Nuclear Desalination - The Answer To Water Shortages
The conclusion of scientists at the recent Symposium of Desalination and Water Re-use in Trombay, India, was that nuclear power is the only technology presently available which can provide the freshwater that a growing world population will need, without depleting fossil energy resources, according to the International Journal of Nuclear Desalination.
B.M. Misra, the co-editor of the Journal, notes that 3.5 billion people are predicted to face severe water shortages by the year 2025 because the supposedly cost-effective solar, wind, and wave power approaches to desalination “are not viable” for large-scale freshwater production.
In his preface to the issue, P.K. Terawi from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) wrote that “Water-borne diseases cost the Indian economy 73 million working days a year,” and “many of these diseases can be prevented by safe drinking water.” He also noted that two million children now die a year from water-borne diseases, and that more than half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients with these diseases.
S.S. Verma, of the Department of Physics at SLIET in Punjab, reported that small floating nuclear plants could be sited off-shore near densely populated coastal areas, to provide cheap electricity while powering a desalination plant with their excess heat. “Companies are already in the process of developing a special desalination platform for attachment to Floating Nuclear Power Plants,” he said.
Another new approach reported by A. Raha and colleagues at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre is to use Low-Temperature Evaporation for desalination, which could make use of low-pressure steam or low-quality waste heat from a nuclear power plant. Safety, reliability, and viable economics have already been demonstrated, Raha said, and BARC recently commissioned a low-temperature desalination plant to produce 50 tons per day of freshwater.