Proceedings of the International scientific and practical conference ―Toronto Congress of Advanced Research‖ (April 20-22, 2026) / Publisher website: www.naukainfo.com. – Toronto, Canada, 2026. - 174 p.

162 Introduction. Currently, electricity generation in Ukraine and most European countries is carried out primarily at large thermal and nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants, which account for approximately 50% of the electricity generated by power plants in Ukraine, play a leading role in the energy supply of the national economy [1]. One of the most important conditions for the reliable operation of nuclear power plants is their uninterrupted water supply, the source of which is reservoirs and cooling ponds. For the normal functioning of thermal and nuclear power plants, cooling systems must dissipate a huge amount of heat into the environment, accounting for approximately 70% of the energy consumed by the fuel [2-4]. Among the main hydrological factors that determine the operating conditions of cooling ponds, water exchange, intra-reservoir hydrodynamics, and the thermal regime of water masses occupy a significant place. Water exchange in cooling ponds is divided into two fundamentally different components. The first, external water exchange, is formed primarily due to water consumption for evaporation and filtration, on the one hand, and compensation for these costs through recharge from an adjacent natural water body (river, reservoir), on the other. External recharge, for example, in the cooling pond of the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant (SUNP) accounts for 42% of its volume annually [5]. The second component, internal water exchange, is caused by the discharge of water heated at the plant and the intake of water for unit cooling. At the SUNP, for example, such water exchange occurs over 60 times per year [5]. The efficiency of cooling water in a cooling pond, and, consequently, its hydrothermal regime, directly depend on the flow organization scheme, which should ensure the lowest possible chilled water temperatures with minimal capital and operating costs [6, 7]. As shown in [6], the component scheme of the water intake and outlet structures of the Tashlyk cooling pond of the South Ukraine NPP belongs to the so-called combined type, where the separation of flows occurs due to vertical temperature stratification. A disadvantage of this scheme is the attraction of warm waters from the upper layer of the flow to its lower layers. To reduce this effect, it