@J12t @owenblacker https://www.power-technology.com/news/edf-energy-golfech-nuclear-plant-heatwave/
The limit is to protect marine life. It seems they don’t have any facilities to cool the water before returning it like cooling towers, though I remember stories from British coal fired power stations about fishermen preferring downstream of the plants because the fish were more active in the warmer water despite the cooling towers.
@aimaz @owenblacker so what do you think the design limit (not the ecological impact limit) of the max temp of water intake is to run the plant at full output? Hard to imagine that they designed this so they could run it at much higher temps than they would reasonably be allowed to emit. (I’m taking a very wild uninformed guess as to sensitivity of the parameters, please correct me if you know better)