Hi there everyone,
Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.
I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don't understand though is where the water goes that it can't be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.
As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It's my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.
Could someone explain to me what's going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?
I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I'm confident that I'm missing something.
Thanks for your time!
Isn't the same true for nuclear power plants?
yes but we get value from power plants - power.
LLMs just suck up more power.
Yes, or anything with evaporative cooling towers. (Coal-fired plants have them too, because they're associated with the steam turbine part, not the nuclear part.)
However, it should be wasting a lot less water (relative to the benefit) since the whole point is to extract as much energy from the steam as possible before it exits the turbine. Power plants have the "excuse" that if they tried to cool the steam any further they'd have to spend power to do it, which would reduce overall efficiency and thus be self-defeating.