1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
Which is misleading in several ways, both because it ignores the majority of solar power and ignores how safe that power will be over time.
“Nuclear Energy consuming roughly 400 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, 320 billion gallons of water were consumed by United States nuclear power plant electricity generation in 2015.” And that’s direct consumption in cooling towers, nuclear indirectly uses power in other ways.
By comparison the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in Riverside County estimated 2/3 cup of water per megawatt hour.
The notion that nuclear power is going to significant affect water supplies is without merit.
1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/#:~:tex....
2. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/styles2/images/...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
However, wastewater is just water. Look at a long river and towns upstream dump their wastewater into rivers that towns and cities downstream collect as municipal water.
Nuclear takes longer, is more expensive, has lower ROI, and higher risks. Solar has a lower capacity factor, but having 1/3 the availability at 1/15th the cost is a net win. Especially as we need vastly more power in the daytime and idling Nuclear is really expensive.
Currently 3% of global electricity comes from Solar and 16% from hydro with Nuclear only proving 10%. Scaling Nuclear to a significantly on a global scale take not just massive construction and new regulations, but also training etc, we simply don’t have the time.