Japan gets almost all of its oil from the Middle East and has nothing to give in return…except water.

Ultra dry Middle East needs water, (doesn’t everyone?) and must produce it from the salt water nearby. There’s a consortium including Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd. and Toray Industries Inc. that is developing a desalination plant. That’s not new news. But the plant will use half as much power as existing facilities. That’s BIG news. Imagine, using less fossil fuels to produce electricity to desalinate.

Desalination Process

There is a group of 14 companies, including Kajima Corp. that will build a prototype this year. They will work together in such areas as membrane production and plant design. More energy savings will come from reworking the water-treatment process. The new process exceeds current quality standards.

The Middle East is the target of the consortium. From 2010, other countries wil be in their sites

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Nuclear energy is not all that bad if you know how to tap into its vast potential in a proper fashion and if you can find the right way to dispose off the toxic waste. Even though it is not the ideal alternate energy source, it still is in a certain sense far better than fossil fuel.

Jordan is one of the driest countries on the planet and is so woefully short on energy resources that the nation imports 95% of all its energy needs. The tiny Arab state is now looking in a new direction as it signed a deal with China which allows it to develop nuclear power using its vast Uranium reserves.

The country’s 1.2 billion tons of phosphate reserves are estimated to contain 130,000 tons of uranium and the government intends to start mining the radioactive ore to fuel its first nuclear plant that will go online by 2015. By 2030, Jordan wishes to produce 30% of its energy needs from nuclear power.

With rich Uranium deposits and right technical help from China (wonder how right that is), Jordan will also use the power for a desalination process that will bring the much needed drinking water. While this is indeed a positive step forward, one hopes that Jordan uses its nuclear know-how judiciously.

I wonder if they considered a solar plant in Jordan. That would be much cleaner!

Image courtesy of Christopher Chan