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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

Also, electricity from fossil fuels consumes a lot of water.

U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698

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Mostly east of the Mississippi, which has no water shortage. If you don’t use the water in the East, it usually ends up as salt water in the ocean.

https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/t...

Additionally in certain circumstances it's less disruptive to use more water. E.g a nuclear power plant on a river: river water in, slightly warmer river water out w/o any or much steam generated. The more water 'used' the lower the temperature of hot water discharged, so kinder to the local ecosystem.

I am an electrical engineer that mainly works on hydro plants but also have done some work on natural gas plants. The fact that this is so high is shocking to me. I guess the big culprit is coal plant cooling towers. The natural gas plants I've worked in don't even have cooling towers, any cooling water goes right back where it came from.

Water used for cooling a power plant either evaporates in a cooling tower or gets discharged back into the river.

Same with water for farming of course

With a healthy dose of AG chemicals!

Might I introduce you to the standard solution for coal ash: https://environmentamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Ac...

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