People Would Rather Have Nuclear Power Plants In Their Area Than AI Data Centers

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/05/13/people-would-rather-have-nuclear-power-plants-in-their-area-than-ai-data-centers/

Crossposted from https://lemmy.radio/post/13319258

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My understanding is that all nuclear power plants have a primary closed loop system (for the direct contact part), but the secondary cooling system, by heat exchange with the closed system, can either be evaporative or by heat exchange with an available body of water.

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Nuclear plant has been historically built nearby water body without water loss (evaporating). Shift to open system happened mostly in US. Majority of plants are still located in coast side (UK, Korea, Japan, Finland etc) using sea water, inland one still utilize river water (France).

For new US reactors likely employ open system so your water concern stands, though its open evaporation system is optimized better than unoptimized data center ones.

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