Economics of Sea Water Desalination with Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Other Energy Sources: The EURODESAL Project

This paper summarises our recent investigations undertaken as part of the EURODESAL project on nuclear desalination, currently being carried out by a consortium of 4 EU, and one Canadian, Industrials and two leading EU R&D organisations. Results obtained so far seem to be quite encouraging as regards the economical viability of nuclear desalination options. Thus, for example, specific desalination costs ($/m3 of desalted water) for nuclear systems such as the AP600 and the French PWR900 (reference base case), coupled to MED (Multiple Effect Distillation) or the RO (Reverse Osmosis) processes, are 30 to 60% lower than fossil energy based systems using pulverised coal and natural gas with combined cycle, at low discount rates and recommended fuel prices. Even in the most unfavourable scenarios for nuclear energy (discount rates = 10%, low fossil fuel prices) desalination costs with the nuclear options with innovative reactors are 7 to 15% lower, depending upon the desalination capacities. Furthermore, with the high performance coupling schemes developed by EURODESAL partners, specific desalination costs of nuclear systems are reduced by another 2 to 14%, even without system and design optimisation.