Comment on Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 days ago
One of the windiest, sunniest, emptiest places on earth and they want to waste water building reactors instead of renewables.
Hell, the geology means you can store energy in the ground using pressurized air.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
What? I’ve grown up around people in the nuclear industry, and nothing I’ve ever learned about the function “wastes” water.
Some rambling on how I understand water to be used by reactors
You’ve got some amount of water in the “dirty loop” exposed to the fissile material, and in the spent fuel storage tanks. Contaminated water is stuck for that use, but that isn’t “spending” the water. The water stays contained in those systems. They don’t magically delete water volume and need to be refilled. Outside of that you have your clean loop, which is bog standard “use heat to make steam, steam move turbine, moving turbine make electiricity, steam cools back to water”. Again, there’s no part of that which somehow makes the water not exist, or not be usable for other purposes.
Not saying you’re wrong. Renewables are absolutely preferable, and Texas is prime real estate to maximize their effectiveness. I’m just hung up on the “waste water building reactors” part.
Guessing it was some sort of research about the building process maybe, that I’ve just missed?
BussyCat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
How do you condense the steam back to water?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Building them doesn’t waste water, running them does. In a place with a lot of water they make sense but any industrial water usage in a place with limited water supplies - when there are lower usage alternatives - seems wasteful