Cooling Tower
The cooling tower at Callaway is 553 feet (169 m) tall, 77 feet shorter than the St Louis Gateway Arch. It is 430 feet wide at the base, and is constructed from reinforced concrete. It cools approximately 585,000 US gallons (2,210,000 l; 487,000 imp gal) of water per minute when the plant is operating at full capacity, and about 15,000 US gallons (57,000 l; 12,000 imp gal) of water per minute are lost out the top from evaporation. Another 5,000 US gallons (19,000 l; 4,200 imp gal) of water are sent to the Missouri River as "blowdown" to flush solids from the cooling tower basin. All water lost through evaporation or blowdown is replaced with water from the river, located five miles from the plant. The temperature of the water going into the cooling tower is 125 °F (52 °C), and the tower cools it to 95 °F (35 °C). The tower is designed such that if it were to somehow topple over completely intact, it would not damage any of the critical plant structures.
Read more about this topic: Callaway Nuclear Generating Station
Famous quotes containing the words cooling and/or tower:
“As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)