The emission of warm water from (conventional and nuclear) power plants is a significant issue but it's kind of not the most prominent issue w.r.t. nuclear powe

The emission of warm water from (conventional and nuclear) power plants is a significant issue but it's kind of not the most prominent issue w.r.t. nuclear power so it tends to be ignored (e.g. the fact that the water is slightly more radioactive or contaminated gets a lot more attention -- it's well known that heat-loving ecosystems develop around power plant outflows). The magnitude of the thermal pollution varies by technology. Morroco is planning a heat-concentrating system (boiling water with a giant parabolic mirror, in essence) which produces very intense heat in the middle and actually cools the land in the surrounding errors (since the mirrors will have a much higher albedo than rocks and sand). I'm not actually sure if this is going to be a net increase in heat absorption, so this might be a non-issue. (This form of solar generation is apparently more expensive than photovoltaics, though.) The Union of Concerned Scientists is much more worried about water use, especially in arid areas, with such power plants. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-solar-power.html#.Vi4vTBCrTMU http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewa... Photovoltaics (solar cells) are pretty much black and about 20-30% efficient) so they're absorbing more incident radiation than rocks and sand and then converting 70-80% of it to heat. We see similar effects from urbanization of desert areas (e.g. Phoenix and Las Vegas) so it's not like the effects will be unprecedented -- they just shouldn't be ignored.