12 ms·

In 2022, 85% of the country's drinkable water was produced through desalination of saltwater and brackish water. If there is a real need, and a will to address

In 2022, 85% of the country's drinkable water was produced through desalination of saltwater and brackish water. If there is a real need, and a will to address it, we have everything we need to to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...

ramesh31 3y ago
>In 2022, 85% of the country's drinkable water was produced through desalination of saltwater and brackish water. Israel does this by burning massive quantities of fossil fuels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Israel#/media/File:Energy_consumption_by_source,_Israel.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Israel#/media/File:E... It's not even remotely economical without huge government subsidies. Completely untenable with current technology for poorer countries, or anyone that cares at all about carbon emissions.
- tguvot 3y ago
  You can't drink hydrocarbons.
- ALittleLight 3y ago
  Couldn't they just replace fossil fuels with nuclear and solve the emissions issue?
  - tguvot 3y ago
    Not sure that largish, easily targetable, nuclear facility on a tiny spot of land is a good idea.
    - zirgs 3y ago
      They already have one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres_Negev_Nuclear_Research_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres_Negev_Nuclear_Res...
      - tguvot 3y ago
        officially it's a textile factory :) on a serious note, it's a smallish research/etc facility. probably most of things are as deep underground as possible. it's not same thing as full blown nuclear power plant
- jbm 3y ago
  Is there a practical reason why it would be difficult to do this with solar power? Is this a process that does not adapt well to intermittent power sources?
  - ramesh31 3y ago
    >Is there a practical reason why it would be difficult to do this with solar power? Same reason it's hard to do anything with solar. Grid scale storage is an unsolved problem.
    - jbm 3y ago
      I wasn't too clear about what I meant, but is storage even necessary here? For example, would there be an issue if the desalination process was left in an intermediate state for X hours / days while power is intermittent? I wonder if there are more energy-expensive desalinization processes that are better to use with intermittent power sources, like solar.
      - tguvot 3y ago
        desalination plants are built to produce specific amount of water in order to cope with demand. if you going to stop desalinating while there is no solar, you need more plants in order to desalinate more water during the day. also, in general, even during day, solar not always available.
        janalsncm 3y ago
        Sure. So if for example your city has an average of 3400 hours of sun per year like Jerusalem does, and you know how much water you need to produce in the 8760 hours of the year, you can calculate how much to desalinate during sunny hours. Excesses can be used for excess water or sold back to the grid.
        tguvot 3y ago
        desalination plants don't serve one city. they serve country. also, in general, it's not economical to build plants that do not work 24/7 unless you are country that can spend x3 to overbuild and keep equipment idle Israel btw supplies desalinated water to Jordan and PA.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > It's not even remotely economical without huge government subsidies. Why shouldn't drinking water of all things receive subsidies? Why must drinking water be a for-profit enterprise?
  - ramesh31 3y ago
    >Why must drinking water be a for-profit enterprise? It's about sustainability, not profit. Of course wealthy nations can (literally) burn enough money turning fossil fuels into water to make their population comfortable and happy. But most can't, and the externalized cost is unimaginable at a global scale.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      Clean energy exists, it would require more subsidies but so what?
      - dylan604 3y ago
        Wind powered desalination seems like a perfect combo seeing as it's pretty much always windy on the coast. California's May gray and June gloom makes me thing would keep solar from my first option.
        bsder 3y ago
        HVDC links to El Centro and Arizona would make solar just fine for Southern California.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - ramesh31 3y ago
        >Clean energy exists, it would require more subsidies but so what? Easy to say when your government can afford the subsidies. But the vast majority of freshwater-insecure nations will never be able to do this without a 10x technological breakthrough.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  A lot of public goods are that way. What you’ve stated is practically a tautology. “Government subsidy” just means the public is paying for it. Other things that fall into that category are universal education, the military, and police.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Fresh water isnt a "public good", technically or economically speaking. A "public good" is a commodity that is neither rival or excludable. This means that the quanity or quanity is not deminished by people using it, and that you cant prevent anyone from using it. A lighthouse or public radio are examples of public goods. Fresh water, economically speaking, is a classic private good. It gets consumed as someone uses it, and can people can be easily restricted from acess if they dont pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)#Definition_matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)#Defini...
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      *quantity or quality
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Nuclear energy has entered the chat Why not use nuclear power plants to power desalination plants? I even wonder if some of the salt from the brine could be fed into certain types of nuclear reactors (Molten Salt Reactors and the like, possibly) making it an even more symbiotic relationship
  - anamexis 3y ago
    The OP brushes on this
  - acidburnNSA 3y ago
    Massive-scale desalination with nuclear has been proposed for decades by many nations. Here's a proposal (originally pushed by JFK) for using them to transform the Middle East into a luscious mecca, thereby solving any arable land scarcity issues (from 1967) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b643596&view=1up&seq=9&skin=2021 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b643596&view=1up... More modern take here: https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclear-desalination https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclea...
- yyyk 3y ago
  Note that the large increase in the graph predates seawater desalinization. If you start at 2005 (first large seawater desalinization facility per wiki) and assume all the increase is due to desalinization (definitely untrue, but simplifying), the difference isn't so large.
LordDragonfang 3y ago
>85% of the country's drinkable water "the country" in this context is Israel, since HN truncates the wiki link right before that.
- wiz21c 3y ago
  OK, so we got a country that needs machines to survive (no desalination plant, no water to drink). Maybe it's time to understand that it's not a long term strategy ? That may be they should move to another place where water is naturally more abundant ?
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > may be they should move As if immigration isn't a hugely fraught political topic. And you might want to consider how many people moved to Israel and why.
  - patrickmcnamara 3y ago
    Every country needs lots of machines to survive. We'd all starve and freeze to death pretty quickly without 'em.

