photograph, which enforces my premise in my previous post. photograph, which enforces my premise in my previous post.The size of cooling towers needed for a 1.whatever GIGAWATT plant would be very large. Not seeing them in the satellite or ground level shots means they probably don’t exist at this site. I’ll bet the TVA is regretting not spending that couple of million bucks they “saved” by not building a couple of cooling towers right about now
They’re clearly visible from Google maps. See here:
The reactor building is bottom center, and there are rows of mechanical-draft cooling towers flanking some ponds, to the upper left. If you were looking for a large hyperbolic natural draft tower, you were looking for the wrong thing.
In their submittal to the NRC it appears TVA’s design expected the likelihood they would have to derate because of thermal limits.
Their cooling towers are along the waterfront to the right of containment structures.
From ADAMS:
Cooling towers are operated as necessary to meet thermal
discharge temperature limits. For EPU operation of three BFN
units, use of cooling towers is expected to increase, and on
those rare occasions when NPDES permitted thermal limits
cannot be met with the operation of the cooling towers, the
plant would be derated to remain in compliance.