But if it just went through some heat exchangers, it's not like if it was dirty? As far as I know, nuclear power plants return the water they consume to the rivers they extracted it from.

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jacquesm an hour ago | parent [-]

Heat exchangers could easily contaminate the water. If they're not kept hot enough they could be breeding ground for Legionella and a whole raft of other bacteria. Clean water is science, not just a matter of bulk pumping stuff from one place to another (though that's definitely a part of it). Water treatment plants are complex and have a ton of QA on their product. You can't just run it into a factory and pretend it is the same stuff going in modulo some increase in temperature.

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cm2187 an hour ago | parent [-]

But you are talking about drinking water. I would be surprised if they even use that for cooling. But any non human consumption use of water (like agriculture) should happily use that water, shouldn't it?

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jacquesm an hour ago | parent | next [-]

No, agriculture has fairly strict standards about the quality of the water, they can't use gray water to irrigate. Of course it will still work but depending on where you live the produce may then no longer be fit for human consumption.

You can use it for irrigating your lawn but not for vegetables, especially not if you plan on selling them. But 'light' gray water requires relatively little treatment before you can use it again, however this could still be quite expensive compared to just letting it go. I wonder if they've done any quantitative research on this that's public.

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schainks an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is America. Our toilets use _clean potable water_ to flush our shit.

Drinking water from the mains is metered, so it is observable from the business perspective. Life finds a way. Heat exchangers and datacenter plumbing absolutely breed life and put things into the water that were not there when it was pumped in.

Imagine if a datacenter used a shady supplier of pipe that used, say, lead in their alloy. Do you want that datacenter grey water going into crops?

	▲	cm2187 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The water from the lake isn't drinking water either, it is contaminated with all sort of stuff including dead animals and animals excrements. But it doesn't mean it is not suitable for agriculture.