Experience and prospects for nuclear heat applications other than power generation

Nuclear energy is playing an important role in electricity generation, producing 16% of the world's electricity. It has proven to be safe, reliable, economic and has only a minimal impact on the environment. However, most of the world's energy consumption is in the form of heat. Nuclear energy could penetrate further the heat market. Some of early reactors were used for heat supply; in UK, Russia or Sweden. Now, over 60 reactors are supplying heat for district heating, seawater desalination, and chemical or agro-industrial processes. Its experience reaches more than 600 reactor years with no safety concerned incidents. The design precautions to prevent the carry-over of radioactivity into the heat recipient network have proven to be effective. These experiences will provide a reliable basis for a more extensive deployment of nuclear heat, thus leading to better energy supply diversification. In particular, process heat for seawater desalination using nuclear heat has been of increasing interest to some IAEA Member States over the past decade. International co-operation is being assessed by several countries in order to share resources for implementation and harmonise current and future demonstration projects of nuclear seawater desalination. Interests in the application of process heat at high temperatures using high temperature gas reactors are also being resumed. This paper gives an overview of the experience and prospects of nuclear heat applications. It also reviews the IAEA studies on assessing feasibility of using nuclear energy for seawater desalination