Economic Assessment of the Possible Desalination Processes for the First Unit of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

The problem of ensuring the continuously growing needs of people for freshwater is becoming more acute in Iran. In order to resolve the serious water crisis in arid regions of the country near the Gulf, several desalination units have been used. However, most of the installed units of seawater desalination are based on fossil fuels consumption, which suffers from several disadvantages. According to the demand for clean energy to provide water and electricity, nuclear technology is gaining higher attention as compared to other energy sources. Bushehr NPP as the first commercial nuclear reactor in the country can be included the establishment of a large-scale desalination plant. In this study, after reviewing pertinent aspects of commercial desalination technologies, the history of seawater desalination in Iran is presented. This paper is focused on economic assessment of coupling the Bushehr NPP with different types of desalination systems, namely, Multiple Effect Desalination (MED), Multi-Stage Desalination (MSF), Reverse Osmosis (RO), and RO + MSF, RO + MED (hybrid methods) by using the Desalination Economic Evaluation Program (DEEP) package. By considering the obtained results and advantages of hybrid methods, RO + MED process with thermal/RO ratio of 0.7 and the total capacity of 150 000 m3/day is suggested.