Why are thermal/nuclear power plants’ chimneys so wide and huge?
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They’re cooling towers. They are that size and shape because the hot turbine exhaust steam is sprayed into the cooling tower high up, meanwhile there are fans at the bottom blowing air inward into the tower where it funnels upward and the shape causes it to increase in velocity and decrease in pressure which drops the temperature. This causes the steam to condense and fall like rain into the collection tank in the bottom. The steam turbine uses a lot of water when it’s running (and generating electricity) so a large cooling tower is needed to cool all that hot water down
Edit: it’s not the water directly from the turbine, it’s the water used to cool the water from the turbine, which is heated by the water used in the turbine, which is heated by the water used to cool the reactor. There are three separate water systems in the whole setup.
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