The role and importance of nuclear desalination

Abstract

Desalination needs energy and saline water as the process raw material. The desalination process where the needed energy is generated by nuclear sources and/or the saline water is supplied from a nuclear installation, such as cooling water from the power unit, is usually called nuclear desalination. Comparing nuclear desalination with alternative water sources in general and to nonnuclear desalination in particular is the main goal of this paper. There are, obviously, advantages and drawbacks for nuclear desalination compared with the alternatives. Projects where those advantages are prominent under site-specific conditions will of course favour nuclear desalination. The following presentation describes the details of the above-stated generality covering these advantages and drawbacks and referring to the potential cases that will justify using nuclear desalination.