The USA’s largest nuclear power plant gets its cooling water through long lines. Now the expensive drops are used smarter at the plant in Arizona.
The availability of cooling water is crucial for the safe operation of reactors. But the largest nuclear power plant in the United States is unique – the plant is the only one in the world that is not located by a large water source, in the form of the sea, a river or a lake.
The Palo Verde Generating Station cools instead with recycled wastewater sent 56 km through Arizona desert area. The nuclear power plant is located in Tonopah in southwestern Arizona.
More than 246 million liters are consumed daily. After 2025, a price increase is in the agreement with the cities that supply the water, with contracts expiring in 2050.
To reduce water loss via cooling towers
After laying down the plan to pump up brackish groundwater outside Phoenix, the search for a cheaper source continues. The latest bid from Arizona Public Service Co., APS, is that instead use the existing water in a smarter way. It writes the newspaper Arizona Central.
During the summer, APS, together with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, will conduct dry cooling tests. Today, the steam that has passed the turbine goes out into the cooling tower next to the plant, where a large part of the water disappears into the air. The idea is to reduce the loss.
At the laboratory in New Mexico, you should look at methods for lowering the temperature of the water before it reaches the cooling towers. If, for example, it were done with the help of fans, the energy consumption will constitute a cost, and the question is whether it eats up the profit compared with today’s solution.
APS is also looking at the possibility of building a water treatment plant at the nuclear power plant. Today’s delivered wastewater can usually circulate 25 times through the cooling towers before the salinity becomes too high – then it is pumped out into ponds where the water is allowed to condense. But it would possibly be profitable to treat the water instead to lower the salinity.
The Palo Verde Generating Station consists of three pressurized water reactors that together have an electrical power of 3,937 MW.
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