Nuclear Power Technology Development Section

NUCLEAR DESALINATION

Water Supply & Demand

Seventy percent of the planet is covered with water, but only 2.5% of that is fresh water. Nearly 70% of this fresh water is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland. Most of the rest is in the form of soil moisture or in deep inaccessible aquifers or falls at the wrong time and place – in monsoons and floods. Less than 0.08% of the world’s water is thus readily accessible for direct human use, and even that is very unevenly distributed.

Currently an estimated 1.1 billion people lack safe water. The resulting human toll is roughly 3.3 billion cases of illness and 2 million deaths per year. Moreover, even as the world’s population grows, the limited easily accessible freshwater resources in rivers, lakes and shallow groundwater aquifers are dwindling as a result of over-exploitation and water quality degradation. According to “business-as-usual” forecasts, about two thirds of the world’s population will face shortages of clean freshwater by 2025.

Areas projected to experience water stress
(International Water Management Institute, 2000)

Better water conservation, water management, pollution control and water reclamation are all part of the solution to projected water stress. So too are new sources of fresh water, including the desalination of seawater. Desalination technologies have been well established since the mid-20^th century and widely deployed in the Middle East and North Africa. The contracted capacity of desalination plants was 34 Million m³/d worldwide as of 2001 (IDA statistics) and has since been increasing by an annual average of 1 Million m3/d.

Please contact A.Badulescu@iaea.org for questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: March, 2004