[Carlseymanh]

One of the few problem of nuclear is summer time water use. Combining solar with nuclear would be the best option in my opinion.

[datadrivenangel]

Nuclear plants, like most large thermal plants, are almost always located near large bodies of water and return that water downstream so it doesn't really matter?

[lukan]

It matters if people don't want to see the rivers full of dead fish, so last year there were already shutdowns because of heatwaves.

https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...

[moooo99]

It does when you care about the environmental impact of your cooling (and also consider the fact that droughts are an increasingly severe problem).

[pbmonster]

It matters when the level of that body of water drops by a lot in summer and the water temperature rises at the same time. Add environmental laws (cooking the fish is discouraged), and your nuke plant needs to go into safety shutdown pretty reliably every summer.

[Zigurd]

Historically the biggest impediment to nuclear power has been incompetent construction management and project management. Incompetent is a strong word for it but nuclear power plants are the largest capital equipment purchases on the planet. Even modern so-called modular designs can't save poor project management, and learn as you go engineering.

That so mundane and should be easy to fix, right? That's why I bring up scale. Nobody has experience running projects that big. Some things are just too big to manage.