Going Nuclear to Desalinate Seawater 

Our rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity

Many years ago I had a neighbor, Paul Kunming, who was a retired Westinghouse nuclear power engineer. He said Westinghouse made a major error by not incorporating desalination plants with nuclear power plants. If coastal cities could have a water supply, they'd want nuclear power plants.

Had 3 separate msf plants on the cruise ship I worked on. It utilized waste heat from the main engines, so our water production would scale with ship speed(engine load)

One fact in favor of nuclear power should be pointed out: radioactivity is very easy to measure. Much easier than any other contaminant in water. It's a non issue.

One interesting note, dedicated desalination reactors can be MUCH cheaper than energy-generating reactors. That's because they don't need to pressurize the water to keep it liquid at very high temperatures. A desalination reactor can just pressurize water to just 4 atmospheres, raising the boiling point to about 140C. 4 atmospheres is easy to work with, it's less than the pressure in your faucet.

I've been saying this for years - In California, PG&E should work with the sate water agencies to repurpose Diablo Canyon for desalination. Pump the fresh water generated up over the coastal range and into the California Aqueduct.

I used to operate an MED for the purpose of concentrating grape juice. Kinda bothered me that we dumped millions of gallons of process water from the juice, as well as thousands of gallons of Ethanol down the drain. It costs a fairly good amount in wastewater treatment and i just think its stupid to dump fuel down the drain. This type of inefficiency is everywhere across food industry and i hope it gets some attention.

As an Australian. Im just like WTF is with our tritium drinking limit

It's a no-brainer. The inherent safety and compactness of MSRs, along with their very high heat output, make them ideal for all sorts of industrial processes. Much of industry like steel etc needs heat rather than electricity

Salt cooled nuclear in 1973, well I didn't know the tech was that old. They are working full speed on the molten salt reactors now. Definitely the best method of desalination.

Another exceptional video, with excellent dictation. Your mastery of English is better than most native English speakers. Keep doing what you do in your style, its very much appreciated. Thank you.

Modern desal plants are up to 90% water recoveries these days - very impressive. That minimises the input flow as well as the sea critters it effects. You then combine the brine outflow with the treated sewage outflows and bingo bango. Let's roll.

Newer Molten Salt Reactors operate at higher temperatures, 450-650 range. Combining this with CO2 gas generators, which have as intake temperatures roughly around the same temperatures 500+ degrees, also means that the temperatures of the output of these generators is around 250 to 300 degrees. This allows for a even higher energy transfer efficiency than older PWR reactors. Furthermore, even the temperatures that come out of an MSR are warm enough as is to generate Hydrogen without first having to turn the heat into electricity (eliminating the efficiency loses related to heat to electricity process) so high water production, and, large hydrogen production (which is emissions-free), Now the hydrogen can be used as is for hydrogen based transport, however, going one step further and implementing Carbon Capture, and combining CO2 and Hydrogen can allow you to make synthetic fuels (pure, gasoline, kerosene, diesel). And this let me tell you is a holy grail moment. While still producing CO2, this synthetic fuel burns cleanly (no impurities based from refinement) and burns more potently, critically, it is cyclical in nature, you take CO2 out of the atmosphere (or out of the oceans) and then release it back into the atmosphere, it is net-zero. And the key difference is simple and highly attractive; we don't need to reinvent anything to make it work. This Fuel can be used in our current infrastructure as is... Airplanes, Shipping boats, Public Transport, personal transportation; all of this becomes carbon-neutral overnight, without the necessity or expenditure to change the entire fleet of transportation methods (which in itself constitutes a burden in the form of emissions and pollution, as we are retiring the older fleet before its lifecycle ends) Another fundamental win from this is opening up a market to which we can base our Carbon Capture too... Currently, we can capture tons and tons of CO2 from the atmosphere... but there is no market large enough to sell it too... meaning the Carbon Capture will never be a profit driven industry... however synthetic fuels however flip this... creates a market, allows Carbon Capture companies sell their CO2 to fund the construction of more carbon capture... once we have displaced all fossil fuels from the transport industry alone (fossil fuel power plants make no sense to convert to synthetic fuels) (at this point also technology and scale also has driven down the cost of Carbon Capture) governments can impose a carbon storage quota, 70% of what is captured is destined for synthetic fuel production, and the remaining 30% is for storage; thus now motivating the construction of more carbon capture and finally beginning the process of CO2 reduction in the atmosphere. Carbon Capture is energy intensive, and thus requires a large quantity of stably available electricity which is emissions-free, which again leads perfectly into the hands of Nuclear Energy...

