I found the below photo of FP&L’s Turkey Point power station that gives a good representation of the size of the cooling canals compared to the entire installation. The light colored area in the very upper right corner of the photo contains two nuclear reactors and all of their associated secondary equipment, two oil fired power stations and one large combined cycle plant with four gas turbines and a steam secondary. As can be seen, the cooling canals require far more room than all of the rest of the equipment combined.
The arrangement has been described as a large radiator. It also happens to be one of the most productive American crocodile breeding areas in the country.
Addition posted May 30, 2007: Reader Ian pointed out that you can explore the site yourself from Google Maps using the following link – http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=25.398003,-80.341644&spn=0.14251,0.204964&t=k&z=13&om=1 . Thank you Ian, it is an interesting trip to be able to zoom in and see just how small the reactor building are in comparison to the rest of the equipment on site – like the fuel oil storage tanks for the fossil plant.
