Rusatom Overseas engages world’s leading experts to create new generation desalination facilities

World’s leading experts on desalination technologies joined the Rusatom Overseas Expert Council on Desalination that had its first meeting on September 17 in Moscow. The Council will deal with tasks aimed at development of best technological solutions for Rusatom Overseas’s major customers in water and water treatment markets of various countries.
 
Among the members of the Council are doctors of sciences, academicians, professors, leading global specialists in desalination technologies with unique experience in design and technical evaluation of desalination facilities. Among the Expert Council’s participants are Evgeny Velikhov, President of Kurchatov Institute and academician of the Academy of Sciences of Russia, Yuri Rakhmanin, Director of the Research Institute of Human Ecology and Environmental Health, and Evgeny Muralev, Director of the MAEK-Kazatomprom Center for Innovative Technologies (Kazakhstan).
 
Evgeny Velikhov, Member of the Expert Council on Desalination, President of Kurchatov Institute, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences mentioned:
“The modern world needs fresh water as much as it needs energy. Over two billion people already live in areas with water shortages, and water deficit will continue to worsen in the next decades. Efficient management of strategic water resources is becoming a top priority task in many countries’ political agenda. Russia has unique competencies and historical experience in using nuclear energy to produce fresh water by means of thermal desalination. Development of this area by Russian Nuclear Energy Corporation Rosatom is an important element of work with foreign partners”.
 
“Foreign customers are interested in getting the best ready-made solution for water desalination with predictable final product cost, especially for mobile (movable) technologies. The Expert Council on Desalination will allow us to quickly and efficiently develop such solutions for each client based on the specific needs. Flexible approach to interaction with potential customers is important to Rusatom Overseas: we are prepared not only to construct a desalination facility based on nuclear technologies, but to operate it and ensure financing, too. With this approach, our aim is to become leaders in the global nuclear market”, said Dzhomart Aliev, Rusatom Overseas CEO.
 
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In accordance with the existing statistics about two billion people in the world suffer from lack of fresh water. At the same time, major population growth rate in the coming decades is expected in the regions that are already affected by shortages of fresh water – Latin America, Africa, Middle East and South East Asia.

In 2000, the United Nations established its eight Millennium Development Goals one of which is to ensure environmental sustainability. This goal includes reduction of the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water as one of its targets. 

Desalination technologies can also be used to produce water for agricultural and industrial needs. International cooperation on water issues in the world is implemented in the framework of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Water Council. ROSATOM focuses on the technologies of multiple effect distillation (MED technologies) which copy natural processes  of evaporation and condensation of sea water. As well as other desalination technologies, MED technologies require significant amount of energy, and stable operation of desalination facilities depends on security of energy supply. The unique nuclear desalination facility that allows to desalinate water in industrial scale volumes is located in the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, on the Caspian sea. The facility operated on the based of the three-circuit reactor BN-350 and produced up to 120 thousand cubic meters of fresh water per day.