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by oakwhiz 610 days ago
It's possible to use "dry cooling" for a nuclear reactor. [1][2] The thermodynamic efficiency would be much lower, but it is possible to use alternative thermodynamic cycles/methods, for example reactors sent into space have used radiative cooling since there is no realistic way to use fluids to finally reject the heat.

1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/duboc2/

2. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

1 comments

So basically radiators. They would have to be huge, and they would have to move huge amounts of air through them. As a backup that might work, probably using a hybrid where a water body is used for cooling and air is the fallback.