Photo Credit: Jessie Benaglio
This is one of 2 cooling towers for Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant on Lake Erie in Michigan. Fermi 2 is a 1,130-megawatt nuclear power plant owned and operated by Detroit Edison Company, an electric utility that serves 2.1 million customers in Southeastern Michigan. The plant’s cooling system is a “closed system” to prevent thermal or other pollution in Lake Erie. Each tower is 400-foot tall and has the capacity to cool 450,000 gallons of water per minute. The mist seen rising above the cooling towers is clean water vapor, about 8,000 gallons a minute per tower when the plant is in full operation. The black rows on the bottom of the tower show waterfalls of the cooled water that is being recirculated to cool off the steam from the turbines for the water to be used in the reactor.