Thanks for making all these videos they are very unique and always very interesting topics. I learn so much from them

I'm surprised in countries that have deserts there aren't even an prototype of concentrated solar desalination plant. Edit: I see in the replies many people miss understood what i mean, i don't mean solar panels. Concentrated solar is made with mirrors pointed to an object in this example massive glass dome filled with water.

Most informative. Thanks for the video!

Congratulations 👏 for such a wonderful presentation ❤️

The biggest environmental concern is what to do with the salt-enriched waste water. Great video otherwise, but you didn't even touch upon this.

You did a great job with this. Awesome channel...

thank you for great work, i know this video took lots of your time to develop, thank you for your great work & all the great info in this video, god bless you.

Very good job, Molten Salt Reactors are a promising producer of heat with general less tritium production.

Great video as always! Would've loved a little more coverage of the Indian plants though

Your Chanel is awesome. Congratulations from Spain.

Never knew so many were in operation, great video.

Nuclear desalination makes great sense. Nuclear generates lotsa heat and can be used to boil water... cools down the vapor and get clean water, rinse repeat.

Video doesn’t mention what happens to the salt after desalination.. if dumping it back in the ocean it increases the concentration and wrecks the ecosystem. It is another issue that needs to be addressed when these projects hit scale.

Really excellent documentary! Outstanding!

An unexpected topic, but it is important and I enjoyed this. Thanks

Good video, I hope more people can design reactors to slowly but eventually replace coal and petroleum so they are only really used for plastics or classic cars.

I love the style of your vids. So unbiased and to the point. Very informative and insightful. Thank you!

Congratulations on crossing 200k!

Dude thanks for this

I remember Jacque Fresco exhibiting a solar desalination plant that used a clear canopy over a canal to collect moisture from the evaporation off of water as it is heated by the sun, perfect for most equatorial zones. No energy plants required.

You covered much of the same information that was in my senior project, the main difference was that I focused on the use of SMRs to reduce overnight cost and more specific to the task of water scarcity to meet climate change issues. I enjoyed your video, happy to see good information for a positive use for nuclear energy.

Man, u're channel is awesome! Keep it going! The topics, the delivery. Not a typical "playing around" popular science channel :DI think I would l like to hear on Russia's perspective in the semiconductor industry since sanctions. Will it be able to do something with its Elbrus or not. And the breeder-reactors on fast neutrons. Just telling some (maybe) interesting ideas on future videos. Thanks!

Great Video! Love it!

The desalination comes at a low price if it is thermally coproduced with electricity. The efficiency of the powerplant is only slightly reduced but you get the water for it.

There's a pretty efficient and cheap solar desalination method called TMSS. I think it's a type of MED.

The effort you make to proper pronunciation is noticed, and extremely rare. I appreciate your dedication to proper aducation.

Was just thinking about it! And then the video dropped.

Yet another of my ideas has already been thought of but I was planning to send it into the middle of the desert to just be dumped there (that’s the only purpose (and free salt))

Wish Australia would stop being scared and build some bloody reactors. great video dont how you explain this shit so well.

We need more of this

It must of been 20 years ago I was imagining this . The economics is where i fell short

No mention of graphene or graphene oxide desalination? This relatively new technology basically stacks layers of graphene or graphene oxide close enough together for water molecules to pass through but block virtually everything else, without the high pressure required for reverse osmosis.

Good job analyzing the water problem from a stand point of current engineering. I think you made the case that thermal desalination powered by nuclear energy is doable right now, no break throughs required. However, I have my doubts that this will be significantly advanced in the near to medium term. There is too much fear of nuclear power. "Nuclear water" is not a tagline that sells. This is a shame because sea water desalination can be cost competitive with many current dam and irrigation projects. For perspective, the minimum theoretical energy required is less than 1 Kw/hr per M^3. Stated differently, reverse osmosis of sea water requires a pressure head of ~ 300 M. For comparison the California water project pumps water up 400 M over the Tehachapi mountains. Yes, pre-treatment is currently expensive. Yes, practical osmotic systems may require multiples of theoretical pressure. But, desalination is not that much more expensive than other alternatives.

Great video. Thanks

That was excellent. Thanks

I think Finland follows now the EU directive mandating 100 Bq/l Tritium limit. It only make sense considering Finland is in EU the number of 30 000 is outdated.

"Agricultural use" means that at least some Co2 is removed & replaced with O2. Not a bad trade off.

Excellent informative video the “greens” should pay attention.

Very interesting info!

this is for sure a great video, and I enjoyed watching ! subbed and liked ! a fellow creator

Great Stuff! I was wondering if a ship based nuclear reactor could be used to provide energy for a mobile de-sal plant, for example on humanitarian missions via an form of deep-hulled vessel such as an amphibious assault ship? Would such a facility be effective, or even feasible?

