Great article on desalination that brings up some points I hadn’t thought of.
https://www.wired.com/story/desalination-is-booming-but-what-about-all-that-toxic-brine/
Seems like a nuclear power plant with each desal plant would make a good combination.
This is the heart of the matter here. When they change the desalination brine from a cost center to a profit center—the world changes.
But brine is more than just hypersaline water—it can be loaded with heavy metals and chemicals that keep the feedwater from gunking up the complicated and expensive facility. “The antifoulants used in the process, particularly in the pretreatment process of the source water, accumulate and discharge to the environment in concentrations that can potentially have damaging effects on the ecosystems,” says Jones. Dilution may help with the hypersalinity problem, but it doesn’t get rid of the chemical toxins.
But herein lies opportunity: The discharge can also contain precious elements like uranium. This might be enough incentive to turn desal brine from a noxious byproduct into a source of revenue. Or you might use evaporative pools inland to produce commercial road salt for deicing roads. And that could help clean up the industry, because capitalism.
“There’s definitely economic opportunities available,” says Jones. “That’s why we stress there is positive news here as well. There’s an opportunity as well as it currently being a big challenge.”