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Economics of Sea Water Desalination With Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Other Energy Sources : The EURODESAL Project Simon Nisan�, Linda Volpi�, Nelson Martins7, Olga Asuar-Alonso�, Bogdan Bielak�, Gianfranco Caruso4, Luciano Cinotti5, J. Roger Humphries6, Antonio Naviglio4, CEA, CEN Cadarache, DER/SERI (France) Empresarios Agrupados Internacional, SA (Spain) FRAMATOME ANP (France) DINCE, Universita di Roma � La Sapienza � (Italy) ANSALDO Nucleare (Italy) CANDESAL Technologies (Canada) IRRADIARE (Portugal) Around the time horizon 2020-2030, the shortage of water supply for drinking and irrigation purposes would be a major problem in many countries of the North Mediterranean such as Greece, Italy (southern regions and islands), Portugal (Alentejo and Algarve regions and islands such as Porto Santo, Corvo etc.) and Spain (southern and eastern regions ). Other states in the region, such as Malta and Cyprus would also suffer from acute water shortages. For the entire Mediterranean region, conservative estimates indicate a shortage of water of about 10 million m3/day. In this context, sea water desalination is a very attractive and sustainable alternative for the solution of the water shortage problem However, over the long term, desalination with fossil energy sources would not be sufficient or advisable: fossil fuels reserves are finite and must be conserved for other essential uses whereas demands for desalted water would continue to increase; furthermore, the combustion of fossil fuels would produce large amounts of greenhouse gases and toxic emissions. A sustainable solution could thus only be provided by nuclear energy and, to a certain extent, by renewable energy systems. These considerations have been the motivating force behind the launching of the EURODESAL project, under the aegis of the EC, and currently being carried out by a consortium comprising of 5 EU and Canadian industrials and 2 EU R&D organisations. Major results of the project, discussed in detail in the full paper, cover in particular the following : Consistent technical feasibility studies with 3 nuclear reactors: the French operating PWR 900 and the two innovative reactors under development, the AP600 and the GT-MHR. These reactors were coupled to two desalination processes : MED (Multiple effect distillation) and the RO (Reverse Osmosis). Improvement of the efficiencies of the above couplings through innovative utilisation of the heat, normally lost to the heat sinks in PWRs. Coherent evaluation of the specific desalination costs obtained with the help of the newly developed CEA code SEMER (for power plant cost calculations) and the IAEA code DEEP (for the desalination cost calculations, with input of power costs from SEMER) ; comparison of the results with two fossil energy based systems : the 600 MWe Pulverised Coal plant (PC) and the 700 MWe Gas Turbine, Combined Cycle system,(CC) Preliminary safety analysis of the above mentioned integrated nuclear desalination systems. At the end of the project, in June 2002, detailed technical and economic assessment results will be used to lay the foundations of a demonstration nuclear desalination project for the South of Europe and, eventually, for other regions of the world. These results will be an integral part of the full paper. Analysis of the first results leads to some highly encouraging conclusions : Specific desalination costs ($/m3 of desalted water) for nuclear systems such as the GT-MHR, AP600 and the French PWR900 (reference base case), coupled to MED (Multiple effect Distillation) or the RO (Reverse Osmosis) processes, are 20 to 30 % lower as compared to the corresponding desalination costs from PC and CC. Even in the most unfavourable scenarios for nuclear energy (discount rates � 10%, fossil fuel costs < 25 $/t) the nuclear options with innovative reactors remain competitive. With the high performance coupling schemes developed by EURODESAL partners, the gains in specific desalination costs of nuclear systems are increased by another 10-15 %. Analysis was carried out on basis of many own researches and date received by other authors/