Going Nuclear to Desalinate Seawater

Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink. Humans need freshwater and getting enough of it is an ever-present challenge.

Yet the earth is covered in water! Over half of the planet is ocean! The problem of course is that you cannot drink it because it is too salty.

Desalination is the process of removing salts from salty sea and brackish water to produce freshwater. The goal is simple, but the technologies are complicated and energy intensive. And we often power these processes with oil.

Ideally, we do not want to burn any more fossil fuels to get this water. And that is why people sometimes want to use nuclear energy to power the whole process.

Errata:
10:00 - Finland is part of the EU and thus is subject to EU tritiated water limits. Thanks to Axis for pointing this out.

Links:

[phlodel]

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.

[nictamer]

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.

[CatFish]

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)

[Jim_]

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

[AlexBesogonov]

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.

[StevieinSF]

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.

[SubvertTheState]

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.

[mariuscheek]

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

[stephanhazeu]

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...

[GeneralThargor]

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.

[ristekostadinov]

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.

[maarten]

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

[RenegadeRanga]

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.

[TheColinputer]

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

[Hossak]

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.

[bernardsulman]

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.

[DanBurgaud]

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.

[PlanetFrosty]

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

[punditgi]

Most informative. Thanks for the video!

[exportedafrican]

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.