Tin Foil Soldier

Drought could close nuclear power plants - Weather- msnbc.com
Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.

If only we could melt some of that ice that no one is using @ the North and South Pole, I bet we wouldn’t run out of water then.

Sarcasm aside, I never really thought that nuclear power plants would have to be shut down because there isn’t enough water to cool them.  Even that said, @ least in the case of Three Mile Island, they aren’t actually using river water to cool the reactor / steam from the reactor / steam made from steam made from the reactor, they just have access to river water in case they can’t cool the steam made from the steam made from the reactor fast enough. you got that?

I got distracted when I wrote that, because technically you either have superheated water from the reactor that heaters other water to steam, and that other water spins turbines and then is cooled by another loop of water, as in a pressurized light water reactor, or you have water that is from the reactor that boils into steam, spins turbines and then is cooled by other water, such as in a boiling water reactor.

And this post took entirely too long to write as I got lost in articles about nuclear power on wikipedia