ramesh31 3y ago

>In 2022, 85% of the country's drinkable water was produced through desalination of saltwater and brackish water. Israel does this by burning massive quantities of fossil fuels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Israel#/media/File:Energy_consumption_by_source,_Israel.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Israel#/media/File:E... It's not even remotely economical without huge government subsidies. Completely untenable with current technology for poorer countries, or anyone that cares at all about carbon emissions.

tguvot 3y ago
You can't drink hydrocarbons.
ALittleLight 3y ago
Couldn't they just replace fossil fuels with nuclear and solve the emissions issue?
- tguvot 3y ago
  Not sure that largish, easily targetable, nuclear facility on a tiny spot of land is a good idea.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    They already have one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres_Negev_Nuclear_Research_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres_Negev_Nuclear_Res...
    - tguvot 3y ago
      officially it's a textile factory :) on a serious note, it's a smallish research/etc facility. probably most of things are as deep underground as possible. it's not same thing as full blown nuclear power plant
jbm 3y ago
Is there a practical reason why it would be difficult to do this with solar power? Is this a process that does not adapt well to intermittent power sources?
- ramesh31 3y ago
  >Is there a practical reason why it would be difficult to do this with solar power? Same reason it's hard to do anything with solar. Grid scale storage is an unsolved problem.
  - jbm 3y ago
    I wasn't too clear about what I meant, but is storage even necessary here? For example, would there be an issue if the desalination process was left in an intermediate state for X hours / days while power is intermittent? I wonder if there are more energy-expensive desalinization processes that are better to use with intermittent power sources, like solar.
    - tguvot 3y ago
      desalination plants are built to produce specific amount of water in order to cope with demand. if you going to stop desalinating while there is no solar, you need more plants in order to desalinate more water during the day. also, in general, even during day, solar not always available.
      - janalsncm 3y ago
        Sure. So if for example your city has an average of 3400 hours of sun per year like Jerusalem does, and you know how much water you need to produce in the 8760 hours of the year, you can calculate how much to desalinate during sunny hours. Excesses can be used for excess water or sold back to the grid.
        tguvot 3y ago
        desalination plants don't serve one city. they serve country. also, in general, it's not economical to build plants that do not work 24/7 unless you are country that can spend x3 to overbuild and keep equipment idle Israel btw supplies desalinated water to Jordan and PA.
mcpackieh 3y ago
> It's not even remotely economical without huge government subsidies. Why shouldn't drinking water of all things receive subsidies? Why must drinking water be a for-profit enterprise?
- ramesh31 3y ago
  >Why must drinking water be a for-profit enterprise? It's about sustainability, not profit. Of course wealthy nations can (literally) burn enough money turning fossil fuels into water to make their population comfortable and happy. But most can't, and the externalized cost is unimaginable at a global scale.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Clean energy exists, it would require more subsidies but so what?
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Wind powered desalination seems like a perfect combo seeing as it's pretty much always windy on the coast. California's May gray and June gloom makes me thing would keep solar from my first option.
      - bsder 3y ago
        HVDC links to El Centro and Arizona would make solar just fine for Southern California.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - ramesh31 3y ago
      >Clean energy exists, it would require more subsidies but so what? Easy to say when your government can afford the subsidies. But the vast majority of freshwater-insecure nations will never be able to do this without a 10x technological breakthrough.
janalsncm 3y ago
A lot of public goods are that way. What you’ve stated is practically a tautology. “Government subsidy” just means the public is paying for it. Other things that fall into that category are universal education, the military, and police.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Fresh water isnt a "public good", technically or economically speaking. A "public good" is a commodity that is neither rival or excludable. This means that the quanity or quanity is not deminished by people using it, and that you cant prevent anyone from using it. A lighthouse or public radio are examples of public goods. Fresh water, economically speaking, is a classic private good. It gets consumed as someone uses it, and can people can be easily restricted from acess if they dont pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)#Definition_matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)#Defini...
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    *quantity or quality
no_wizard 3y ago
Nuclear energy has entered the chat Why not use nuclear power plants to power desalination plants? I even wonder if some of the salt from the brine could be fed into certain types of nuclear reactors (Molten Salt Reactors and the like, possibly) making it an even more symbiotic relationship
- anamexis 3y ago
  The OP brushes on this
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  Massive-scale desalination with nuclear has been proposed for decades by many nations. Here's a proposal (originally pushed by JFK) for using them to transform the Middle East into a luscious mecca, thereby solving any arable land scarcity issues (from 1967) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b643596&view=1up&seq=9&skin=2021 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b643596&view=1up... More modern take here: https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclear-desalination https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-electric-applications/nuclea...
yyyk 3y ago
Note that the large increase in the graph predates seawater desalinization. If you start at 2005 (first large seawater desalinization facility per wiki) and assume all the increase is due to desalinization (definitely untrue, but simplifying), the difference isn't so large.

LordDragonfang 3y ago

>85% of the country's drinkable water "the country" in this context is Israel, since HN truncates the wiki link right before that.

wiz21c 3y ago
OK, so we got a country that needs machines to survive (no desalination plant, no water to drink). Maybe it's time to understand that it's not a long term strategy ? That may be they should move to another place where water is naturally more abundant ?
- pjc50 3y ago
  > may be they should move As if immigration isn't a hugely fraught political topic. And you might want to consider how many people moved to Israel and why.
- patrickmcnamara 3y ago
  Every country needs lots of machines to survive. We'd all starve and freeze to death pretty quickly without 'em.