1. Introduction
In recent years, there have been several heat waves affecting the
use of power plants in Europe and the U.S.A. due to high water
temperatures and low flows of water (van Vliet et al. [1], Martin [2]
or Badr et al. [3]). The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, [4]) and other experts expect that air and water temperature
will rise in future. In many regions there will also be a
reduction in river runoff in summer. Heat waves and droughts as
observed in Europe in summer 2003 and 2006 will very likely occur
more frequently (Schär et al. [5]). As a result, the number of interruptions
in the use of power plants because of lack of water for
cooling or high water temperatures could increase, too.
The impacts of climate change on the power plants and the
electricity system have been analysed in several studies (cf. Koch
and Vögele [6]). In Ref. [6] a new approach is presented for analysing the impacts of climate change on power plant electricity
generation, combining a power plant model and hydrological
models for river runoff and water temperature. The Krümmel nuclear
power plant was selected to demonstrate the methodology. In
this paper, we extend the analysis of possible impacts of climate
change on electricity generation in Germany by applying the
methodology to 17 nuclear power plants located in different river
basins in Germany. The uncertainties are analysed with regard to
power generation under different climate developments and corresponding
increases in air temperatures.
After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, half of the
nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down and it is planned
to close the remaining plants in the near future. Despite of this, the
nuclear power plants in Germany are used in this analysis because
of the very good database. The concept presented can be used to
analyse such effects for other types of power plants with comparable
water cooling systems.
Section 2 gives an overview of nuclear power plants in Germany.
In Section 3 the hydrological data (water temperature, runoff) used
in this study are described, and in Section 4 the results for the
nuclear power plants are presented. The article concludes with a
discussion of the results in Section 5.