ACCount37 expressly left out the coal smoke stacks from their description, so I'm not sure why you chose to focus solely on that and throw it back in?
What are cooling towers for if not for coal smoke stacks?
Nuclear
the clouds comming off nuclear towers is literally just steam. not radioactive steam. just.... steam
That's not even unique to nuclear. Gas and coal can have them too. Typically they're only used if the other source of coolant is not sufficient.
For example, you take in cooling water from a river. When the river gets too hot in summer you want to use that cooling tower to evaporate water to provide additional cooling.
Which also explains why it's steam
What about the billions of tons of solar panels that turn to toxic garbage every 20 years or so, and can't yet be recycled? Not to mention the huge amount of land consumed by solar farms.