3 ms·
The water lost to cooling ends up as steam and then precipitation. So it doesn't exactly delete water, it just disperses it. Some of it will fall straight back
by sjwright 8y ago
The water lost to cooling ends up as steam and then precipitation. So it doesn't exactly delete water, it just disperses it. Some of it will fall straight back into the same river systems. A lot of it would probably be absorbed into the local water table—which is valuable if the table is already being tapped.
Does anyone know if there's any modelling to show how widely such activity disperses water? How much of the water is expected to land somewhere functionally useless (e.g. into oceans)?
Or, if they built a desalination plant next to each nuclear plant, would they be able to compensate for the water loss efficiently?
- adrianN 8y agoThe trouble with nuclear in regions where water can be scarce is that you can't cool your plant sufficiently and have to turn it off. You can take only a small fraction of a river's flow for cooling without kill all fish in the river. If the river is low on water, your plant can't be cooled.