Morocco-Russia Nuclear Desalination Plans Raise Concerns in Canary Islands

A few weeks before the deadly earthquake of September 8, Morocco and Russia reaffirmed their willingness to install desalination plants using nuclear energy, 400 kilometers off the Canary Islands coast. The idea had already worried the Canarian authorities in 1999, who had mobilized to ask Morocco not to use nuclear power in the Tan-Tan area. The authorities of the archipelago believed that the kingdom did not have the industrial know-how for this type of process, reports El Confidencial.

The Tan-Tan desalination unit was to be installed in cooperation with China and was to be equipped with a (NHR)−10 type reactor, with a power of 10 megawatts (MW) and a production capacity of 8,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day. "If the Moroccan authorities were to make a request concerning this sector, it is clear that extremely strict conditions would be established, precise standards in terms of nuclear safety and submitted for approval to the competent services and authorities," said Chris Patten of the European Commission in 1999, responding to a question from the Canarian MEP, Isidoro Sánchez.

But two new developments this year could change the lines. These are the partnership between Morocco and Russia and the September 8 earthquake. The Moroccan company Water and Energy Solutions and the Russian state-owned company Rosatom based in Moscow have signed an agreement for the installation of 12 desalination plants, a few kilometers from the Canary Islands. At the same time, Israel has also offered Morocco its nuclear-powered desalination technology "if France does not really want to cooperate in this area for fear of the reaction from Algiers," announced the vice-president of the Israel-Morocco Chamber of Commerce.

Since 2015, the Minister of Energy Transition, Leïla Benali, has informed Parliament that her department is studying the possibilities of using nuclear power to produce electricity. A Reflection Committee on Nuclear Energy and Seawater Desalination (CRED) was set up in 2009 and produced a report approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In 2016, the agency authorized Morocco to launch its peaceful nuclear program, assuring that it meets all the conditions and has the human resources and scientific expertise in the field. An IAEA delegation was on a mission in the kingdom last November.