[CobaltFire]

Nitpick here:

Nuclear discharges more like 2kWh of heat per kWh of electricity produced.

Perhaps slightly more, but its in that ballpark. Seems like a small difference but you are overstating the waste by near 50%.

Source: Degree in Nuclear Engineering, previous life was a Reactor Operator. Also, just look up thermal efficiency of currently operating reactors.

[Retric]

That 3+:1 is actually from being pedantic.

2:1 implies 33% thermal efficiency to the grid which is commonly achieved in normal operations.

Unfortunately engineering means you can’t work with such overly simplified models. Many ways of dumping heat run into issues from solar gain prevents dumping significant heat under the employe parking lot etc.

[CobaltFire]

I don't disagree but am having a hard time parsing the second half of your comment.

In my experience we saw some losses when taken as a system that prevented us from hitting 2:1, but they weren't anywhere near 50%. We also ran closer to 40% than 33% thermal efficiency in the power generating loop, so many of the system thermal costs are baked into that 33% efficiency to the grid.

Basically, each reactor install will have it's own minor issues. Overall they should be hitting around 2:1 as an entire system. If they aren't there is something going on that I haven't come into contact with (which is quite a lot, I'm sure).

[Retric]

> hard time parsing the second half of your comment.

I’ll put it as a spherical cow engineering problem. Let’s suppose the temperature is 30C and you want to dissipate 2GW of heat across a 1kmx1km flat plate, what temperature will it get? That’s a relatively straightforward calculation if you don’t need high precision.

However in the real world it wouldn’t have a single equilibrium temperature. 30C at night the heatsink would be one temperature and in the daytime it would be a different temperature due to sunlight.

Evaporative cooling largely sidesteps this issue, but it’s worth keeping in mind why that’s chosen over other seemingly cheaper options.