Cooling Lake Simulations Compared to Thermal Imagery and Dye Tracers

We compare three-dimensional simulations of two cooling lakes at the Savannah River site to calibrated temperature data derived from high resolution thermal imagery and to data from two dye tracer experiments. The observed temperatures include detailed surface temperature maps created from calibrated thermal imagery and vertical temperature profiles measured at five locations across one of the cooling lakes. The dye tracer data consist of time series of concentrations recorded near the cooling water outlet of one of the cooling lakes. There is generally good agreement between observed and measured quantities, but the agreement is best for the smaller cooling lake that had a relatively higher heat load. We suggest that wind stress variability may have been at least partially responsible for the poorer agreement between observation and simulation for the larger cooling lake. The primary conclusion from this study is that thermal imagery is an excellent additional data source to dye tracer data for cooling lake model verification because imagery provides detailed information about the surface temperatures over the entire cooling lake allowing for a more complete verification of model simulations.