Nuclear Energy

detail the impact of these 'once through cooling systems' on marine life. These cooling systems suck
in and discharge as much as four million litres of water per minute. This water is sucked in at such
a high velocity that along with the water, marine life is also sucked in; they are unable to resist the
velocity. The bigger marine animals like the endangered sea turtles impinge on "prevention
devices" such as screens and barrier nets, and either drown or suffocate. While billions of smaller
organisms, including small fish, fish larvae, and spawn, all very essential to the food chain, pass
through these screens, and are drawn into the reactor cooling system where 95% of them are
scalded and discharged back into the water body as lifeless sediment. These high destruction rates
can overtake recovery rates, resulting in extensive depletion of the affected species. In this way,
entire marine communities can lose their capacity to sustain themselves.
With millions of litres of hot water being discharged into the waterway every minute, the
total heat dumped into the waterway is tremendous. [How much? Roger Witherspoon, the well-
known US journalist, author and editor, in a recent article has given some figures. Citing company
records, he points out that the nuclear power plants at Salem, New Jersey, USA, dump about 30
billion BTUS of heat hourly into Delaware Bay. That is the equivalent of the heat which would be
generated by exploding a nuclear bomb, the size of the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima, in the
waters of Delaware Bay every two hours, all day, every day. cxxxix ]
Such a huge hot water discharge damages and destroys fish and other marine life and
dramatically alters the immediate marine environment. In the immediate discharge areas, the ocean
floor is scoured clean of sediment by the force of the thermal discharge, resulting in bare rock and
creating a virtual marine desert. Areas farther from the discharge become coated in heavy, life-
stifling sediment. The water is discharged into the waterway at a temperature around 10-13 degrees
Celsius higher than before. The increased temperature drives away indigenous species and attracts
others, thus causing huge changes in the marine environment. Warmer waters also cause fatal
disease, and disruption of normal behavior patterns, of some species of fish.
An analysis by the US Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed these findings. It
has concluded that power plants with “once through cooling systems” are collectively killing more
than one trillion fish annually and disrupting their local aquatic ecosystems with their hot water
discharges. More significantly, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has also now
publicly acknowledged that "once through cooling systems" are vacuuming up trillions of newly
hatched fish – those under a half inches in length – and destroying them in their heat exchangers.
The NMFS has in fact gone so far as to state that there is "strong evidence" that the decline in fish
stocks along the entire northeast Atlantic seaboard is due more to the destruction of baby fish than
to over fishing of adults. cxl
Despite this overwhelming evidence, such is the clout of the nuclear power companies that
environmental and nuclear regulators have not moved to force nuclear plants using "once through
cooling systems" to retrofit their plants with cooling towers. Utilities using cooling towers draw in a
lowered water intake of about 70,000 litres a minute, reducing damage to marine life by as much as
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