Environmental Law Commons^™

The Clean Water Act And Power Plant Cooling Water Intake Structures, John H. Minan

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

The focus of this Article in on a subtler, but no less important, part of the climate change story involving energy and water. The focus in on the federal regulation of existing once-through-cooling (OTC) intake structures that are used by large steam electric-generating power plants. OTC, closed-cycle (CC) cooling, and dry-cooling (DC) each perform the same function, which is the removal of waste heat from the steam cycle after it has generated electricity.
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The elimination of OTC systems would have a salutatory effect on the aquatic environment because fewer marine organisms would be destroyed by impingement and entrainment. But …