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Not for the people who would have liked to drink the water used to clean the panels (cf the projects in deserts). Everything has some drawbacks and it s useful

Not for the people who would have liked to drink the water used to clean the panels (cf the projects in deserts). Everything has some drawbacks and it s useful to diversify.

Retric 5y ago
Your off by orders of magnitude. Nuclear uses vastly more water than solar power per kWh. “Nuclear Energy consuming roughly 400 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, 320 billion gallons of water were consumed by United States nuclear power plant electricity generation in 2015.” And that’s direct consumption in cooling towers, nuclear indirectly uses power in other ways. By comparison the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in Riverside County estimated 2/3 cup of water per megawatt hour.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Most of the water used by nuclear is used to run the heat exchangers, and gets dumped straight back into the river it's drawn from. This looks like it's the source you're quoting [1]. It's pretty clear that nuclear power is a tiny fraction of water usage [2]. Furthermore, in water-constrained areas nuclear plants can be cooled with wastewater [3]. And lastly, plenty of nuclear plants are cooled with ocean water, which obviously has zero shortage. The notion that nuclear power is going to significant affect water supplies is without merit. 1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/#:~:text=As%20of%202015%2C%20nuclear%20energy,plant%20electricity%20generation%20in%202015 http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/#:~:tex.... 2. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/images/f1big.png http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/images/... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
  - Retric 5y ago
    I agree it’s a trivial amount of water and both can go without using water, the point was solar is on average vastly less. However, wastewater is just water. Look at a long river and towns upstream dump their wastewater into rivers that towns and cities downstream collect as municipal water.

Not for the people who would have liked to drink the water used to clean the panels (cf the projects in deserts). Everything has some drawbacks and it s useful to diversify.

Retric 5y ago

Your off by orders of magnitude. Nuclear uses vastly more water than solar power per kWh. “Nuclear Energy consuming roughly 400 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, 320 billion gallons of water were consumed by United States nuclear power plant electricity generation in 2015.” And that’s direct consumption in cooling towers, nuclear indirectly uses power in other ways. By comparison the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in Riverside County estimated 2/3 cup of water per megawatt hour.

Manuel_D 5y ago
Most of the water used by nuclear is used to run the heat exchangers, and gets dumped straight back into the river it's drawn from. This looks like it's the source you're quoting [1]. It's pretty clear that nuclear power is a tiny fraction of water usage [2]. Furthermore, in water-constrained areas nuclear plants can be cooled with wastewater [3]. And lastly, plenty of nuclear plants are cooled with ocean water, which obviously has zero shortage. The notion that nuclear power is going to significant affect water supplies is without merit. 1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/#:~:text=As%20of%202015%2C%20nuclear%20energy,plant%20electricity%20generation%20in%202015 http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/#:~:tex.... 2. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/images/f1big.png http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/images/... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
- Retric 5y ago
  I agree it’s a trivial amount of water and both can go without using water, the point was solar is on average vastly less. However, wastewater is just water. Look at a long river and towns upstream dump their wastewater into rivers that towns and cities downstream collect as municipal water.