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Role of Nuclear Desalination in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammed S. Aljohani1*, AbdulRahman A. F. AbdulFattah1, and Abdullah I. Almarshad3 1) Nuclear Engineering Dept., College of Engineering, KAAU, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 2) Atomic Energy Institute, KACST, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia constitutes approximately 80% of the Arabian Peninsula with a total area of 2,250,974 km2. Saudi Arabia is considered a desert land, with a dry climate and no running water exists. The topography of the country varies drastically from one place to another. As a result of that, temperature, humidity and precipitation range from one region to the other. Temperature varies from less than 0 C in the high elevation areas during winter and reaches up to 48o C during summer months. The average annual rainfall is about 95 mm all over the kingdom per year. Among all other regions, the southern region receives the highest rainfall. The eastern and western regions are very humid where humidity reaches up to 75% during summer and drops to 65% during winter. Water resources in the Kingdom can be broadly divided into four categories, surface water, underground water, desalinated water and treated wastewater. Adequate rainfalls in the southern and western regions are the main sources of surface water in the Kingdom. In order to store surface water efficiently, dams were constructed in some regions of the Kingdom. Underground water can be divided into two categories, renewable and non-renewable. Most of the renewable underground water is used in house and agricultural uses. Saudi Arabia has 25.9% of the desalination plants in the world. These plants produce 1,938,864 m3 of distilled water per day and 3,965 MW of electricity. The desalinated water is mainly used for drinking and house use. To transport water from some desalination plants to remote areas, the Saline Water Conversion Company has established pipeline systems with a total length of approximately 2000 km. Treated wastewater is considered in its early stages of development and supplies only 0.8 percent of the current needs. Water consumption in the Kingdom can be divided into house, industrial, and agricultural uses. The underground water conservation is very important for a country like Saudi Arabia because of its limited water resources. The underground water reservoir carries approximately 337,000 million m3 of water at a depth around 300 m. When adding the minor reservoir to the above quantity it becomes approximately 500,000 million m3 of water. Many hydrological, economical and geological studies have been investigated to satisfy the ever-increasing water demand in the Kingdom. Some of the solutions offered are constructing water channels, building water dams, digging wells and other solutions depending on the hydrology and geology of the region. Nuclear desalination can be defined as: the production of potable water from seawater in an integrated complex in which both the nuclear reactor and the desalination system are located on a common site, the relevant facilities and services shared, and the energy used for the desalination process is produced by the nuclear rector. Since the early 1960's, scientists have agreed that the nuclear energy would be ideal for desalination of water because nuclear reactors can produce tremendous amount of heat. The heat source can be either utilized directly to evaporator, or converted to electric energy to drive the reverse osmosis (RO) desalination units. However, The coupling of nuclear reactors with desalination processes has taken many years of studies because of contamination problems. The same reasons behind the use of nuclear power for electricity generation also apply for seawater desalination. These reasons are, for example, economic competitiveness in areas that lack inexpensive hydropower or fossil fuel resources, energy supply diversification, conservation of fossil fuel recourses, promotion of technological development, and environmental protection by avoiding emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse effects. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) studies (TECDOC-666) examined costs for different types of applications. These assessments have shown that nuclear desalination could be technically and economically feasible. About 500 reactor years of operational experience from nuclear co-generation and heat - only reactors are now available in twelve countries. Nuclear energy has been utilized for seawater desalination in Japan and in Kazakhstan. In Japan the desalination plants are mostly for on-site water supply, however, in Kazakhstan supplies water to nearly population center. Although most industrialized countries are in favor of large nuclear power plants for domestic application, there is a growing interest in small & medium reactors (SMR's) in several Member States. The small and medium plants would fit better to smaller electricity grids and would better match the rates of projected growth in electricity and water demand. Countries that are suffering from water shortages usually have grids for which SMR's could be an appropriate choice for electricity and seawater desalination. Many different SMR types of plants have been designed. Vendors have offered these reactors as possible options for the coupling with desalination processes. The options identification program was initiated in 1996 to identify and define the practical options for demonstration of desalination using nuclear energy. The IAEA has developed a program to identify options for nuclear desalination and to demonstrate any related technology. This main objective of the program was to build confidence (through the design, construction, operation, and maintenance) and to prove that nuclear desalination can be technically and economically feasible. Another main objective is to prove that nuclear desalination is safe and reliable. A wide range of possible reactor types and desalination technologies can be selected using the Option Identification Program. The MED and RO desalination processes were found to be most promising because of the relatively low energy consumption and investment costs, as well as high reliability, MED and RO desalination have been found to be the most promising desalination processes. MSF process has been excluded because MED process has many advantages over MSF process. The lower energy consumption, less sensitive to corrosion and scaling, partial load operability, and more flexibility have made the MED process more attractive than MSF process. The screening resulted in three options, which used the well-proven cooled reactors and desalination technologies. These options are: RO desalination in combination with a nuclear power reactor being constructed or in an advanced design stage with construction expected in the near term. The preferred capacity of the rector would be in the medium-size range. RO desalination, as in, above, in construction with a currently operating reactor. Some minor design modifications may be required. MED desalination in combination with a small reactor. Nuclear desalination plants in Kazakhstan and Japan are operating for years. Besides this experience many countries have shown interest in nuclear desalination through several designs and studies. Such countries are: China, India, the republic of Korea, Morocco and the Russian Federation. This continuing international interest in nuclear desalination forecasts a high potential market for the introduction and commercial development of nuclear desalination. In this study, the role of nuclear desalination in Saudi Arabia was investigated. A water and electricity demand forecast between the years 2000 and 2025 was made for the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia and all the necessary input data for the DEEP computer code were collected. The DEEP computer code was run for several options of energy sources such as: Pressurized Water reactor, PWR (600 MWe). Small Pressurized water Reactor, SPWR (160 MWth). Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor, PHWR (450 MWe). Heat Reactor, HR (200 MWth). Gas Turbine, GT (125 MWe or 175 MWe). Saudi Arabia is somehow different than other countries. The utility organizations such as water are constructed and run by the government. The construction of these utilities is usually done with no interest rates. However, most of the utility organizations are going in the direction of privatization. The water utility seems to continue under the control of the government. Due to this reason, two scenarios were investigated, the first assumes no interest and discount rates and the second assumes interest and discount rates equal to 8%. The scenario with zero interest and discount rates assumes that the water utility will continue under the control of the government and the scenario with interest and discount rates of 8% assumes that water utility will be privatized.