Is there any reason the water can’t be safely consumed later? It’s not toxic or nuclear is it? The cooling water didn’t just up and disappear did it?

Edit: Links provided in the comments…

• https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc&t=1264
• https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/03/06/how-much-water-do-the-data-centres-use-its-a-secret/
• https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025EcInd.17012986J/abstract
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_cooling_towers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederaussem_Power_Station

Notable comments:

• https://lemmy.world/comment/23672269
• https://sh.itjust.works/comment/25288634
• https://lemmy.cafe/comment/16350045
• https://sh.itjust.works/comment/25294655

Edit addendum: I’d like to thank everyone that’s participated in this question thread, sorry if I missed any good relevant links in the comments.

To be clear, I still loathe the whole AI datacenter era, it really is heavily wasteful of resources, notably energy, but I wanted to better understand the water usage situation.