If more energy is inserted into a system than comes out of the said system, then that system will warm up.
I can’t seem to get that premise out of my cranium because I seem to have some understanding of physics, and energy balance seems to be written in the laws of physics.

Is your assertion that my assumptions are wrong based on your faith that someone has given you the right information, or have you actually studied the situation yourself.

Here are some interesting facts that have come to my attention, and I recommend that you familiarize your self with them also.

Info from here:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16320707

“The thermodynamic efficiency of nuclear power stations is lower than indices of thermal power stations operating on gas, coal or oil fuel. This efficiency does not usually exceed 30-35%. Hence more than 60% of the energy of nuclear fuel being used escapes into the environment through turbine condensers at nuclear power stations.”

From here:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/us/scriba.htm

About 7 miles northeast of Oswego, New York on Lake Ontario are 3 General Electric Boiling Water Reactor facilities.

About 7 miles northeast of Oswego, New York on Lake Ontario are 3 General Electric Boiling Water Reactor facilities.

Nine Mile Point Unit 1,
Core total uranium dioxide fuel weighs 105 tons. Of this, approximately 2.8 tons is the fissionable U-235.
The condenser is cooled by Lake Ontario water, which flows at 250,000 gallons per minute. Within the condenser the maximum temperature rise for the cooling water is 36F, while the maximum lake surface temperature increase at the discharge point is 11F.
Unit 2 uses a natural draft cooling tower to remove heat from the warm water that leaves the plant's condenser. The cooling tower is 543 feet high, evaporates about 25,000 gpm of the total 580,000 gpm that pass through the condenser. Makeup is from Lake Ontario.

The Fitzpatrick unit is rated at 2436 MWt and 816 MWe net output. The unit's condenser is cooled by Lake Ontario water, similar to Nine Mile Point 1.
Maximum lake surface temperature increase 3F

OK, evaporation rate is 25,000 gpm and that equals 1,500,000 gph * 24 hours = 36,000,000 gpd * 365.25 days = 13,149,000,000 gpy.
And that is just pissing in the wind for a year at one location. At a 20 year life, that one unit alone has evaporated 262,980,000,000 gallons of water into the atmosphere.

The condenser cooling water for the 2 other units is about 500,000 gallons per minute and the temperature is raised by 36F.
Since you do not trust my calculating abilities, I’ll let you figure out how much water is heated in a 20 year period by all the nuclear power plants around lake Ontario and the world.
Simply making a guess, I would say that this piss has some effect on the temperature of the waterways.

The water level of the great lakes is down considerably, the question is why, could it be that mans doings have assisted nature in lowering the levels?

From:
http://www.great-lakes.net/envt/water/levels/flows.html

General Resources
GLIN: Compare snow melt (snow water equivalent) for the upper Great Lakes basin: 1997-2000
From the summer of 1997 to today, water levels on the middle Great Lakes have fallen from near record highs to near record lows. This decline is nearly 3.5 feet on lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie. This trend is forecasted to continue for the foreseeable future due in part to the fact that the drainage basins for lakes Superior and northern Michigan and Huron (the headwaters for the Great Lakes) have had one of the driest winters on record. Snowmelt runoff is a key component in replenishing groundwater and tributary stream flows into the Great Lakes.

Could the heat from power generation and the low water levels in the lakes be related somehow?

From:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2007/1311/

The large capacities of the Great Lakes allow them to store great volumes of water. As calculated at chart datum, Lake Superior stores more water (2,900 mi3) than all the other lakes combined (2,539 mi3). Lake Michigan’s storage is 1,180 mi3; Lake Huron’s, 850 mi3; Lake Ontario’s, 393 mi3; and Lake Erie’s, 116 mi3. Seasonal lake-level changes alter storage by as much as 6 mi3 in Lake Superior and as little as 2.1 mi3 in Lake Erie. The extreme high and low lake levels measured in recorded lake-level history have altered storage by as much as 31 mi3 in Lake Michigan-Huron and as little as 9 mi3 in Lake Ontario. Diversions of water into and out of the lakes are very small compared to the total volume of water stored in the lakes.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYAMkzn0NmcIaU0gDYfv7DZBEGcAD8S0CMRG0

All the Great Lakes, which together make up about 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water, have been in decline since the late 1990s.
Lakes Huron and Michigan are about 2 feet below their long-term average levels, while Lake Superior is about 20 inches off. Lake Ontario is about 7 inches below its long-term average and Lake Erie is a few inches down.

