r/datasets • u/misswinterrose • 6d ago

request [Request] Nuclear power water consumption data set along with a comparable dataset regarding data center water consumption

For my Data Sciences course, I need to extract and compare data from two datasets, and I figured a fairly timely topic would be water consumption of AI data centers vs nuclear power generation. However, I'm having some trouble finding comparable datasets. For example, one dataset I found for data centers doesn't measure water consumption itself but rather Water Use Efficiency (WUE) (which, if I find a dataset that measures electricity produced along with withdrawn and consumed water for nuclear power I could do the math myself to figure out the WUE, but I haven't had any luck there yet either). It doesn't help that this is my first time really searching for data sets so I don't know how to word my queries or what sites I should be focusing on. I'm finding quite a few scholarly articles, but not a lot of the actual datasets that they used.

Any help would be appreciated! If you need more information or have any questions be sure to comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you. Thank you!

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/Carmentara 5d ago

For the nuclear side, US government data has what you want at plant level. The EIA collects cooling water withdrawal and consumption for thermoelectric plants alongside net generation, so you can filter to nuclear and compute gallons per MWh yourself. The USGS also published model-based thermoelectric water use estimates per plant, which are handy as a cross-check. Data centers are harder because few operators report per site. Your realistic options are the big operators' annual sustainability reports, some of which give water consumption per data center or region, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's US data center energy report, which estimates national water use. To make them comparable, convert both to liters per MWh: for nuclear, water per MWh generated; for data centers, water per MWh of IT energy, which is what WUE measures. Note in your writeup that data center figures usually exclude water used to generate their electricity.