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The water is borated and heavily purified. You don’t want stuff growing inside, but at the same time you don’t want to have chlorinated water slowly corroding the metal components.

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Check out this study. Pretty wild! [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7760952/]

I also read in the XKCD thing that it might be up to about 50° so it's probably a bit uncomfortable for most algae type things.

I bet there's some good chance of getting wacky extremophiles though!

Would you mind sharing a link to "the xkcd thing" if you have it?

edit: sorry for being lazy, I scrolled a bit more and found it.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

Relevant: "For the kinds of radiation coming off spent nuclear fuel, every 7 centimeters of water cuts the amount of radiation in half."

On the picture, the fuel rods are indeed protected by a huge quantity of water above them. But what happens below them ? They seem to be in direct contact with the ground...

I would guess that in reality they are either suspended and/or there is enough concrete at the bottom

People tend to avoid casually tunneling under nuclear pools.

50C is terribly hot for a swim.

Hot spring baths usually top out around 42-43C

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