What contribution do atomic reactors make to Lake Erie's toxic algae blooms?
August 4, 2014 
Lake Erie's serious water quality decline -- including being clogged with toxic algae -- threatens drinking and irrigation water, fisheries, tourism, recreation, etc. Photo credit: Reuters.Half a million residents in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan have been warned not to drink their tap water -- nor even to boil it, which would make matters worse. The problem is a toxic, caused by a massive algae bloom just offshore in Lake Erie.
What's the cause? Certainly agricultural and yard run-off, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), human sewage and industrial pollution are major factors.
But what role do thermal-electric power plants play? Remarkably, two-thirds of the heat generated by burning coal or splitting atoms is waste heat.
Detroit Edison's Monroe Power Plant, at 3,000 Megawatts-electric one of North America's single-largest coal burners, is located on the Lake Erie shore in southeast Michigan. It lacks cooling towers. Thus, 6,000 MW-e of thermal pollution is discharged into the shallow (average depth, only 23 feet) Western Basin of Lake Erie.
There are a number of additional coal burners on the shoreline of Lake Erie's Western Basin, including ones lacking cooling towers.
What about atomic reactors? Detroit Edison's Fermi 2 atomic reactor, and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's Davis-Besse atomic reactor -- visible with the naked eye, one from the other, 30-miles across Lake Erie -- both have cooling towers.
Even though their usage of Lake Erie water is decreased by orders of magnitude, and their discharge of thermal pollution into the lake is also diminished, as compared to not having cooling towers, it is still large. And some of the water used in the cooling towers is lost as steam, which blows out of the Great Lakes watershed on the wind. Thus, some part of Lake Erie's volume is evaporated, compliments of atom splitting. The already shallow Lake Erie is made that much more shallow, concentrating heat and nutrients that help toxic algae flourish.
Five years ago, a coalition of environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, made just such a contention in their multi-faceted challenge to Detroit Edison's proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor. However, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) quickly dismissed the challenge.
Thus, the answer to the question "What contribution do atomic reactors make to Lake Erie's toxic algae blooms?" remains unaddressed, compliments of the deep disinterest of Detroit Edison, NRC staff, and the ASLB.
One good thing that did come of the environmental coalition's contention, however, was it forced Detroit Edison to address the phosphorus pollution into Lake Erie that would have resulted from its Fermi 3 cooling systems. Detroit Edison has supposedly made plans to curtail phoshorus discharges from the proposed new Fermi 3 reactor.
The environmental coalition, more than five years into the fight against Fermi 3, now faces the threat of a 20-year license extension at Fermi 2. Fermi 2 is the largest Fukushima Daiichi twin design in the world. Fermi 2's 1,122 MW-e General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactor is nearly as big in size as Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 and 2's GE Mark I BWRs put together. The coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, represented by Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge, will file a petition to intervene, and contentions, opposing Fermi 2's bid for 20 additional years of operations by NRC's arbitrarily short August 18th deadline.
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