Why are power plants always close to a water supply?
The EPR power plants produce hot water. The water that extracts the heat from the reactor vessel is radioactive (primary circuit) and must never come into contact with the clean water that makes the turbines turn (secondary circuit). A sealed heat exchanger between these two circuits enables heat alone to pass from one to the other. The heat exchange is improved when the water arriving from the secondary circuit is cold. Therefore the aim is to cool the water that has already released a large part of its heat to the turbines. The presence of a small or big river, or the sea, capable of cooling this water very quickly without itself being heated too much, is necessary.
