Quote:
Originally Posted by rmay635703
Our plants dump the waste water right into the river,
The power plants in my home town have a population of 100,000+ within a 20 mile radius
There are subdivisions under a mile away
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I have a buddy who works at a natural gas fired plant in Wisconsin and their waste heat is used to melt sidewalks in their downtown.
Still there is only one nuclear power plant still operating in Wisconsin (and yet something like 15% of Wisconsin's electricity is nuclear) and that's not really "waste" water they "dump" in the river. Is is river water they use to condense the steam and return to the river. You can have a nuclear power plant in the desert and just use a loop of water through a cooling tower to condense the steam. The water is always the same water, like the water in your car that has a cooling "tower" in the radiator. On the aircraft carrier we used salt water from the ocean to condense the steam and then returned it to the ocean. It's 3 steps removed from any nuclear contamination and is never under a neutron flux so it is just water that is a little warmer than it started out.
I still think there are plenty of remote areas better suited to build nuclear power plants. Keep them away from oceans and rivers. If nothing else you can then safely store spent fuel rods and other waste right on site and there is nothing natural to cause it to be a danger later.