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Collision Between Water and Energy Is Underway, and Worsening
An anonymous reader writes "This article is an eye opening perspective on another side effect of power generation — water usage: 'More than 40 percent of fresh water used in the United States is withdrawn to cool power plants. Renewable energy generally uses far less water, but there are glaring exceptions, such as geothermal and concentrating solar.' The article also mentions that power plants have to shut down if the incoming water is too warm to cool the plant. 'Also, even though some newer plants might use far less water, they could find that there’s far less water available as water temperatures go up and water flows go down. Another study found that nearly half of 423 U.S. plants were at risk of lower power output during droughts because their intake pipes for water were less than 3 meters below the surface.'"
The fact that powerplants borrow water to cool themselves is no big deal. They give it all back.
I know, right? I'm so sick of this "Sky is Falling" liberal nonsense. Humans will eventually learn to drink sea-water, just the way Darwin intended. Deal with it.
What is even more ridiculous is the 40% number. Come ON! What about Agriculture. In CA something like 90% or our H2O usage goes to growing things. The power generation is tiny. Then there is the little detail that many of our power plants use ocean water!
I'm calling BS on that number.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I live close to the new NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah. Currently we are under a drought with widespread municipal water restrictions, yet the NSA surveillance center requires 1.7M gallons of water daily to operate.
The fact that powerplants borrow water to cool themselves is no big deal. They give it all back.
No, no, the article says "withdrawn" which means its not in the water bank anymore.
So at 40% per year, in two and a half years there will be no water left in the bank. We are Doomed.
To protect your future, you should run down and withdraw all your water from the bank today.
Horde it in your bed. (That's why water beds were invented).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Water-cooled power plants take in water. And then they put it out again, warmer. They don't use it up. At worst some of it comes out as water vapor from cooling towers, which condenses out.
When you put generators down 5-6000 feet in deep fast ocean currents, which run virtually at constant speed year round, the amount of power available down there is staggering. Obviously it only works near coastline regions, but that is where the large populations tend to be, though not all coasts have deep water currents.
Superconducting long distance transmission lines are improving in capability, so maybe distance is not so much a problem in the future.
It is not technically difficult or polluting. We already put complex anchors and devices at those depths for oil drilling.
No need for radioactive stuff, no cooling, no dead birds, no pulsing noise to humans, no polution.
It takes damn good engineering, but that is what we are damn good at.
Start now.
The study is more about the risks that power plants may not have enough water available, not that they are using it up. The plants are competing for the water with those that do consume it, such as agriculture and residential, exacerbated by long term drought cycles in some areas, and climate change.
Total water withdrawals in the United States for 2005 were estimated for eight categories of use: public supply, domestic, irrigation, livestock, aquaculture, industrial, mining, and thermoelectric-power generation (fig. 1). Thermoelectric power was the largest category of water use, followed by irrigation and public supply
Page 5 has pictures and data, you might like that.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Most power plants built the lake in the first place. And they don't discharge into the lake; they discharge at or downstream of the dam -- so they aren't pulling in their own hot water. Next to none (read: NONE) of the intake water is used in the turbine steam loops -- those are 100% closed loops, if you're losing water you have a problem. (a serious problem for nuke plants.) [note: steam loops use distilled water -- ZERO minerals, RO reduces the mineral/particle volume, but it's not zero.]
That said, there are still numerous plants that use evaporative cooling towers. And they do, indeed, require a significant volume of water that is "consumed" -- it goes up as vapor. While it isn't "drinking water", it's water that's not available to the filter plant that feeds your taps. In a drought, you have a choice... cool the power plant, or have water to drink.