Name a common heat sink in a nuclear power plant.

Name a common heat sink in a nuclear power plant.

• A. Cooling towers.
• B. Reactor core.
• C. Control rods.
• D. Spent fuel pool.

Answer: (A)

A heat sink is anything that removes heat from the plant’s system. In a nuclear power plant, after the reactor core generates heat, that heat must be rejected to the environment to keep the system operating. Cooling towers are designed to reject that heat from the condenser water to the atmosphere, often by evaporating a portion of the cooling water. They are widely used because they can handle large heat loads and don’t rely on a nearby large body of water. The reactor core is the heat source, not a sink; control rods regulate how fast the fuel fissions, and the spent fuel pool stores used fuel and is cooled, not used to reject the plant’s main heat.

A heat sink is anything that removes heat from the plant’s system. In a nuclear power plant, after the reactor core generates heat, that heat must be rejected to the environment to keep the system operating. Cooling towers are designed to reject that heat from the condenser water to the atmosphere, often by evaporating a portion of the cooling water. They are widely used because they can handle large heat loads and don’t rely on a nearby large body of water. The reactor core is the heat source, not a sink; control rods regulate how fast the fuel fissions, and the spent fuel pool stores used fuel and is cooled, not used to reject the plant’s main heat.