There's no physics reason of course, but not using the natural river source for cooling like this further hurts the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
replySimilarly, all industrial processes of heat rejection, including data centers, could use closed cycle cooling, but they don't, because it's more expensive to install and operate.
> the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
replyThat affects ~0.5% of the yearly production in France, it's not a "primary weakness", it's the opposite, it's so low of a problem that the state simply doesn't care enough to fix it.
They are saying economics is the primary weakness i.e. nuclear costs more than renewables even if you don't have fancy cooling methods that would increase the cost further.
replyWell no it isn't, this problem is so small that it's not even worth installing any additional cooling method. It's also the lowest consumption period of the year, making the problem even more irrelevant as some plants are already offline for maintainance anyways.
replyAnd since the poster didn't knew that, I'm not sure the cost analysis holds up.