[tkwalker]

Originally Posted by MidTNKayakAngler

TK,

You mentioned temperature in your post, so the temperature discharged is only 10-12 degrees warmer than what it comes in from the river? Does this temperature vary due to the amount of generation? I've noticed my best days out there is when steam or smoke is rolling heavily out of the stacks, and that's not often. It seemed as if there wasn't much coming out of the stacks the fishing wasn't as good.

Jeremy, No that is not smoke or steam you see coming from the stacks (steam is to expensive to make , so you can be sure we don't want to loose any).. It is condensate ... This is when the warm discharge from the stacks enters the cooler atmosphere and the moisture in the air evaporates .. For example: On a cool or cold morning you will see what looks like smoke coming from automobile exhaust ... Same thing "condensate" if you will notice you will also see water dripping from the exhaust. This is what use to rot exhaust systems out in older cars ... Since the auto Mfr's. started using stainless steel this is almost nil these days ... Notice there isn't many Muffler and exhaust shops around any more ...

As far as a difference depending on the amount of generation, no.. The volume will increase or decrease depending on generation variance... There are two Westinghouse steam turbines rated at 275 Megawatts and two Westinghouse Turbines rated at 312 Megawatts .. At least this is what was there when I left in 1984.

Now on occasion which is rare a boiler may go on pressure (These are Babcock-Wilcox Negative pressure boilers) this will cause a belch of a darker discharge (This is called opacity, or clarity to the naked eye)

Now as far as your fishing goes in relationship to the stack discharge I would say your better catches were in the winter into spring... If you notice in the summer months if everything is normal you want see hardly any discharge from the stacks, If you do (and this is true 12 months of the year) Units may be coming up to be put on line or being taken off line . Also there may be a Precipitator malfunction ... The scrubbers should alleviate a lot of these problems ..

By the way the discharge temp going down stream from the canal will linearly dissipate back to normal by the time it reaches the 109 bridge... Hope this helps ... <'TK><