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61 comments on The needs and use of water for power, industrial plants and people

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ericy on November 6, 2007 - 11:14am

No, I think the article addressed this:

That is a fair volume of water, particularly for the amounts that are single-use pass through. Now a lot of this water is returned to the source, but still a significant amount is lost to evaporation. And thus there is currently a program within the National Energy Technology Lab (pdf), to look into this. But before I get there I think it is useful to put the current conditions in context.

There is the point that the warmer water released to the environment will tend to evaporate more readily than the cooler water that they started with.

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CMDC on November 6, 2007 - 6:54pm

There is another factor related to cooling water we need to consider. The river/body of water that the cooling water is released back into has to have enough volume to absorb the extra heat without dramatically increasing its temperature. Some power plants in the southeast are closed, not because there isn't enough water for cooling, but because the river ecosystem it's returning to would be completely killed off by 70/80/90/whatever degree water.

When droughts reduce the volumes in bodies of water, they can't accept the cooling water and the plant shuts down. So minimum required water levels for plant operation are significantly higher than you would expect just from looking at plant usage/evaporation.