It's worth considering total lifecycle use of water (mining, production and operation) for nuclear and solar.

Solar: ~300-800 L/MWh [0]

Nuclear: ~3000 L/MWh [1]

davemp 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

That’s not really useful information. The nice thing about water is that it’s usually still water after it’s “used”.

The question how much is used for mining slurry or chemical baths.

Those 3000L/MWh might very well be more environmentally friendly than solar because most of it’s used for cooling.

Water we have plenty of. We can desalinate as much as we need to

NewJazz 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Build subsurface wells and responsible brine dispersion infrastructure then come back and tell me we can desalinate as much as we need to.

If you put the brine back into the sea, and later put the waste water back into the same sea, doesn't it balance out? Also, the sea is pretty big.

Perhaps, but locally, the higher brine concentration will cause issues.

	▲	NewJazz 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, hence my use of the word "dispersion". Over a wide enough area, the brine shouldn't have a noticeable impact on sea life. But concentrated release can be really damaging.

aredox 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nuclear reactors regularly shut down because the water from the nearby river is already too hot.

cbsmith 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, but you need energy to desalinate so...

	▲	HPsquared 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		How does it compare to ~3000 L/MWh? I assume it's a rounding error. edit: Desalination uses 4 kWh per cubic metre of water. That is, it would yield 250,000 L/MWh.