Why do nuclear power plants have such wide chimneys?

为什么核电站有这么大的烟囱？

原文地址：https://www.quora.com/Why-do-nuclear-power-plants-have-such-wide-chimneys

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Ákos Németh:

Chimneys?
烟囱？

You mean these things?
你是指这些东西吗？

These are not chimneys. Large power plants produce huge amount of heat, but use up only about half of it. They must release the remaining heat to avoid melting, so they blow it into the environment.
这些并不是烟囱。大型发电站会产生巨量的热量，但仅仅能够用掉大约一半。电站必须将这些剩余的热量散出去来避免融堆，所以就把这些热量散到外界环境中去。

How do they release it?
那么是怎样做到这点的呢？

If there is a big enough river nearby, they use the water. But if not, they build these big chimney-LIKE towers to release heat by EVAPORATING WATER. Yes, these chimneys release steam and vapor, not smoke or radiation. And why such big towers? To allow the rising steam to cool down and be able to recollect and in the next turn use it in the machinery and turbines again.
如果附近有一条足够大的河流，那就使用河水。如果没有，那就通过建造类似于烟囱的大型散热塔，然后通过将水汽化来散热。是的，这些烟囱会产生蒸汽和水分，但没有烟雾和辐射。那么为什么要建造的这么大呢？为了将这些蒸汽冷却然后可以重新收集起来以便让机器和涡轮机下次使用。

Water, in the amounts the power plants use it, is not cheap. In most cases, it’s cheaper to reprocess it than to get more of it.
核电站使用的水量考虑到巨大的需求，并不便宜。在大多数情况下，重新收集使用会更加经济。