Using Nuclear Energy to Make Fresh Water

While many global observers fear future conflicts over supplies of fossil fuels, another resource where the same fear of conflict exists is fresh water -- and nuclear can help defuse those tensions by providing clean and reliable energy to power water desalinization plants. Here's some news from the United Arab Emirates:

In a press statement, Saeed Mohammad Al Raqabani, minister of agriculture and fisheries, said: ''Our meagre water resources are under tremendous pressure and this will continue as long as there are expansion programmes, since the demand is increasing.''

”If a country has less than 200 millimeters of rain per year then it is classified as one of the arid countries. The UAE has a lot less rain than that,” he added.

According to an official report, the average amount of renewable fresh water available in the UAE is already less than 250 cubic meters per person per year, which is well below the average international per capita water consumption.

Plans are now afoot to use nuclear energy to desalinate water. This is a cost-effective process that will help reduce the stress on the country's depleting water resources, and has received the blessing of the Federal National Council (FNC).

Warning that rapid population growth was putting more pressure on fresh water supplies, the FNC approved recommendations that called for the use of nuclear energy technology for desalination to help meet the challenges facing underground water resources. . .

''The government feels that the use of nuclear technology would be cost-effective and would spare the country the millions of dirhams it spends on water desalination projects every year,'' said the Dubai Municipality official.

The UAE signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1996.

Comments

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog