Foreword: JEM Spotlight: Nuclear desalination—environmental impacts and implications for planning and monitoring activities

André P. Maïsseu

André P. Maïsseu was born in Paris, France in 1942 and is a Swiss citizen. He worked in the French nuclear industry for 30 years. Maïsseu is the founding President of the World Council of Nuclear Workers and Atoms for Peace. He is the Editor-in-chief of the Inderscience Nuclear Collection, has published several scientific books and about two hundred scientific articles and one novel. His current scientific interests are peaceful nuclear applications (production of electricity, desalination, production of hydrogen), mathematics (prime number, fuzzy logic) and thermodynamics.

Natural deaths, the principal determining factor of the value of goods or the context in which human activities take place, constrain human activities. They are the causes of the malfunctioning of the societal paradigms that have been the building blocks of humanity's history since its origins. These malfunctions simultaneously affect our physical environment, our ecosystems, the functioning and the structure of our societies, the means to the creation of wealth and of its distribution between social classes and across geographic zones.

It would seem that world resources in drinking water are no exception to this rule. Pollution and scarcity now appear to be the main parameters constraining the management of the planet's water resources. For the purpose of responding to an ever-increasing demand, as is the case with all the other planetary resources, the sole orders to be followed would seem to be: let us economise our resources and combat waste. Yet responses whose sole objective is the management of scarcity according to the canons of a politically correct sustainable development will, in reality, merely exacerbate this malfunctioning.

The real response consists in providing the means of satisfying the demand for drinking water, one of humanity's vital needs, without any restriction whatsoever.

1. From stewardship of scarcity to the development of resources

The question of the relationship between Man and Nature is recurrent in political economy. Is mankind part of nature? Is mankind master of nature? Is nature at mankind's disposal for the satisfaction of its needs? Are mankind's projects contrary to nature's projects, inasmuch as the latter may be identified and may have projects? In what way might mankind be contrary to nature? Is it useless consciousness's “absurd” sentiment that it exists, as Sartre suggests, confronted with a universe that does not know it is overwhelming, as per Pascal? Is it the generic activity of mankind that transforms the world by its knowledge, its creations and its actions? Is it work? The topical problem in philosophia perennis, the relationship between mankind and nature in the form of the theme of “rarity”, this age-old enigma, is a cardinal question for political economy, be it of neoclassical inspiration, issuing from ontological discourse, or Marxist, guiding the elaboration of a positive social science.

The whole human adventure can thus be summarised as a fierce fight against rarity, as an unequivocal relationship between man and materiality, be it a case of that essential anthropological characteristic, absolute rarity, which transcends all social or historical specificity and which targets the human condition as a whole in the sum of its relationship with nature, or the relative rarities of different objects vis-à-vis the satisfaction of needs.

This question of rarity is present in all economic analyses. Defined as a discrepancy between needs whose limits are poorly understood and limited resources, this concept of rarity evolves, according to different economic theories, either as a theoretical prerequisite, or as a reality to be reckoned with. In this collective unconscious shared by too great a number of economists and persons with political responsibility, rarity is related to as the expression of a natural law, expounded as the unbridgeable gap that separates needs from resources. In this universe, finite in the sense given it by Prigogine, in which we are enclosed according to this vision, resources are limited whereas physiological or social needs augmented by demographic pressure are limitless, whence the paradox of an abundance which is unwelcome, as it is likely to cause an increase in this discrepancy between resources and needs, making the global situation even more disastrous.

And, to satisfy humanity's needs for water, the only response proposed is to limit its consumption, to adapt the consumption of drinking water to the available resources.

There is an alternative to this Malthusian approach: the development of resources in order to satisfy needs.

2. Water in abundance, everywhere and for everyone

This is urgent.

The issue of the restrictive management of water resources that is currently considered will in the medium term exacerbate scarcities. Water should not be economised. On the contrary, it should be spread in profusion. The decision that prohibits the watering of gardens to safeguard levels of ground water in the short term compromises the existence of ground water in the medium term! In the medium and long term, the only valid response does not consist of limiting the flow of water, but rather, on the contrary, increasing it as much as possible.

Some people say that rapid demographic increase, coupled simultaneously with industrialisation, urbanisation, agricultural intensification, and lifestyles that consume ever greater quantities of water, will lead to a global water crisis. Water scarcity will proliferate everywhere as a result of the demographic boom and urbanisation. The goal of water for everyone, in particular in the developing countries, and in urban megapoles, will be inaccessible.

Wrong!

The vision of a planet Earth constrained by the spectre of scarcities must be rejected; this Malthusian vision of the world can be rejected from the moment Lavoisier's law, “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”, is applied in an open system according to the laws pronounced by Prigogine, and this is all the more true regarding water as water is constantly being recycled.

Water is not disappearing from our planet. It does not escape to the outer limits of the universe, to be lost forever. Water is always there, in one form or in another. Admittedly, fresh water only represents 2.5% of the total stock of water on the planet, the other 97.5% being salty; admittedly 2/3 of the fresh water on the planet is concentrated in glaciers and snow; admittedly 1/3 of this drinkable water is in underground sheets that are difficult to access; admittedly 0.007% of all the planet's water is available for life on Earth, in rivers, streams, reservoirs and lakes.

The answer is simple: it suffices to desalinate sea water to make it consumable; to render it fit for the multiple needs not only of humans but also for all this nature that surrounds us, on which our life depends, and thanks to which we prosper. It would suffice to process one millionth part of the planetary sea water for the water issue to be resolved. Previously, the Sahara was fertile. Thousands of animals lived there and bathed in numerous lakes and rivers. Why should what was the case before, not become so again?

We have the necessary technology: sea-water desalination and wastewater cleansing technologies have been understood, mastered and deployed for decades. With the decisive coupling of nuclear technology with desalination technology, humanity now has the perfect and complete answer to the problem of drinking water.

The technology exists. The skills are there and profitability is too. Depending on economic and financial conditions, a return on investment is guaranteed in between 10 and 12 years.

Who would dare claim that the world lacks the money to satisfy humankind's water needs when billions have been poured out to save the international banking system? Who could be so cynical, so dishonest, so brass-necked, so characterised by bad faith as to dare to advance this argument when a deluge of billions has flooded the coffers of the banks, bled dry by whatever dubious manoeuvre?

It would be sufficient for a twentieth part of the financial manna that has been so generously distributed these last months by the world to be devoted to the investments necessary for the establishment of nuclear-powered desalination plants where they are needed for there no longer to be any desert on the surface of the globe.

In their article entitled “Nuclear desalination: environmental impacts and implications for planning and monitoring activities”, Ibrahim Khamis and Vladimir Anastasov, two experts responsible for nuclear-powered desalination with the IAEA, take stock of nuclear desalination and brilliantly explain the good technical, economic, sociological and ecological grounds for nuclear desalination.

Footnote

† Part of a themed issue dealing with water and water related issues.

---