The methods of physical oceanographic surveys to examine the effect of thermal discharge from nuclear power plants in Korea have been reviewed and a standard guide to the survey is proposed. It is desirable that in situ observation and numerical thermal diffusion modeling are conducted simultaneously to describe the variation in temperature distribution affected by thermal discharge from a power plant because any observation or numerical modeling alone has limits to do so quantitatively. It is suggested that the field observation must be based on the concept of heat budget modeling considering all artificial and natural heat sources/sinks around the power plant. Any results from numerical modeling must reach to a certain statistical significance level to use for a standard temperature distribution. In addition, the development of standard numerical codes is proposed to improve the problems shown in the past numerical circulation and diffusion modelling.