining the cooling requirement, these distinctions are not insignificant. For example, any power plant running at 33% thermal efficiency must discharge about 14% more heat than one at 36% efficiency. Coal plants have a slight edge over nuclear plants and a correspondingly reduced need for cooling water.

<snip>

A big issue, however, is that recirculating cooling systems reduce the overall efficiency of a power plant by 3-5% compared with once through use of water from the sea, a lake or major river.

<snip>

As the cooled water is returned to the condenser, the 3-5% of the flow that is lost to evaporation must be continuously replaced. The water loss equates to some 1.75-2.5 litres per kilowatt-hour. Moreover, because evaporation concentrates impurities in the water, some bleed of water (called ‘blowdown’) is required, raising the need for replacement water by another 50%.

<snip>

[bananas]

13. 2002 EPRI report

Water & Sustainability (Volume 3): U.S.
Water Consumption for Power Production
- The Next Half Century
pdf: http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/public/000000000001006786.p...

"It appears that the larger the shift from coal and nuclear to natural gas, the greater the
decrease in water consumption for power generation (possibly as much as a 50% drop
relative to the base case and a 35% drop relative to today’s use)."

[Dogmudgeon]

14. This may give you a start

It appears to be (mainly) bias- and politics-free, and it contains high-quality links, too:
Water use in nuclear & coal-fired power plants

I've broken out the links for easy reading:

The EPRI link:
Responding to Emerging Power Plant-Water Issues – DOE/NETL’s R&D Program

The IEEE Spectrum link:
How Much Water Does It Take to Make Electricity?

My overall impression: Fossil fuel is more efficient than nuclear energy in water use, but it's the biofuels that have the big thirst. The reported figures for shale oil and oil sands seem far too low, but that may just be my "truthy gut" speaking.

The issue of waste heat management is a separate issue, and it should probably be given more weight. That "waste heat" from both fossil fuel and nuclear energy has been used quite efficiently for energy co-generation, an overlooked technology.

Air-cooling of any heat-generating process is also feasible, but it isn't commonly used. It's yet another entire issue.

I used a Google search on ""coal nuclear water" but anytime the word "nuclear" is used as a search term, a lot of the links involve politics. "coal nuclear water IEEE DoE" is probably a better set of search terms; using the names of other scientific journals and organizations will also help, and it's easier to control for bias. (Not that all bias must be avoided; I personally find biased articles more useful in showing the boundaries of a scientific controversy than advocacy groups.)

Finally, these are just three sources. There are probably hundreds of studies on water use in energy production; as well as concrete, common metals, uranium, rare earths, and any other resource.

This whole aspect of energy production is nearly invisible to the public, but (IMO) it's absolutely vital that it become visible in a hurry.

--d!

[bananas]

10. From what I've read, yes nuclear plants use more water than fossil plants.

Not sure why, but there are a number of differences I can think of off-hand: core temperature, containment structure (insulation/thermal mass), filtration system, double-loop cooling system.

[ProudDad]

11. And they all use depleting resources

to prop up a bogus Ponzi scheme laughingly called an "economy" whose benefit is for the few who get richer and richer and whose reliance on the bogus assumption that they can support infinite growth on a finite Earth is being rapidly disproved...

Power Down Folks!

www.transitionus.org

http://www.postcarbon.org /

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_down

[Grinchie]

15. It because modern Nuclear Plants are based on smaller military designs

The military pioneered the use of nuclear powerplants, but the industry didn't bother to redesign truly efficient, larger reactors. They basically took designs originally created for a few hundred kilowatts, and scaled up, thinkit would be a simple thing to make the boiling teakettle design bigger to make megawatt scale power.

Unfortunately, they found out the hard way that large piles of radioactive material do not scale up that well, and unforseen problems snuck into the reactors that were not problems in the smaller, kilowatt designs.

Three mile Island was the real wake up call when they found that the designs they had come up with in the megawatt class had serious design flaws, and that they were all over the country using the same design, with the same problems.

The simple (in theory) teakettle design turned out to be not so simple, and it turned out to be even more expensive to operate.

I'm sure that if the truth were told, the Nuclear industry is nothing more than another Enron type scheme that is totally dependant on subsidies from the government, considering it was Military Funding that initially paid for the development of nuclear power.

See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-18605173610480... for an indepth history of Nuclear Power.

It's a pretty good snapshot of the thinking of the time.

[Pavulon]

17. We design and sell highly efficient reactors

to other nations. Westinghouse makes systems that are safe and scale. The AP1000 is an example. We have the technology to use breeding plutonium reactors but that has been limited by proliferation concerns.

[Grinchie]

18. I think they could be a lot more efficient. Considering they started out with smaller designs

and then scaled up, they ran into a lot of things that their fledgling science didn't account for.

The waste heat problem in the original post is a good example of the enormous amount of waste heat that is basically discarded into the environment.

Secondly, there is the issue of waste material. This issue has not gone away, and the costs of an accident are overwhelmingly bleak.

Thridly, there is a finite supply of Uranium, despite what they would have you believe.

[The Stranger]

16. Holy godfuck, is that correct? 1.2 Billion with a "B"?

[estuarian]

19. Can Fictional Fish Die Real Deaths ?

This issue is politically motivated, and not at all what has been presented to us.

Several big players are using this issue as "career fuel".

See: http://waistdeepinthecruddy.blogspot.com/