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From its humble beginnings as a glacial network in the Swiss Alps, the Rhône is being transformed into one of the most industrialized waterways in the world. As it meanders through the south of France to the Mediterranean Sea, its bloodless water is absorbed by boilers, absorbed through pipes as a coolant, diverted for agriculture. Among its biggest consumers is a battalion of nuclear reactors. Since the 1970s, the river and its tributaries have helped produce about a quarter of France’s atomic energy.
But in recent weeks, this has not been the case. Amid a slow-burning heatwave that killed many other people and sparked intense wildfires across Western Europe, and combined with already low water levels due to drought, the water in the Rhône has been too hot for work. It is no longer conceivable to cool the reactors without expelling downstream the water so hot that it extinguishes aquatic life. Thus, a few weeks ago, Électricité de France (EDF) began to close the reactors along the Rhône and a main river moment in the south, the Garonne. Now it’s a family story: Similar closures due to drought and heat occurred in 2018 and 2019. This summer’s shutdowns, combined with the malfunction and maintenance of other reactors, have helped slow France’s nuclear power generation. through almost 50 percent.
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Of all the low-carbon force resources likely to be needed to fight climate change, the nuclear force is considered to be the least disruptive. It’s called reinforcement when time doesn’t cooperate to obtain other carbon-free force resources, such as wind and solar. But the nuclear industry faces its own climate risks.
Water disorders (too much or too little) are more closely related to hydroelectric dams, which have struggled to maintain production in dry areas like the western United States. But as Swedish historian Per Högselius says, much of today’s nuclear engineering isn’t about splitting atoms, but it’s about dealing with aquatic upheavals on a larger scale. Nuclear technicians have been known to refer to their career as a very confusing way to boil water, generating steam that spins turbines. But regularly much more is needed to keep the reactor cold. why so many services are found across the sea and along primary rivers such as the Rhône.
Many other industries are affected by warmer rivers, adding giant factories and forced plants that run on coal and gas. But forced nuclear plants are unique because of their immense length and the central role they play in maintaining forced online networks in places like France. And warming and shrinking rivers aren’t the only demanding climate situations they face. On coasts, the combination of emerging sea degrees and more common and intense storms means increased flood risks. The scientists also pointed to other more demanding situations, such as the most common algae. blooms and populations of explosive jellyfish, which can clog water pipes.
Nuclear power plants are also built to last a long time in the future, with a lifespan spanning part of a century or more. This is a meeting, says Natalie Kopytko, a researcher at the University of Leeds who researched nuclear regulatory frameworks to look at climate considerations. “I probably didn’t see anything about climate change, which scared me a lot,” he says. the plans assumed that existing climate situations would continue for a long time into the future.
Angela Cortaaguas
Steven Levy
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Some of the existing considerations on climate substitution are similar to safety, and the sector has begun to take steps to address them. After the Fukushima crisis in Japan, triggered by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (T. E. )The U. S. Department of Homeland Security (NRC) began drafting new regulations to harden existing power plants in the face of climate threats, such as storms and rising sea levels. The procedure learned of dozens of services that could face flooding in extreme conditions. But in 2019, the plans were big. part slipped through republican leaders, who argued that prices were too high for the nuclear industry to adopt in such unlikely events (“This resolution is absurd,” Democratic-appointed commissioner Jeff Baran wrote in dissent at the time).
The nuclear industry and environmental teams continue to disagree on whether existing regulations take into account the most recent clinical developments, specifically on the issue of sea point rise. “There’s a lot of scope in the protective aspect for nuclear-force plants,” says Doug True, nuclear director of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a U. S. -based industry group. He added that utilities are updating their climate threat models and have already taken important steps to protect their services from excessive weather.
But those climate threats are being discussed again with more brazenness as regulators in Europe and the United States extend the lifespan of nuclear-powered plants to combat climate change. In 2019, the NRC began approving 20-year extensions for some reactors, starting with the Turkey Point Power Plant in South Florida. Environmental teams presented interventions to avoid the plan, arguing that a combination of more intense hurricanes and rising sea levels would threaten the low-lying plant in a way that regulators had not sufficiently controlled. In February, the NRC canceled the extension of Turkey Point and other plants pending further environmental review.
So far, most of the production cuts are due to warming waters, not only in the Rhône and Garonne, but also in places like the Tennessee River in the United States and in the coastal seas where many other plants are located. In recent years, nuclear power plants in northern Europe have been forced to shut down or decrease production because seawater has become too hot to safely cool reactor cores. restrict your cooling water to five degrees Fahrenheit.
Given the relative scarcity of intense heat waves and storm-related blackouts, climate-related backlash has a small effect on overall energy production, affecting less than 1% of EDF’s annual production on average, for example. But the on effect is developing as temperatures continue to rise. In research published in Nature Energy last summer, a Stanford researcher found that there were 8 times more heat-related blackouts in the 2010s compared to the 1990s. In a 2011 study on the as a warming effect on nuclear cooling systems, EDF scientists predicted a 3 degree Celsius increase in the Rhône’s temperature until 2050, which would increase the possibility of closures during heat waves.
Angela Cortaaguas
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Tushar Nene
And those disruptions can occur at critical times, such as summer heat waves when demand for force is high. its reserves of strength due to shortages of fuel and oil due to the war in Ukraine.
Adapting the existing fleet can be challenging, says Thibault Laconde, chief executive of Callendar, a Paris-based startup that advises corporations on climate risks. it may be conceivable to redesign pipes to succeed in deeper, colder waters, or to load new heat exchange systems that lower water requirements, as many French factories did after the country’s record-breaking 2003 heatwave. But prices are sometimes high and power increases are low, Laconde says.
Building from scratch is easier. ” The key question is when we start building new plants, how can we take into account the impact of climate change over the entire life of the plant until 2080 or 2100,” Laconde said, noting that the new generation of French reactors, recently announced by President Emmanuel Macron, are most commonly built on the coast. He adds that the nuclear force works very well in warmer climates, such as Spain or the United Arab Emirates, because those plants were built to cope with it. “I think it’s imaginable to adapt,” Laconde says.
In the United States, the only nuclear facility in the desert, the Palo Verde plant in Arizona, relies on municipal wastewater rather than rivers or seas, though the facility is struggling to cope with emerging prices as more industries compete for limited supplies. Doug True of NEI places greater emphasis on a proposed new generation of smaller nuclear reactors, some of which use molten salts or air-based cooling and rely less on the availability of water sources.
Meanwhile, in France, regulators are expecting a long summer. Although heat can pass, low water levels can persist, leading to discounts that last for weeks or months. EDF recently told reporters that it expects additional cuts in the coming months as water levels continue. to fall, leaving the country waiting for relief from the bloodless and harsh rains.
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