Hmmm, how much power would be needed to produce ALL of Sydney's water
demand ? Could it be supplied without building a dedicated nuclear
power station ?
There are too many unknowns to be even able to have a casual discussion.
What is the desals litres per Kw/hr ? Don't know ?

Bazz,

20 seconds googling.
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"Nuclear desalination is generally very cost-competitive with using fossil fuels. "Only nuclear reactors are capable of delivering the copious quantities of energy required for large-scale desalination projects" in the future (IAEA 2015).
As well as desalination of brackish or sea water, treatment of urban waste water is increasingly undertaken....

....A 2006 IAEA report based on country case studies showed that costs would be in the range ($US) 50 to 94 cents/m3 for RO, 60 to 96 c/m3 for MED"
http://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-desalination.aspx

A cubic meter is 1000 litres. The average bathtub if FULL is about 170 litres, but most people only fill their bath to about the 100 litre mark so a cubic meter is about 10 bath-times. A 10 minute shower uses about the same as the height of the average bath-time, so a cubic meter is 100 minutes or 1 hour 40 minutes: for say $1 US, or $1.42 in today's exchange rate.

So, making a guess from the price, about 2 Kwhr per M3.
Seems manageable per domestic residence but what are the implications
for the power system ?
How many M3 per day are consumed in say Sydney ?
That should be accessible from Sydney water

I make it out to be 162,000 M3 per day.
162000 x 2Kw/hr = 324 Mwatt/hrs per day.
Looks manageable if I got my sums right.
Easy to drop a 0.

It is more than having a big tank Max Green, it is having a country attitude to water, & valuing it highly.

You don't water gardens with drinking water.
You would never think or hosing off a path.
You don't rinse things, [dishes etc], under running water.
You don't bath, but have short showers.
You use 6 liter/minute shower heads.
There are many non city ways to be careful with water.

As for pollutants, city fall out is nothing to crop dusting residues.
If my lady ever thought of the toilet habits of all the country birds that often perch on our roof, she would die of dehydration.

Of course we seriously filter our drinking water & have filters on our tank outlets, just like city folk could.

I have lost about 10 trees & twice as many shrubs from my 1.4 acre house paddock. I anticipated it might be a bit dry, so consigned some areas to survive on what nature provided. What was once lawn/grass is now mostly bare dirt, but will probably come back.

I read somewhere that there is more lawn than agriculture irrigated in California, & think the same might apply to South East Queensland too.

Its fascinating watching how a article like this one sends people of on tangents, from Alan B with his much loved topic of Thorium to Max Greens' love of desal, but dismissive scepticism of rainwater. The common link of course is cheap, reliable energy to clean up the water to drinking standards. We could never get Sceptic Max to value rainwater, so its pointless trying to convince him, particularly as he demands desal as the only solution. However, given his comments on the value and quality of rainwater, his ascertains need sorting out. First, there are numerous papers of rainwater quality, so use Dr Google. Raw water quality is not ideal for drinking but can be used for every other use in the house (we only drink 5% of the drinking water we use). Secondly, his lack of concern for "bugs" is foolish, while his fear of toxins is ill founded. Bugs are the issue and they do exist in rainwater tanks (thanks to birds and animals) and if you want to drink the rainwater, it needs filtering. …. continued next post