"One company wants small nuclear reactors to power the energy-intensive process of purifying vast volumes of toxic “produced water” for use in agriculture and industry."
"As Texas stares down a water shortfall, its leaders are looking at vast volumes of brown, briney oilfield wastewater as a hopeful source of future supply. They don’t have many other options.
But extracting clean water from this toxic slurry will require enormous amounts of energy, just as Texas fights to keep up with the rapidly growing power demands of a high-tech industrial buildout.
At current efficiency levels, treating all the effluent of the West Texas oilfield would require up to 26 gigawatts of power, more than the total generation capacity of most U.S. states. Even if operators achieved their ambitious target efficiencies, the Permian would still need an additional five gigawatts, enough to power about five million average American homes."
Dylan Baddour reports for Inside Climate News March 24, 2025.
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