Excellent idea. 👍👍

Great video

12:00 "up to 10-30% of fish embryos are being affected" .... at what scale ? Around the reactor ? You can't mean worldwide.

Perhaps useful to think of a nuclear reactor + desalination plant as equivalent to a "peaker" power generation unit that can be operated 24/7 "for free" (uranium fuel and nuclear waste disposal being relatively inexpensive operating costs) with the electrical power that isn't needed by the electrical grid being put to productive use. Compare for example to a nuclear reactor + hydro power storage facility, feed nuclear reactor electricity into the grid when needed and use that electricity to pump water uphill the rest of the time. Such a combination is even more useful, but only works where the nuclear reactor can be built near a good site. Or compare to the notion of building dams in remote locations with the intention of using the electricity generated to smelt aluminum. The aluminum smelting plant and the desalination plant are similar: they both represent productive ways of using electricity where the nuclear power operator can control demand.

This would be an interesting use for Small Modular reactors...

Really exciting possibilities... thanks.

I really hope they start using nuclear power to desalinate water. People need fresh water at a low cost.

For countries with excessive renewable power wouldn't it be cool to use the extra power for desalination instead of using battery storage? This creates water while reducing costs since you don't need batteries!

Combing flash distillation with nuclear would be a good combo. In flash distillation, the brine is heated, not boiled. The brine would be at a higher pressure than the steam heating it, so any leaks will be from the seawater to the secondary loop, excluding tritium transfer from the secondary loop to the brine. Not so great for the plant now getting brine in the secondary loop, but great for keeping the product water radiation free.

Good info.

Desalinated water is a solution to a lot of the worlds problems. It's a shame it hasn't become more widespread. People say it's too expensive, but the more we invest the cheaper it gets. I've seen proposals of solar powered Desal plants. Could even be used to change water tables and water cycles of otherwise dry regions. Just build water pipelines and pump excess fresh water.

The big problem with desalination is the host of imponderables-- like corrosion in the reactor coolant loops and corrosion in the brine loops. Everything looks fine from the outside until a pipe corrodes through or a valve gets stuck open or shut and then EVERYTHING has to be shut down for weeks, months, years, or forever. It's especially bad with sodium loops as the sodium remains radioactive for a very long time.

Congratulations 👏 and all the best for your success and happiness ❤️❤️

This was a primary research project for me in college!

What to do with brack water that is left over? It can damage ocean habitats.

It's a winning combination. I used to be a nuke on a US Navy submarine. The reactor is just a heat source that doesn't require hydrocarbons like oil, gas or coal. Under pressure, the very hot water from the nuclear plant is pumped inside the tubes of a steam generator that makes the steam and sends it out of the reactor compartment in secondary piping (WITHOUT radioactivity) to drive turbines to make electricity. It's a simple thing to branch off some auxiliary steam to make fresh water from sea water as we did underway. We could produce about 10 thousand gallons of fresh water daily in the 1970s which was more than enough for the power plant and potable water for a crew of 140 men. Nuclear plants should be built in seismically quiet coastal areas with associated desalinization plants to make surrounding communities and regions plenty of fresh water. By the way, when you see those big cooling towers emitting huge plumes of environmentally safe steam, remember that all this heat energy is just being wasted to the atmosphere when instead, just a small portion of this non-utilized energy resource could be used in auxiliary capacities like desalinization that could benefit the utilities as a secondary but significant source of revenue in terms of the overall nuclear power plant's business model.

Thank you, nice video! Please consider listing sources of information ( most do it below video ) so viewers can verify that this is information not entertainment..

Thorcon plan to build MSRs on barges or off shore platforms built in shipyards.

Crazy to me how nuclear is coming back to the energy debate, seeing how much safer things have become and watching the whole fossil fuel thing play out. I do hope for our future that serious thought is given to going nuclear in a bigger way.

People are going to have to wake up about nuclear. It's far safer and pollution wise it's a no brainer. Yes when safety protocols and site placements are an afterthought, bad things happen. Those incidents while severe, are few and far between. Maybe someday we will find a better alternative but until then much like the fallout series, the future is the ⚛️!

If not mistaken, based on what I read. The by-product produced by desalination is a concentrated salt water. Since we harvested the "fresh" water component, the by product which is the super salty water gets discharged into the sea. Eventually, the sea will become a "dead sea" and there goes our seafood.

Always fun to rediscover a word used internationally that has roots in your language. brackish has Dutch roots and the word brak has of course the same meaning. Funnily, when I go out in the weekend and collect a huge hangover...I also say "I'm brak".

It's easy to get caught up with scary sounding things like tritium, but it's important to remember the reason there is such wildly different environmental standards for it is that these are basically guesswork. We have no evidence for harm from it at low doses so they just pick a number that sounds good. We only have evidence of harm from extremely high doses and no one has ever had enough to kill them.

