Can anyone explain the very common public mis-understanding of the role of natural-draft cooling towers used in fossil-fueled as well as nuclear-fueled electric generating plants? For example, today's (January 16) Dallas Morning News devotes about two full pages devoted to nuclear power plants, with both photographic detail as well as an artist's rendition of natural-draft cooling towers scattered around the country. Evidently, because natural-draft cooling towers are large and highly visible even from several miles distant, such towers have somehow become a visual metaphor for nuclear energy. WRONG! Those cooling towers simply cool the condensate coming from steam-driven turbines. They have no technical relationship with nuclear power other than the fact that they are generally located near the turbine-generator unit. Such cooling towers have long been in use at fossil-fueled power plants decades before the advent of nuclear energy.
- posted
17 years ago