Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

Actually this summer my country had to temporarily switch off around 3GW of coal power due to the heatwaves, so no - coal is not as reliable as it's presented by some.

View on HN

If you mean this[0], then it sounds like the plants when offline _during_, but not necessarily _due to_ the heatwave.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/31/what-h...

I can't speak to that coal incident, but nuclear power plants in France had to shut off during heatwaves because they could no longer be cooled adequately.

They had to be shut off during heatwaves mainly to limit the raise in temperature of nearby rivers, due to the river heating, the limited flow of the rivers, and the raise in the reactor's egress water temperature. It is not clear if the raise in the egress water temperature had a big impact, it seems more likely that the heatwave made the rivers less able to receive the excess heat. The cooling systems were still fully able to cool the reactor, but not without shedding a lot of heat to the rivers (as usual).

Of course, this is not at all contrarian to your point, I made the precision because "no longer could be cooled adequately" could be misunderstood.

They were also some problems with the efficiency and reliability of backup generators during heatwaves, but this is not very hard to handle (the backup generators are much easier to cool than the reactor itself).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com