Numerical Study of the Behavior of Heated Water Discharged into the Ocean

Part I: the Effect of Earth's Rotation

Abstract

The effect of the earth's rotation on the behavior of heated water discharged from gigantic nuclear power plants was investigated numerically. It is shown that the effect is significant even for the existing scale of discharge. Horizontal spreading of the heated water is suppressed in offshoreward and northward directions (when heated water is discharged in an eastward direction from a westfacing coast in the northern hemisphere), but accelerated in the southward direction, and the shape of the formed warm water region becomes asymmetric. In this paper, several calculations were done using exaggerated Coriolis parameters (f) in order to demonstrate the effect of the earth's rotation. An increase of fenhances above effect, but the situation of the inner region of the produced warm water mass is much different from that in the outer region near its margin. The southward expansion of surface isothermal contours in the inner region increases with an increase in f, but those in the outer region do not. This results in an increase of the sharpness of the front which is generated near the southern edge of the warm water region. We have not found simple parameters which describe the temperature and velocity distributions in the warm water mass produced.