Fernando Fischmann's Power-Enabling Pools

As the world is now painfully aware, keeping nuclear plants near the ocean is a devil's bargain. Most power plants, regardless of fuel, need massive amounts of water for cooling the steam used to turn the turbine generator. When things go wrong, like the leakage of contaminated water into the Pacific at Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, the consequences can be harrowing. Fernando Fischmann, a Chilean real estate developer and biochemist, may have a way to use advanced swimming pool filtration—yes, swimming pools—to cool power plants efficiently and eliminate their need to be close to natural bodies of water.

Fischmann's company, Crystal Lagoons, designs huge, swimmable lagoons for resorts around the world, including a 19-acre creation in Algarrobo, Chile, which holds the Guinness record for world's largest swimming pool. Using what he has learned at his Santiago company, Fischmann believes his technology can handle the millions of gallons that pump through a typical large power facility every day. About 40 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. comes from plants that draw from nearby lakes, rivers, or oceans—and spit heated water back, which disrupts aquatic life near the outflow pipes. That's one reason plants can be so ecologically damaging, even without a Fukushima-scale disaster. The water going into a plant also must be clean to avoid fouling its equipment.