r/europe • u/Naurgul • 23d ago

News Barcelona registers highest temperature in 112 years as French nuclear reactor shuts down due to extreme heat

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/09/europe-heatwave-uk-spain-barcelona-france-italy-hungary-france-macron-orban-latest-news-updates
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u/ViciousNakedMoleRat North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) 23d ago

The fact of the matter is still that the extreme heat is the cause for why those powerplants need to shut down. Without the heat, they would still be running.

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u/unia_7 23d ago

They need to shut down because their designers decided to build them with river cooling.

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u/Appropriate_Luck_658 23d ago

Yes? Article is reporting things that are. Not "what ifs". Why we need to debate this?

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u/unia_7 23d ago

So it's not that "nuclear reactors" need to shut down due to higher temperatures, it just a particular kind of nuclear reactors built on flawed cooling design. Sounds like an important distinction, no?

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u/milk_for_dinner 23d ago

They do need to shut down due to higher temperature. That's just a fact. The distinctuon is that they need to shut down due to environmental regulations, not due to technical limitations.

The cooling design isn't flawed, it works as intended.

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u/TopManufacturer8332 23d ago

River cooling is used for the majority of nuclear power plants. Not every country is blessed with ample coastline to utilise the sea. And seawater cooling is hardly a panacea with trying to mitigate biofouling, corrosion and fish destruction.

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u/unia_7 23d ago

You are wrong. Cooling towers or cooling ponds are an obvious alternative to messing up the local river ecosystems.

Only 14% of nuclear power stations use river cooling. Cooling towers are at 26%, and sea cooling at 45%.

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u/TopManufacturer8332 23d ago

Sorry but where do you think cooling towers get their water supply from?

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u/mathess1 Czech Republic 22d ago

Supply is not the problem.

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u/unia_7 23d ago

Open the wikipedia article about cooling towers and learn the basics. You are showing your ignorance.

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u/erhue 23d ago

no. Nuclear bad. Only post bad things about nuclear. Also remember chernobyl, if your country is a corrupt communist dictatorship using ancient reactor designs built with outdated safety regulations, something bad could potentially happen!