Word: reactor
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Nuclear power is just another way of boiling water: An atomic reactor sustains a fission reaction which produces heat used to boil water which drives electric turbines in the same way as in traditional, coal-fired plants. All coal contains traces of radioactive carbon, which is released when coal is burned. Recent studies suggest that boiling water reactors will leak over 14,000 times the amount of radioactivity produced by coal burning. Such a reactor is also only about 20 per cent efficient, which means over 80 per cent of the heat generated is wasted and must be released...
...Vernon-sized nuclear reactor requires about 1100 to 1200 cubic feet of water per second, all of which is heated to about 18 F above its original temperature. Although over 900 reactors are expected in the U. S. by the year 2000, just 120 of them would require more water than the total annual runoff from the continental U. S. Coastal power stations which use ocean water are being offered as a solution to this problem...
Critics of the reactor expect the presence of all this heat to create dense fogs during weather inversions. In the case of Vernon, such fogs are expected to be about 10 miles wide, 40 miles long and 400 feet thick and could occur on as many as 30 days of the year...
...will the Vernon reactor be cooled? It is expected that the winter temperature of the Connection River will be raised 10 F. To enable this stream to accommodate this and other such reactors the Army Corps of Engineers has planned a $4 billion project for the entire Connecticut River from the Canadian border to Long Island Sound, including over 205 dams, 84 of which are directly related to the Vernon plant...
...order to store electricity produced by this reactor during off-peak hours, four pump storage stations are now planned. In each of these, water pumped up to huge tanks on mountain tops and released to generate electricity when needed. These will be built on Wantastiquet Mountain in Brattleboro, Vermont; on Northfield Mountain in Massachusetts; near Bellows Falls in Walpole, New Hampshire; and near Bear Creek Swamp above Rowe, Massachusetts. The ecological consequences of the 10 rise in river temperature, the 205 dams and the pump storage stations have hardly been investigated...