Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
...which seems a waste to me. Why not use the "waste" heat for
desalination? It
has fresh water as a "free" byproduct of the cooling process.
There have been a few nuclear powered desalination plants. I do not
know whether they were co-gen units or only desalination plants, but
I believe even engineers are skittish about putting drinking water in
close proximity to reactor cores. It seems like a dumb idea to me.
All of the Japanese nuclear power plants that I know of are built
next to the ocean or the Inland Sea, and are cooled by seawater. They
do not have the large cooling towers you see in the US plants.
- Jed
