Bad Fission on BBC News

[Glom]

This news was covered on the Ten O'Clock News and the discussion about carbon emissions was brought up. As the commentator ran through the statistics, the screen was backdropped with a series of nuclear cooling towers.

Interesting! To represent carbon emissions, they pick the one chimney that isn't responsible for them at all.

This is just another example of negative stigmas being attached to nuclear power without any regard for what's actually correct.

[JohnOwens]

Do you know that other means of electrical generation also use cooling towers? (I would think you would.) If so, how could you identify these as being particularly nuclear? I mean, if you recognize the particular plant shown, that'd certainly be good enough for me.

Added: E.g., a quick Google search turns up this coal plant.

[swansont]

Do you know that other means of electrical generation also use cooling towers? (I would think you would.) If so, how could you identify these as being particularly nuclear? I mean, if you recognize the particular plant shown, that'd certainly be good enough for me.

Added: E.g., a quick Google search turns up this coal plant.

But the white stuff in the picture is water. No carbon.

[JohnOwens]

Do you know that other means of electrical generation also use cooling towers? (I would think you would.) If so, how could you identify these as being particularly nuclear? I mean, if you recognize the particular plant shown, that'd certainly be good enough for me.

Added: E.g., a quick Google search turns up this coal plant.

But the white stuff in the picture is water. No carbon.

Umm, yeah, I know that. My point was, maybe they did show a coal or other fossil fuel plant, with the cooling towers, and the cooling towers alone would lead some people to presume it's a nuclear plant. I wasn't saying there should be carbon compounds coming out of cooling towers, regardless of whether they're coal or nuclear! #-o

[swansont]

Do you know that other means of electrical generation also use cooling towers? (I would think you would.) If so, how could you identify these as being particularly nuclear? I mean, if you recognize the particular plant shown, that'd certainly be good enough for me.

Added: E.g., a quick Google search turns up this coal plant.

But the white stuff in the picture is water. No carbon.

Umm, yeah, I know that. My point was, maybe they did show a coal or other fossil fuel plant, with the cooling towers, and the cooling towers alone would lead some people to presume it's a nuclear plant. I wasn't saying there should be carbon compounds coming out of cooling towers, regardless of whether they're coal or nuclear! #-o

I guess I made my point poorly. I meant that by showing cooling towers and saying, "Pollution" people would make that association, which is wrong. So even if they were correctly criticizing coal plants, they were still presenting bad science.

[Iain Lambert]

Maybe, but if you want to show a picture of a Coal station, then the cooling towers are its most prominent and photogenic feature. There is something about a cooling tower that just says 'power plant' even if its wrong.

[Glom]

Fair enough that I couldn't be sure they were nuclear. It's true that the other chimneys could have been outside the shot. But with this bad science, all power sources that involve those cooling towers are incriminated. My immediate reaction was nuclear because in my experience, those chimneys tend to be associated with nuclear more than other power sources which have other kinds of chimneys to add variation in the shot.

[captain swoop]

Fair enough that I couldn't be sure they were nuclear. It's true that the other chimneys could have been outside the shot. But with this bad science, all power sources that involve those cooling towers are incriminated. My immediate reaction was nuclear because in my experience, those chimneys tend to be associated with nuclear more than other power sources which have other kinds of chimneys to add variation in the shot.

Driving south down the A1 (or north for that matter you pass Ferrybridge power station. It has 8 of these towers right next to the Motorway. Drax and Thorpe Marsh are within sight, they are both huge coal fired power stations with massive cooling towers. Hartlepool Nuclear station on the Tees doesn't have a cooling tower at all, neither does Dungeness. As they are on the coast with unlimited water supply they use condensers.

[Captain Kidd]

I think Glom’s right in that the average person probably associates cooling towers with nuclear plants. However, they’re an environmental requirement here in the US for any industry using river/lake/etc water to cool equipment and want to dump the water back into the river/lake/etc and are a requirement IIRC for plants built after a certain date. TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant doesn’t have the big concrete hyperbolics, they’ve got, uh, 6 I think (originally 8 but they’re wooden and they’ve proven twice now that wood will burn even when wet) smaller and more “normal” cooling towers you see for big buildings. And TVA’s Paradise Fossil Plant has three big hyperbolic towers.

So, it was probably bad form to show the towers if they were talking about pollutants, but, hey, they’re big and can be seen for miles (I’ve seen Watts Bar’s from 40 miles or so, granted that was from the top of a mountain, but I could still make out the shape and the vapor easily).

[Glom]

Ah you see that's the problem. I don't use the A1.

People I know tend to associate cooling tower looking things with nuclear power more than coal. I'll cede I may be making a hasty generalisation. If everyone else doesn't think that way, then the problem as I described in the OP doesn't really exist (people associating carbon emissions with nuclear power).

Nevertheless, if people do get the idea that the cooling towers are releasing carbon dioxide, then if they see a nuclear power station that has them, there is the potential for a misconception.

[Grand Vizier]

Just to be provocative, is it true that cooling towers are inevitably non-polluting? If you had enough of them, the local heat/vapour could alter local microclimate - that's pollution of a sort. Of course, I seriously doubt that the effect is any more than marginal in reality.

