Thermal power stations – also called power plants – come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from old-school coal- and gas-fueled power stations to modern nuclear power plants. Perhaps unsurprisingly, water temperature is directly correlated with air temperature, with recent studies such as a 2024 research paper by Jiang Sun et al. Being Hot Is GoodAn interesting question that one may ask here before getting into the gritty details of power station plumbing, is why it seems that it are basically always nuclear power stations that appear to be affected by rising temperatures, rather than other types of thermal power stations. Although this knowledge does not immediately provide a solution to such subcritical thermal power stations being forced to throttle back or even shut down during heatwaves, it adds important context to the problem that has to be solved. Thus, ideally our thermal power stations would all use ultra-supercritical steam turbines, with modern Generation IV nuclear reactors like China’s helium-cooled pebble bed reactors hitting a cool 750°C, and molten salt reactors hitting a similar reactor outlet temperature.