Water takes hit with "business as usual" approach to electricity generationHuge demands on increasingly scarce water are a major cost burden of "business as usual" electricity generation, according to a new Synapse Energy Economics report prepared for the Civil Society Institute (CSI) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The research focuses on the water impact of various fuels used to generate electricity, including nuclear, coal, wind and solar. Nuclear power has critical cooling requirements that require huge amounts of water. Roughly 62 percent of U.S. nuclear plants have closed-loop cooling systems withdrawing between 700 and 1,100 gallons of water per MWh. Open-loop cooled nuclear plants have even higher withdrawals of between 25,000 and 60,000 gallons per MWh. Coal-fired power plants rely on the same closed-loop cooling systems which withdraw between 500 and 600 gallons of water per MWh and lose most of this via evaporation. Withdrawals for open-loop cooled coal-fired power plants are between 20,000 and 50,000 gallons per MWh. On the other hand, wind and solar photovoltaic power requires little water in the electricity generation process. Concentrating solar power requires water for cooling purposes, but new technologies are placing greater emphasis on dry cooling. Solar power plants with dry cooling use only around 80 gallons per MWh – about a tenth of the low-end estimate for nuclear power and one-sixth of the low end estimate for coal-fired power generation. For more: Related Article:
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