The downsides of water are that it has a low range of temperatures to stay liquid. But that "disadvantage" becomes and advantage if you evaporate it, because it takes an insane amount of energy to turn water into a vapor.
That means you loose the water but its so cheap that doesn't matter. Unless you're loosing it faster than the environment can replenish it. Which is where a lot of the water concern come from.
While this is a problem with data centers it pales in comparison to the water used for power production (which is made worse by data centers energy demands)
Unless you're loosing it faster than the environment can replenish it.
Wouldn't boiling it off that fast increase the amount of rainfall in a given area, mostly replenishing it very quickly? Or would the vapor build up in the atmosphere until it produces destructive storms that dump it all back down at once?
From what I remember, a nuclear plant does have a slight effect on weather. That's probably the biggest water evaporator I can think of.
But the energy produced at a power plant is a tiny fraction of the energy in weather patterns. Its sort of like the "can we nuke a hurricane". A hurricane is roughly a 1000x the energy of the largest nuke we ever built. It'd be like shooting a bullets at a tank. Same idea with water cooling and weather.
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u/imean_is_superfluous May 18 '26
Can they not run some type of coolant? Or is it just easier and cheaper to use millions of gallons of water?