NEI Nuclear Notes

Last month NEI's Nuclear Energy Overview team covered news that the Diablo Canyon Power Plant has on site a desalination facility that it uses to generate fresh water from seawater. And lots of it  -- the Diablo desal facility is capable of producing 1.5 million gallons of treated water a day. So in addition to producing 2,300 megawatts of carbon-free power, nearly 10 percent of all electricity generated in California, and enough energy to meet the needs of more than three million Northern and Central Californians, Diablo Canyon is poised to be a source to aid California with its historic drought . From the coverage: Plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has entered into a five-year agreement to use the facility’s excess capacity to provide the county’s Office of Emergency Services with fresh water to help tackle the ever-present risk of wildfires.    This news merits broader coverage, and credit the San Luis Obispo Tribune ...

One of the tasks nuclear energy plants could easily do is desalination. Desalination, the process of removing salt from water to make it drinkable (potable, that is), is especially important in more arid lands – say, for example, California : The massive project, in Carlsbad, teems with nearly 500 workers in yellow hard hats. When it’s done next year, it will take in more than 100 million gallons of Pacific Ocean water daily and produce 54 million gallons of fresh, drinkable water. While this adds up to just 10 percent of the county’s [San Diego]water delivery needs, it will, crucially, be reliable and drought-proof—a hedge against potentially worse times ahead. In this case, the Carlsbad facility is co-located with the Encina natural gas plant, which will supply it with power. There are some 16,000 desalination facilities around the world, many of them co-located with gas and coal plants. The Technology Review article linked above provides a lot of useful data on the subje...

Here are some interesting facts on the potential of nuclear desalination plants : Assuming that the same efficiency as the BN350 [reactor] setup were achieved in a conventional regenerative steam distillation plant, such a two-reactor [8-9 GW thermal APWR and EPR] driven desalination plant could therefore deliver about one million cubic meters of water per day (over one quarter of a billion US gallons), as well as more than half a gigawatt of electricity - more than enough for all plant operations as well as activities like pumping water, operating equipment and other internal activities. To put this another way, since one acre-foot is equal to 1234 cubic meters, such a desalination plant could produce 810 acre-feet of water per day or about 283,500 acre-feet per year. What that equates to: Slightly less than half the water consumed by the entire city of Los Angeles. Facts like these make me believe that we won't have serious water consumption problems in the future. If we run out...