From
the comments -
“France
has a no-win situation. Almost 50% of their fresh water goes to
keeping their reactors running. If they cool the reactors, the water
is too hot to use for agriculture-- it cooks the topsoil and their
crops die. If they don't pour the water on their crops, the crops
will wither and die from drought.”
A true conundrum!
Hot
weather forces 4 French nuclear reactors to shut down
4
August, 2018
PARIS
— As Europe struggles through a major heatwave, the French energy
company EDF says it has halted a fourth nuclear reactor, this time
one at the country’s oldest nuclear plant at Fessenheim in eastern
France.
In
a statement, EDT said the Fessenheim nuclear reactor was temporarily
shut down Saturday.
Since
Thursday, four French nuclear reactors in three power plants near the
Rhine and the Rhone Rivers, including Fessenheim, have had to be
temporarily shut down. EDF said the decision was made to avoid
overheating the rivers.
Nuclear
power plants use water from the rivers to cool down the temperatures
of their reactors before sending the water back into the rivers.
Rivers that are unusually warm can experience mass fish die-offs,
which has happened in Germany in the past week.
How about just not starting them up again .... ?
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