I used to work in the nuclear power industry. When I came on board out of college in my first month or so I was given a bunch of books to read and free time to

I used to work in the nuclear power industry. When I came on board out of college in my first month or so I was given a bunch of books to read and free time to read the history of the company and industry in the company library. I came across a 1980's feasibility study to use nuclear power for desalinization in a boiling water reactor. The tldr of the report was "not economic" so the project died. I asked my boss about it since he was around at the time and he hadn't work on the project but did hear about it. He said the study was paid for by Saudi Arabia and that the deal killer wasn't the cost of nuclear heat but fouling of the pipes from mineral deposits in the heat ex-changer and desalination chamber. The coatings killed the thermodynamic efficiencies of the system so there would be really high maintenance costs for continually cleaning and/or replacing the pipes. Like a lot of engineering projects it was a material science problem but nobody wanted to pay for the research to solve.