Are there any nuclear power plants with no external cooling sources such as rivers, lakes, and oceans?

Nuclear is slow. Any design changes takes a long time to be reviewed and approved. The high risks and complex nature means that every design change has to be reviewed for a long time, every component has to be certified. A lot of design advances can happen academically but it takes a much longer time to commercialisation.

I posed a theoretical question on feasibility of nuclear in hot climates like Australia, where extended droughts are common. And the answer given was air cooled nuclear, which doesn’t exist yet. I see NPPs built just 30 years ago, still considered young enough to run for another 50 years, not coping with droughts and heatwaves in Europe and you can’t easily add cooling towers because of design change, cost, etc. The denial of sea level rising is lovely too given that we are already seeing coastal houses lost to bigger waves, coastal erosion.

/r/nuclear Thread Parent