There's many different nuclear reactor designs

For the traditional ones that require lots of cooling water, oceans are typically used so they don't suffer from droughts. If you actually need fresh water you have desalinization available, and nuclear power can power that.

There are more self-contained designs, as you would see on ships.

They're also some hands-off designs that generate low amounts of power over a long period of time used for remote installations.

You need water to generate steam to turn a turbine and make electricity (same for coal, natural gas, fusion). However, many advanced reactor designs do not use water for the reactor coolant itself, unlike light water reactors that do. They use gas, molten salt, or liquid metals. As a result, you can get to quite high temperatures useful for process heat, such as hydrogen production. Direct desalination might also be doable, the issue/question being on the design of the non-nuclear side of the plant.

A lot of Gen IV designs are in the process of commercialization now, with demonstrations slated for later this decade.

I wouldn't worry too much about water availability for cooling (even though it's an issue). I see a bigger "political" issue

A safe nuclear industry requires at laest the two following stuff

• A solid academic and industrial tradition, able to train skilled engineer and technician, but also researcher to prepare the future.

• A government strong enough to deal with the NIMBY, but weak enough to have an independent nuclear safety agency able to perform audits without caring about political pressure.

This works in a country like France, may still work in a country like Germany or US (even though NIMBY have more power there) but many country especially in the * third world* don't have either trained "nuclear scientists" or a government able to guarantee nuclear safety

Nuclear is feasible in lots of places if the question is, "given enough money can we build a nuclear plant here?"

Nuclear gets much less feasible if the question is, "how do we generate electricity in the most cost effective way we can?"

What do you define as nuclear power? Because something like Pioneer 10 which is in space since 1972, is using a nuclear reactor to provide its power, and it is still working.

Most power generation methods like coal have similar requirements, and it doesn't have to be clean water. In costal areas, seawater can be used just fine.

They're not economically feasible anywhere right now. Unfortunately nuclear power is very expensive compared to all the alternatives. Unless there's some radical breakthrough I can't see much nuclear being built in the future. No company would pay such a huge up-front cost to produce uneconomic electricity.

So the strict answer is - no, they're not feasible everywhere. And also not feasible pretty much anywhere.

The largest hurdles to nuclear power are PR. Water usage of nuclear plants is able to recycle most if not all of what they utilize and the high energy density and capable power output makes it much more economical to pump water from further away to sustain the plant and needs of regional communities, especially compared to fossil fuels plants that largely use water in the same capacity as nuclear. If a coal or gas plant was viable in a location, then nuclear would be just as if not more capable in that location.

You could replace every coal plant in the world with nuclear and the only major logistics disruption would be supplying them with enough uranium.

Wouldn't want them anywhere that is prone to earthquakes - the entire Pacific rim, for example.

For the foreseeable future, nuclear would work fine. As long as there isn't corrosive compounds the water works fine, and there is enough uranium alone to power nuclear plants for the next 2000 years

Slightly off topic, there are about 450 nuclear plants on earth. A noted MIT study in 1989 estimated that each nuclear plant only has a worst case nuclear accident every 20000 years.

Statistically that would make one every 44 years.

In our history we have had nuclear power plants for about 60 years, and so far there were three worst case nuclear accidents.