At least with existing nuclear power plants, they are susceptible to climate change issues ironically. In Europe this year several of them had to be shut down or run on partial capacity due to insufficient water supply for their operation.
I'm not sure if that is down to the specific implementation assuming Europe's traditionally plentiful water availability in those regions, or if it is a more general technical issue of nuclear power plants.
To the best of my knowledge, the same issue should also affect any other power plant that uses water avaporation to turn turbines, which would include at least coal; I am not entirely sure about gas.
The nuclear plant I live near uses sea water for its outer cooling loop. Now you can't do that everywhere but by the time the Atlantic dries up, we all will be long gone.
Don't you need to desalinate? Or how does that work? I mean, datacenters could also use sea-water, but I'm pretty sure the reason they don't do it had something to do with material degradation from salt-water.
Edit: I don't think you need to desalinate. So yes, seriously curious why sea water isn't used more often for the outer loop. I remember watching a video about it, but I can't find it right now.
No idea, but it doesn't have a cooling tower and I remember on a field trip to it years ago the guy said they bring cooling water in from the sea, and vent the "hot" water out like a mile off shore.
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u/R3D3-1 Sep 13 '26
At least with existing nuclear power plants, they are susceptible to climate change issues ironically. In Europe this year several of them had to be shut down or run on partial capacity due to insufficient water supply for their operation.
I'm not sure if that is down to the specific implementation assuming Europe's traditionally plentiful water availability in those regions, or if it is a more general technical issue of nuclear power plants.
To the best of my knowledge, the same issue should also affect any other power plant that uses water avaporation to turn turbines, which would include at least coal; I am not entirely sure about gas.