3 Mar (NucNet): Egypt and Russia have signed an agreement for the development of a design for a nuclear power plant with a desalination facility, Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.
Rosatom did not release details of the agreement, but said it believes a desalination facility at a large capacity nuclear power plant with Russian-supplied VVER pressurised water reactors has “significant potential” in foreign markets.
Such a facility would be able to produce up to 170,000 cubic metres of fresh water a day from one nuclear power unit, Rosatom said.
The only large nuclear facility with a water desalination facility operated with heat from the 52-megawatt BN350 fast breeder reactor at Aktau in the former Soviet Union, now Kazakhstan. It delivered more than 100,000 cubic metres of fresh water per day, but was shut down in April 1999 and is being decommissioned.
In September 2014, a council established in Russia to develop technological solutions for using nuclear energy in water desalination said it was planning to work with foreign partners on plans to finance and construct a nuclear plant with a desalination facility.
Rusatom Overseas, a subsidiary of Rosatom, said its Expert Council on Desalination would deal with tasks aimed at the development of “the best technological solutions” for Rusatom Overseas’ customers in water and water treatment markets.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, most desalination plants use fossil fuels, contributing to increased greenhouse gas emissions. There are about 15,000 plants producing desalinated water, most in the Middle East and North Africa. The largest is in Saudi Arabia.
Argentina, China and South Korea have developed small nuclear reactor designs specifically to generate both electricity and fresh water. Small reactor technology may be key to expanding clean, nuclear energy-based desalination, the IAEA said.
In Japan, some of its nuclear stations are equipped with seawater desalination plants to provide high quality make-up water for the boiler feed water as well as for other uses after an appropriate water post treatment. Similarly, in Pakistan, a seawater desalination plant has been set up at the Kanupp nuclear station to meet the normal operational requirements of the plant in addition to providing an independent source of emergency feed water to the steam generator.
The IAEA said that for wider deployment of nuclear desalination, additional requirements have to be met under specific conditions. Technical issues include meeting more stringent safety requirements specifically for nuclear-desalination integrated plants and improvement on performance of the integrated systems. Another important factor for consideration in wider deployment of nuclear desalination is economic competitiveness compared with other options such as fossil fuel powered co-generation plants.
Rosatom is focusing on multiple-effect distillation (MED) technologies, which consist of multiple stages or “effects”. In each stage, the feedwater is heated by steam in tubes. Some of the water evaporates, and this steam flows into the tubes of the next stage, heating and evaporating more water. Each stage essentially reuses the energy from the previous stage.
Rusatom Overseas said about two billion people suffer from lack of fresh water. At the same time, major population growth in the coming decades is expected in the regions that are already affected by shortages of fresh water – Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia.
The IAEA, which has been providing technical support to member states interested in using nuclear power for desalination, said nuclear could help bring down costs. A new generation of innovative small and medium nuclear power plants could co-generate electricity and potable water, both safely and at competitive prices, the agency said.