Here in New Zealand we do the opposite to desalination. At the Manapouri hydro power station, we take 510m3 of fresh water per second and dump it into the sea to produce 800MW of electricity. That's 44 million cubic meters of fresh water per day. Makes that Soudi desalination plant look tiny in comparison.

Great nuanced and balanced analysis. I especially liked that you didn't shy away from the issue of nuclear waste/contamination which a lot of proponents of nuclear fission energy conveniently leave out

The Korean SMART is a copy of the Argentine CAREM... which was designed for water desalination too. So no surprise there

What about using nuclear power to generate electricity to run a heat pump based desalination plant? Should be very efficient. The condenser side boils the water and the evaporator side of the heat pump condenses it back up. Probably very expensive though.

Molten salt/thorium reactors are far safer from meltdowns compared to uranium reactors

I probably missed this, but can these powerplants also generate power? Is the desalination only a byproduct of cooling down steam or these dont even contain turbines and generators?

Thanks!

You keep mentioning "Kazakastan" in this video. Do you mean Kazakhstan?

Could you imagine if we had put in all that alternative energy money in nuclear? We’d be carbon neutral by now with no rolling blackouts and perhaps not be in such worry of these droughts.

Tritium limit in drinking water in Finland is 100 Bq/l, not 30000

I thought this was a good idea 25 years ago. Seems a sensible use of excess power needs while simultaneously cooling reactors. In theory it would combat rising sea levels which just simply adding people (95% water) would not be enough to limit effects of melting ice. It all helps.

There was a plan in the early 1970's to build artificial islands off the coast of California, place nuclear power plants on them, and incorporate a large water desalination process. The selling points were pollution-free electricity and copious amounts of fresh water sent through undersea pipes to southern California. The islands would have had earthquake safety measures incorporated. The plan was not used for various reasons, but if it had worked as planned, it could have solved quite a few problems California suffers from now.

very interesting. I spent ten years in Saudi Arabia and used to frequent the beach near their desalt plant on the East Coast. We had two waters piped into our house, one was salty and the second 'sweet'. The sweet water was only available in the kitchen sink. that was all 20 years ago so not sure what they have now. Thank you for sharing your research.

Very good video. Except for the closing comment about renewable energy.

It’s Ka-zak-stan not kazakastan

Singapore needs such system

I recall telling my teachers and other adults 20 years ago that desalination plants would be the future as we will be able to take water from the ocean to Utah, Nevada, and also other areas for agriculture and human usage purposes. I see a future where we can transport water like we do with Oil. I don't see desalination plants to refill lake Mead or fill the rivers but to let those resources fill up on their own.

There’s another environmental concern you haven’t mentioned. Desalination obviously doesn’t remove all the water from seawater and at the end of the process you have leftover brine. This brine typically gets pumped back into the seawater source which significantly increases local salinity at the region of the outflow but also in theory could increase the entire source’s salinity over time. Besides the obvious, immediate impacts this can have on complex sea life there’s reason to be concerned about the impact of creeping salinity on phytoplankton, which globally account for 50-80% of the world’s photosynthetic conversion of CO2 to O2.

The use of reactors for desalination is only hampered by current reactors that produce very nasty waste and weapons materials. Using thorium reactors would eliminate the waste and weapons materials issue as well as be capable of desalination as part of their cooling system. The concentrated brine can be pumped into evaporation ponds and the resulting salt used for other industrial purposes or diluted with raw seawater and returned to the ocean/sea it was taken from. By building multiple plants in areas where earthquakes and tsunamis are less likely and/or building facilities able to withstand them, water and power can be provided safely and in great quantities. The cost of running thorium reactors would be much less than uranium plants due to their inherent safety and lower radiation fuels and waste.

Kazakhstan is not pronounced "Kazak-i-stan" (4:16)

A good, informative presentation free of bias. Yes, by all means consider nuclear desalination, but also consider the following: Who will finance it, & is the real cost of water going to be passed on equitably to the consumers; In a comparison with solar, can the various desal technologies be ramped back diurnally, to match supply, of will some storage be required? (My understanding is RO, for one, can be); And cost of any supply-side solution to a perceived water deficit like this should be compared with the cost of demand management initiatives.

Regarding the risk of nuclear contamination of the drinking water, would it be possible to just use the electricity generated from a nuclear power plant to power the desalinization plant eliminating all risk of nuclear contamination, as the nuclear components would never come into contact even remotely with the water?

i'm very curious if anyone has looked into using concentrated solar (mirrors, heat tower and molten metal) to conduct desalination. Seems very viable in any dry, hot desert region with access to the coast. The middle east and baja california come to mind.