At 20:29 5-7-01 -0700, Doug Pensinger wrote:
> > They (and many other countries' governments) certainly don't seem to have
> > unlimited faith in the safety of their own nuclear reactors. The website of
> > the International Nuclear Safety Center has a map of Europe that shows the
> > locations of the various nuclear power plants. Notice that there are quite
> > a lot of them built near national borders and near oceans.
>
>The reason that they are located near oceans and rivers (which,
>coincidentally, also often form natural borders) is that nuclear power plants
>require cooling water.
That argument is only valid for nuclear power plants near rivers. As I
pointed out in a previous post, you can't use sea water for coolant because
it's too salt: you'll get a corrosion problem in the pipelines.
Do you also have a good explanation (other than: if it goes wrong, part of
it won't be *our* problem) for the fact that many nuclear power plants are
built close to national non-water borders? Example: Germany and Belgium
built nuclear power plants close to the Dutch border -- no rivers or
anything acting as a natural border.
>It's not polluted with chemicals, nor is it radioactive
>but it is a good deal
>warmer than the ambient temperature of the source water. But then,
>conventional plants use cooling water as well.
And that's supposed to make things right? "Conventional plants dump their
coolant in the river, so it's okay for us to do the same"? Or, closer to
home: if you neighbour dumps his trash in your garden, does that mean it's
okay for you to dump your trash in his garden?
Jeroen
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