As part of our SES project, in late 2022 Rijkswaterstaat commissioned Deltares to conduct an inventory of impacts of cooling water consumption by power plants within the Rhine Basin. This information we will use for calculations on water availability and low flow in the Rhine River and its main tributaries. It should provide useful background information for our socio-economic scenarios and is also valuable for our water allocation model RIBASIM, which we use in the SES project.
The study shows that the estimated total abstraction within the Rhine Basin when all power plants would simultaneously operate at maximum capacity amounts to approximately 89 m3/s, of which half can be attributed to the nuclear power plants. The total consumption within the Rhine Basin when all power plants would operate at maximum capacity amounts to approximately 15 m3/s, of which coal and nuclear power plants together consume most.
For further explanations, uncertainties and results, we like to refer to the attached PDF report HERE.