Earth Equity News

Nuclear Plants Kill Billions of Fish Eggs. By Jim Fitzgerald, BergenRec, October 19, 2008. "Sucked in with enormous volumes of water, battered against the sides of pipes and heated by steam, the small fry of the aquatic world are being sacrificed to the cooling systems of power plants around the country. Environmentalists say the killing is needless, but energy-industry officials say opponents of nuclear power exaggerate the losses. The issue is being debated at an Indian Point nuclear plant north of New York, and power plant operators and environmentalists are watching the outcome there to see how to proceed in other cities around the country. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this term in a lawsuit related to the matter. The issue's scope is tremendous. More than 1,000 power plants and factories around the country use water from rivers, lakes, oceans and creeks as a coolant. Indian Point's two reactors can pull in 1.7 million gallons of water per minute. Nineteen plants on or near the California coast use 16.3 billion gallons of sea water every day. Most of the casualties are just fish eggs... The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration... counts only species that are valuable for commerce or recreation... Technology has long existed that might reduce the fish kill by 90 percent or more. Cooling towers allow a power plant to recycle the water rather than continuously pump it in. New power plants are required to use cooling towers, but most existing plants resist any push to convert, citing the huge cost and claiming that most fish eggs and larvae are doomed anyway."