November 21, 2007 (LPAC)--Nuclear power has the energy flux density necessary for the large-scale desalination to provide the freshwater that a growing world population will need, without depleting fossil energy sources, concluded scientists at the Trombay, India, Symposium on Desalination and Water Re-Use. The proceedings of this conference appear in a just-released special issue of the International Journal of Nuclear Desalination.

B.M. Misra, the co-editor of the Journal, notes that the supposedly cost-effective solar, wind, and wave power approaches to desalination "are not viable" for the large-scale freshwater production needed to supply the 3.5 billion people who are predicted to face severe water shortages by the year 2025.

In his preface to the issue, P.K. Terawi from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) reports that 2 million children now die a year from water-borne diseases, and that more than half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients with these diseases. "Water-borne diseases cost the Indian economy 73 million working days a year," he wrote, and "many of these diseases can be prevented by safe drinking water."

S.S. Verma, of the Department of Physics at SLIET in Punjab, reported that small floating nuclear plants could be sited offshore near densely populated coastal areas, to provide cheap electricity while powering a desalination plant with their excess heat. "Companies are already in the process of developing a special desalination platform for attachment to Floating Nuclear Power Plants," he said.

Another new approach reported by A. Raha and colleagues at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Trombay, is to use Low-Temperature Evaporation for desalination, which could make use of low-pressure steam or low-quality waste heat from a nuclear power plant. Safety, reliability, and viable economics have already been demonstrated, Raha said, and BARC recently commissioned a low-temperature desalination plant to produce 50 tons per day of freshwater.