From:
http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/WP96.pdf

Hunwick Consultants Pty. Ltd. 2006 indicated that 1000 MW reactor would consume 15GL of water per year for cooling.

From:
http://eyeball-series.org/npp2/npp2-eyeball.htm

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant located South of Morro Bay, Calif. is shown in a May 1995 photo. Owner Pacific Gas and Electric will have to pay a $14 million fine for environmental reporting problems at the plant. At the lower left of the photo is the water outfall from the power plant into Diablo Cove. The plant pumps 2.5 billion gallons of water for cooling each day. (AP Photo/Telegram-Tribune)

Scientists have discovered bacteria living in the toxic sediment beneath underground tanks that have leaked radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation, home to some of the most highly contaminated soil in the world. (AP Photo/Courtesy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, File)

Steve Bolt repairs an electrical cord at the "tank farms" on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash., on Tuesday, March 23, 2004. Bolt and more than 800 others who work at the tank farms, where about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste is stored in 177 underground tanks, are given the option of wearing respirators depending on the location and nature of their work. (AP Photo/Jackie Johnston)

From:
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/safetyandsecurity/factsheets/safetystudiespublicworkerspage6/

The study claims that women in 81 counties in the Great Lakes region, where there are 36 U.S. and Canadian nuclear power plants, have an increased risk of breast cancer mortality.

From:
http://www.greatlakes.org/field_guide/toxic_nuke.asp

While all life is exposed to some degree of naturally occurring radiation, human-generated ionized radioactivity has a special impact on life because it produces radioisotopes that mimic natural chemicals and concentrate in the body where these chemicals reside. For example, strontium-90 is routinely released during fission, the nuclear energy production process in reactors. If it gets into cow’s milk, it mimics calcium and follows the route of that element in the body into teeth and bones. It can concentrate to high levels and can cause leukemia, a deadly form of cancer. Iodine-131, another highly toxic by-product, can concentrate in the thyroid where naturally occurring iodine is deposited, and produce serious hormonal dysfunctions or even thyroid cancer in children.

The nuclear energy production process results in a high-level nuclear waste or “irradiated fuel,” often euphemistically called “spent” fuel. Once the irradiated fuel is removed from the reactor to allow a reload of new fuel, it is placed in the waste fuel pool of the reactor. The irradiated fuel in this waste pool is up to a million times more
radioactive than when initially placed into the reactor.

From:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/nuclear-power/

Ontario Nuclear Reactors
The provincial government will announce tomorrow that Ontario is embracing more nuclear power plants, sources told the Toronto Star. Ontario is already home to many nuclear facilities. There are six nuclear units at Tiverton's Bruce plant, plus two more being refurbished; four at Darlington in Bowmanville; six at Pickering, plus two that have been mothballed, and one decommissioned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. reactor at Deep River. To meet the OPA recommendations, Ontario would need about a dozen more reactors, which would take years to build.

That will put Ontario deeper in debt and closer to death.

Here is a site that discusses hydrogen as a fuel.
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydrogen-fuel/

There is a lot of water on our planet and Hydrogen is a large part of water, Hydrogen is also a good fuel.
Intermittent power sources such as solar and wind can be used to extract Hydrogen from water, Hydrogen can be stored safely in many ways.

There are alternatives, if the same amount of effort and money that is put into nuclear energy would be put into developing the hydrogen systems, the world would become much healthier.