Economic evaluation of 20,000 M3/Day seawater desalination coupling with floating reactor nuclear power plant

Abstract

The coupling of floating nuclear reactor with different desalination processes was economically evaluated by using a desalination economic evaluation program (DEEP-5) software and a method of levelized annualized production water cost. Three desalination processes, namely, Multi-effect distillation (MED), multi-stage flash (MSF) or reverse osmosis (RO). The capacity of the plant was 20,000m3/day and its energy source was 100MWt nuclear power plant. The analysis indicated that water costs with the RO process have stronger economic competitive comparing to distillation processes, without regard to changes in water quality. The sensitivity analysis results showed that the sensitivity factors affecting the cost of desalinated water are, in order, discount rate, interest rate, Specific Construction Cost and Condensing temperature.