By Alan George.

Morocco and China have signed a co-operation agreement under which China will supply a nuclear reactor to power a desalination plant in southern Morocco.

The 10 MW reactor, to be sited near the southern city of Tan-Tan, will assure drinking water supplies for 70,000 people.

The accord was signed during a visit to China by Moroccan prime minister Abderrahman Youssoufi. It was initialled on the Moroccan side by Energy and Mines Minister Youssef Tahiri.

The agreement followed an eight-month study by China's State Science and Technology Commission. Inputs to the study came from a specially-formed committee linking Morocco's Ministry of Energy and Mines, National Electricity Bureau, National Potable Water Bureau and National Centre for Energy, Science and Nuclear Technologies. The new reactor will be monitored by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

To date, the world's only nuclear-powered desalination plant is in Kazakhstan, at Fort Shevchenko on the eastern shores of the Caspian. This station, which is much bigger than the projected Moroccan plant, was commissioned in 1973 and became operational in 1977.

Nuclear desalination as a means of helping to solve water shortages in the Middle East and North Africa has long been mooted but little progress has been made. In 1991 North African states meeting in Cairo recommended the joint establishment of an experimental reactor and of a regional nuclear desalination training and research centre that would be open to personnel from all the Arab countries.

The Cairo conference coincided with reports that Israel was negotiating with the Soviet Union for a nuclear reactor to power a desalination plant. Israel's then Energy Minister, Yuval Ne'eman, denied the reports but confirmed plans by private sponsors for the establishment of a locally-manufactured nuclear desalination station. Since then, little has been heard of either the Arab or the Israeli project.

The advantages of nuclear desalination, especially for countries rich in conventional energy, are by no means certain. "The costs and benefits of such a scheme are hard to state, especially bearing in mind the costs of decommissioning," said Keith Callister, a specialist engineer with UK consultants Mott MacDonald, who noted that "distillation plants generally tend to become more economic when associated with power generation' but that in the Moroccan project 'the reactor seems to be only for steam generation."

The environmental implications are also profound. When the studies for the Moroccan project were launched, Greenpeace denounced it, insisting that nuclear-powered desalination was "not at all clean" because the reactor cooling water would be contaminated with radioactive tritium. Greenpeace said that solar-powered desalination would be far cleaner and more suitable for Morocco, with its sunny climate.

Mott MacDonald's Keith Callister agreed that "the safety implications loom especially large in a project like this where the product is directly ingested by the consumers."

Morocco presently has no operational nuclear reactors although a US-supplied 2 MW unit is being installed at a nuclear research centre in the Mamoura area near Rabat. The kingdom has longstanding plans for nuclear power stations. A possible 900 MW station was discussed during the Moroccan premier's trip to China. Studies are planned for a 600 MW station to be sited between the southern cities of Essaouira and Asfi.