Hartlepool Nuclear station on the Tees doesn't have a cooling tower at all, neither does Dungeness. As they are on the coast with unlimited water supply they use condensers.

For which a heat pollution case is even easier to make. Local waters can be significantly warmed by thermal outflows. Nothing to do with the nuclear issue, particularly - tropical fish have been observed in Southampton Water around heat exchanger outflows from Fawley oil refinery, for example. I think it's a very local effect, though.

[milli360]

Do you know that other means of electrical generation also use cooling towers? (I would think you would.) If so, how could you identify these as being particularly nuclear? I mean, if you recognize the particular plant shown, that'd certainly be good enough for me.

Added: E.g., a quick Google search turns up this coal plant.

But the white stuff in the picture is water. No carbon.

In that picture, the "smoke stacks" are probably the two tall structures whose top is out of the frame. I googled "coal generation cooling towers" and the first two pages returned had this image and this, both with smoking stacks, but the most prominent structure is the cooling tower. So, it's hard to avoid.

[captain swoop]

For which a heat pollution case is even easier to make. Local waters can be significantly warmed by thermal outflows. Nothing to do with the nuclear issue, particularly - tropical fish have been observed in Southampton Water around heat exchanger outflows from Fawley oil refinery, for example. I think it's a very local effect, though.

Southampton water is enclosed, I hardly think that Hartlepool power station is going to warm up the North Sea. I would think that water entering via the Tees would have more of a warming effect.

[JohnW]

Driving south down the A1 (or north for that matter you pass Ferrybridge power station. It has 8 of these towers right next to the Motorway. Drax and Thorpe Marsh are within sight, they are both huge coal fired power stations with massive cooling towers. Hartlepool Nuclear station on the Tees doesn't have a cooling tower at all, neither does Dungeness. As they are on the coast with unlimited water supply they use condensers.

I grew up a few miles south of Ferrybridge, and four major coal-fired power stations, all with impressive rows of cooling towers, were within cycling distance. Almost all British nuclear plants were on the coast, and often didn't use cooling towers. When I see them on TV now, I think "electricity generation" but I certainly don't assume "nuclear". Now if the BBC had shown a giant metallic dome, I think you'd have a point. (Yes, I know most nuclear plants don't have them, but I think that's the popular stereotype).

[Grand Vizier]

Southampton water is enclosed, I hardly think that Hartlepool power station is going to warm up the North Sea. I would think that water entering via the Tees would have more of a warming effect.

That's why I was stressing the very local aspect. This looks like a useful site, though:

http://www.irchouse.demon.co.uk/

On http://www.irchouse.demon.co.uk/infoa1.html, they stress that the main danger to marine life from power stations may be in the coolant inflow, not the outflow. I was struck by:

For eggs, larvae and fish < 3cm long the mortality rate is circa 10^14 individuals per annum

.

I know we're talking microscopic, but that's a lot...

And http://www.irchouse.demon.co.uk/hink2001.html

It is shown that the recent closures of direct-cooled power stations in the region are coincident with the increased abundance of common fish and crustaceans at Hinkley Point. These observations do not prove that power stations have, in the past, reduced animal abundance.

So who knows...?

[Glom]

I suppose that the people I've spoken to are in the minority.

[Swift]

One of the ironic things, even if they showed the visible outflow from a coal-plant smokestack (instead of the cooling towers), what you mostly see to the naked eye is also water. Unless you can see in the infrared, CO2 is invisible. Invisible things tend not to make good TV copy.

As far as effects of waste heat, I looked at this issue years ago for a nuclear power plant using a river (the Hudson in New York) for cooling. I would not say its the biggest possible issue for nuclear power (or non-nuclear for that matter), but there are some small, measureable, and possibly negative effects. But that was 20 years ago and I don't recall the details. Sorry.

[JohnOwens]

People I know tend to associate cooling tower looking things with nuclear power more than coal. I'll cede I may be making a hasty generalisation. If everyone else doesn't think that way, then the problem as I described in the OP doesn't really exist (people associating carbon emissions with nuclear power).

Nevertheless, if people do get the idea that the cooling towers are releasing carbon dioxide, then if they see a nuclear power station that has them, there is the potential for a misconception.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I know quite well that most people who see cooling towers will think "nuclear energy" right away. That's why I thought it would be a question worth asking. Call it my contribution in the fight against Bad Energy Science. :wink:
It does leave it rather vague as to whether showing cooling towers when discussing carbon pollution qualifies as BSE, though. :-k

[Alex W.]

I remember in Standard Grade (3rd-4th year high school) geography, the teacher once paused the tape we were watching about pollution and alternate fuel sources, with the screen showing some cooling towers. He then asked what was coming out of them.

"Sulphur dioxide!"

"No."

"Cardon dioxide!"

"No."

"Nitrogen oxides!"

"No."

"Dioxins!"

"No."

I grin and offer "Water!". I felt so smug then. But in retrospect it's depressing that so many people, even at that age, had basically made assumptions based on the pre-spun images that appear in the media, without bothering to find things out for themselves.