Comment by rawgabbit
3 days ago
I was mentally referring to this article. It mentioned that natural gas plants only used one tenth that of coal. I assumed this is because natural gas plants are newer etc.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698
Natural gas-fired generation uses a more energy-efficient technology to produce electricity than coal and has a lower water withdrawal intensity than coal. Natural gas combined-cycle generation had an average water withdrawal intensity of 2,793 gal/MWh in 2020, compared with 21,406 gal/MWh for coal.
Yeah, that's the gas turbine thing. The first-stage (which generates the majority of the power) isn't boiling water, but extracting energy directly from pressure from burning the gas in a jet-engine like fashion.
The coal/nuclear like natural gas is what is labelled as "Steam Turbine" in the chart in this article: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61444
Looks like it's already a small minority.
Coal and natural gas also emit some of their waste heat in the outgoing exhaust gases. Nuclear doesn't have exhaust gases (aside from evaporated cooling water) to carry away waste heat.
The big difference is the much lower thermal efficiency of LWR power plants.