desal

Also, while CA desal cites briny outflow disposal as a major impediment to desal, why not pump the outflow to existing salt flats?

Not an expert on reactor design vs desal design by any means - would love an opinion on the challenges here outside the standard nuclear ones.

Also, there are significant environmental impacts associated with both desal and nukes which you have completely ignored.

The solar collectors can be placed on cheap land, and brought to the desal plants by the ocean edge.

Take the case of Santa Barbara as a great example: drought from 1986-1992, built a desal plant for $34 million.

This suggests to me that boosting it slightly by desal efforts will be negligible at worst, and remediation at best.

Israel (obv a different scale than china) has recently also experienced a big push toward desal.

This includes a real-world desal plant running at 6–13 L/m2/day and a simulated maximum for a proposed system of 25L/m2/day.

To replace that water with desal would require 7E9 sq meters or 7 379 sq.

Replacing California's agricultural water supply with desal plants would cost something on the order of $2,000 per acre-foot at current-day energy prices.

There's also pumping costs to get sea water up and through the desal system.

That article says membrane desal leaves half the water extra salty, is that right?

It really bugs me that desal is the most popular drum to beat, along with "California is a desert" and "California is irresponsible".

Desal is not ever going to be used to irrigate crops in California.

Desal takes enormous amounts of power for not much water.

Desal plants are at sea level on the coast.