Expert Warns Water Shortage May Cause Nuclear Chaos

One expert underscored that clean water security should be considered a question of national security to avert future disasters, such as nuclear war.

Water scarcity has already sparked disputes worldwide, with experts warning that these clashes might escalate into full-fledged civil wars and even nuclear armageddon.

UKRAINE-CHERNOBYL-NUCLEAR PLANT — General view of the "sarcophagus" covering the destroyed 4th power block of Chernobyl's nuclear power plant 27 February 2006. Chernobyl's number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded 26 April 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe and becoming the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster. Following the accident, a concrete sarcophagus was built over the stricken reactor and a new 20,000-tonne steel case to cover the whole plant is planned on being constructed between 2008 and 2009. The power station was eventually shut down 15 December 2000. SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Short Water Supply Could Cause Nuclear Chaos

Dario Soto Abril, Executive Secretary of the Global Water Partnership (GWP), believes water security should be a national security issue.

"Obviously, we're always talking about water security in terms of having enough access for livelihoods, for economic development, and sustainable agriculture and ecosystem, but water security is an essential matter of national security," he told Express.co.uk.

"Not having water security creates economic uncertainty because water is connected to agriculture and manufacturing."

He went on to say that water scarcity would reduce the region's economic intake. Abril also warned that a lack of potable water might lead to "civil upheavals" that would "cause internal problems inside the country" and have devastating consequences in densely populated places.

He believed that the lack of water security in a region would lead some people to go to Europe or the United States.

According to Daily Star, Abril used the example of a recent battle in Ethiopia in 2020, which erupted after Egyptian hackers launched a cyber strike on Ethiopian water facilities. The hackers expressed Egyptian opposition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile on their Facebook page.

The attack occurred while the reservoir behind the dam was being filled despite the fact that Egypt and Ethiopia had not reached an agreement.

Abril also mentioned the Syrian conflict when the water supply was shut off during the siege of Damascus. He said that citizens were deprived of water for weeks.

He added that there's always the risk that countries may use water as a weapon, and tensions will always exist.

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Link of Water to Nuclear Operations

Water is essential to all nuclear power plants because it is needed to cool the heat-producing radioactive cores, according to The Conversation. The water becomes polluted with radionuclides - unstable atoms with extra energy - during the cooling process and must be filtered to eliminate as many radionuclides as feasible.

The filtered water is then kept or discharged into neighboring bodies of water in large steel tanks. Because nuclear power plants require large amounts of water, most are located along coasts - or, in the case of Chernobyl, surrounded by massive lakes. Once the filtered wastewater has been examined and deemed safe by regulators, it can be dumped into the ocean or lake.

Workers at Fukushima dealt with wastewater in this manner when the facility was operational. However, since the tsunami in 2011, officials have used almost a million tonnes of water to try to cool the plant's damaged reactors, which are still hot due to the nuclear power source's long-term release of energy.

All of the radioactive water, which is more polluted than regular wastewater, must be disposed of properly. Some argue that releasing it into the waters is the most practical long-term option.