Water is not only indispensable to life. « Sufficient » drinking water resources are necessary for the development of humanity. All the civilisations that have marked the history of humanity have risen from a great river. They could only develop because their drinking water needs were satisfied : the Nile created Egypt, the Euphrates nourished Mesopotamia , the Indus gave its name to India, and China is the daughter of the Yellow River. Nearer home, western Europe could only develop because of its extremely favourable rainfall pattern. As to the United States, it owes its formidable development to the gigantic river basins, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Missouri combined, that formed its backbone.

Water is not only indispensable to industrial development , to economic growth, to social wellbeing, it is also indispensable for the preservation of natural resources. Yet uncontrolled water can be the worst of plagues, against which human ingenuity is helpless. For a state, a region, a civilisation, securing an adequate water supply has always been one of the indispensable prerequisites, not only to its development, but frankly, to its survival.

While the planet’s water reserves are gigantic, and estimated at 1 304 100 teratons, freshwater reserves only account for 2.82% of this figure. These reserves are also very unequally distributed. One-third is concentrated in ten basins (Amazon, Zaire, Yangzijang, Orinoco, Mississippi, Yenisei, Parana, Lena, Amur, Ob). 20% of humanity, in other words, above 1.25 billion persons, live without drinking water at an affordable price. Three to four million people die every year of diseases linked to the poor quality of the water they drink (diarrhoea, malaria, schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis, helminthus).

Agriculture consumes 70% of the world’s freshwater, industry 20% and households 10%, although this breakdown can vary enormously from one country to another (in France, agriculture only consumes16% of drinking water compared with 69% for industry and 15% for households). Between 1900 and 1995, drinking water demand grew twice as fast as the world population. By 2025, this demand should grow another 40%. In fifty years, the Canadian Agency for International Development has predicted that some forty countries could lack drinking water. In many parts of the world, the discrepancy between freshwater needs and availabilities has already made any possibility of development, or even survival, haphazard, and these difficulties are now spreading through growing pollution to areas of the planet where such problems were inconceivable just a few decades ago.

A dozen areas of potential conflict can already be identified on the planet associated with the problem of water, including international, local and city/countryside conflicts.

If nothing concrete is done in the coming years, these zones of potential conflict, that will probably have degenerated into real conflict, will be swelled by the stream of serious malfunctions connected with the growing impoverishment of the planet, further exacerbated by the discrepancy between drinking water needs and resources.

An essentially socio-political obstacle

An answer is at hand, based on the simple finding that a virtually inexhaustible reserve of water exists on earth - seawater. But this seawater has to be made drinkable, and then made available to those who need it.

Seawater desalination raises absolutely no technical problems. The technologies exist, and can be classed in two main categories : distillation and reverse osmosis.

These technologies are fully under control just about everywhere in the world. Some industrial facilities have been using them for many years. Seawater desalination know-how is already a proven asset.

The obstacles to a broad use of these metatechnologies are therefore not technical.. The obstacles lie at two complementary levels : Seawater desalination is very energy intensive ; and seawater desalination can be very expensive. Energy and capital are needed to desalinate seawater. Unfortunately, drinking water shortage, energy shortage and lack of capital very often go hand in hand, complicating the problem and making its resolution more difficult.

The answer to the water needs of humanity is therefore directly connected to the resolution of its energy needs. Providing an answer to one automatically implies an answer to the other. This answer has to be synergistic and not antinomanian, if it is to last, in other words, with a view to sustainable development. To satisfy its water needs, a community cannot be faced with the dilemma of having to sacrifice energy resources that it does not enjoy in sufficient quantity. The answer must therefore avoid the pitfall of the optimisation of a substitutive allocation of energy resources.

If we add a new constraint to this one, namely, the necessary limitation of greenhouse gas emissions, whose repercussions on the climate are already perceptible and which harbor the potential to create new threats to the future of humanity, solutions based on the use of fossil energies can only be envisioned with dire misgivings.

Among available energy sources, nuclear energy enjoys a considerable advantage : depending on the technology selected, seawater desalination is merely the by-product of electricity generation, with all its attendant consequences for the total investment necessary and the final production cost per liter of drinking water, as well as kWh cost.

Industrial seawater desalination installations have already been operating for many years in Japan and Kazakhstan. Projects are under way in many other countries of the planet. Virtually all the nuclearized countries have examined this question, although progress in the answers varies significantly. For some, the studies have not advanced beyond the paper stage. For others, the prototype stage has already been completed. Note that all the countries that have developed a nuclear navy are familiar with the necessary technologies.

The true obstacle to the resolution of the problem of water accordingly emerges in its intrinsic form. It is based on extremist societal behaviors that categorically oppose anything containing the slightest hint of nuclear energy. While the constraints are financial, the obstacle to be overcome is primarily socio-political.