The impacts of retrofitting cooling towers at a large power station
- Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., Boston, MA (United States)
- Public Service Electric and Gas Company, Hancocks Bridge, NJ (United States)
This paper presents the results of a detailed study of the impacts that a proposed mandated closed-cycle, cooling tower retrofit would have on a two unit 2200 MW{sub e} nuclear operating facility. The paper discusses the complexity involved with such an undertaking, the adverse impact on plant performance, increased operating and maintenance cost, schedule considerations, options that would minimize impacts, and the overall costs involved with such an undertaking. Retrofitting a once-through cooling water system for closed-cycle would require significant redesigns, including modifying the cooling water flow; the construction of cooling towers; review and refurbishment of the condensers, circulating water pumps, piping pressure rating, chemical feed, blowdown, makeup systems, pumps, and pump houses; and providing sufficient circulating water piping to form a closed loop system. There are also several site conditions that also would materially affect the retrofit, e.g. availability of adequate space to accommodate the towers and support systems, site soil conditions, groundwater considerations, etc. The impacts associated with these are presented. This paper indicates that retrofitting a large two unit operating nuclear facility for closed-cycle cooling would not simply involve adding cooling towers to the existing cooling water system. Rather, the effort would require substantial new construction, demolition, and reconstruction activities that could result in replacing, reinforcing, or abandoning a significant portion of the entire existing circulating water system. Such a retrofit project would be wide-scale and complicated and would be unprecedented at a facility of the size studied.
- Research Organization:
- Electric Power Research Inst. (EPRI), Palo Alto, CA (United States); Yankee Scientific, Inc., Medfield, MA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 48133
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-TR-104867; CONF-9408224-; TRN: 95:003577-0002
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Cooling tower and advanced cooling systems conference, St. Petersburg, FL (United States), 30 Aug - 1 Sep 1994; Other Information: PBD: Feb 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings: Cooling tower and advanced cooling systems conference; PB: 323 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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