Power plants can be designed to work in hot deserts. The largest nuclear power plant in the US (Palo Verde in AZ) gets cooled by evaporating treated wastewater.

French nuclear power plants were just not designed for droughts.

Modern powerplants are closed-loop and do not consume water, although they may dump heat into it. Water is not consumed (in any great quantity) or contaminated, except that which is recirculated inside.

> although maybe they may dump heat into it.

Dumping heat into water is how they consume water. They either evaporate the water directly, or they heat a river, causing it to evaporate more later.

They need heat sinks, not fresh + cold + clean water. Even the heat sinks are only really necessary due to concentration of generating capacity rather than the amount of generating capacity. For example, photovoltaic usually has thermodynamic efficiency around 20% while steam plants (nuclear, fossil, geothermal, etc) are usually around 33%: solar panels will release considerably more heat into the environment per unit of energy generated, but since it's spread out nobody cares. Small Modular Reactors are a big step in the "spreading it out until it's easy to get rid of" direction.

What does need (and not just "need" but actually "consume") fresh, cold, clean water (and dry air) is swamp cooling, which for some reason seems to do the rounds as as environmental silver bullet every few years. But that's a different rant.