Maof

     The everlasting shortage of water suitable for use (mainly for drinking, cooking, watering plants) and constant danger of desalination of human vitality and of water-consuming branches of a national economy causes the heightened  concern of the Israeli public and has presently turned into a real social problem. To solve this problem, it is necessary to urgently find and realize the ways and methods of creation and maintenance of reliably additional water supply system economically and ecologically acceptable in our country. The search of an optimum solution of the problem does not currently stop for a moment. A number of competitive trends has already been published. Some of them are even realized by authorities and some managing firms.
     The greatest progress is achieved on the grounds of creation of the additional water supply system in Israel on the basis of sea water desalination. The first desalination system in our country already operates in Ashkelon. Supposedly, it will produce 50 million cubic metres of fresh water per year. The designing of the second one is already started, after which it will be build up in the suburbs of Hadera. The adherents of this tendency of the problem solution of water supply solemnly declare, that Israel will soon take first place in the world for that plenty of the desalination systems allover the country. Joseph Dreisin, Ph.D, the chief of the planning dept. from the Management of water resources of Israel has declared, that they are planning to achieve the desalination systems productivity in the country from 450 up to 800 cubic metre of the desalinated water per one year. Herewith, the prize of their structure is expected in limits from 400.000.000 up to 900.000.000 USD, and the operational charges can exceed 200.000.000 USD per year. However, objective data testify that the desalination of water is accepted only as an auxiliary source of additional water supply concept, and to take it as a basic water consumption source is highly erroneous, for this source is very expensive, extremely limited for use and is very dangerous ecologically.
     The inspirers and the executors of the idea to solve the problem of drinking water supply in Israel by desalination with the subsequent use of water from the Mediterranean sea pursued their object very persistently, addressing lots of departments and the authoritative governmental and public figures having our consciousness been training through mass media to the inevitability of consumption of sea water. However, I did not manage to find their publications containing medical or ecological features of the desalinated sea water and economic comparison of the sea water processes with the other methods and technologies of additional water supply of Israel. Therefore I’m going, to a certain extent, to make up for the omissions they have been misbelievingly committing.
     At the present stage of scientific and technical development of mankind there are three groups of harmful and even of deadly dangerous medical-ecological obstacles not overcome yet and preventing from use of waters of the seas and oceans for vital needs of people, animals and eatable vegetation. The obstacles above mentioned are: - salinization of the see waters; heightened concentration of "heavy water" and significant pollution by the products of human activity. Herewith, the expendability of the attempts to provide the Israeli population and economy with the "neutralized" sea water exceeds much more the costs of the other water supply source application.

     In interview to the popular Israeli journalist the Mark Gorin, published on June 12, 2006 in the newspaper "A Companion of the North", the most famous and persevering apologist of the population and economy "thirst slaking" of Israel by desalination of the Mediterranean waters, professor Yury Kolodny has considered a unique argument in favour of his concept to be enough, i,e., the fact, that the World ocean consists of 97 % of stocks of water all over the Earth (however, in another part of his interview professor has possibly omitted his argument, he himself has shortly disproven, having declared that nowadays the global water consumption keeps up about 0,7 % of the reconnoitered terrestrial stocks of stale waters, those waters which all the people and almost all the other living flesh on the Earth are adopted to consume).
     The modern World ocean occupies about 71 % of the surface of our planet and at average depth of 4 km it contains some 1370 millions cubic kilometers of water, that makes approximately 99,4... 99,6 % of the known water stocks of the Earth. The contents of this huge water space is a complex solution of numerous chemical elements and compounds, practically inexhaustible storehouse of chemical, biological, energetic and fuel resources of the planet. Among the 160 commonly known chemical elements 70 of them are revealed in the sea and ocean waters. Moreover, Arthur Clark, the author of the popular scientific book " the Man, which has ploughed the sea ", considers that "any known element can be found in the sea water". Every cubic kilometer of the sea water consists of 35 tons of firm substances dissolved, on the average, which makes us, as distinct from the stale water, feel the sea water salty. The salt weight of the seas and oceans is being formed of the cooking salt, magnum, sulfur, aluminum, copper, uranium, silver, gold etc. The significant part of salt-containing  elements of the sea waters is wholesome for the human being, and in a number of cases -- even profitable in the business of crude-extraction from the sea-water. However, also there are harmful and dangerous substances among them. But, anyhow, as it is well known, the living beings adapted to stale water consumption can not live in such salty sea water and tear it away.

 The desalination of sea water or, to speak differently, removal the weights of salt-containing substance from the sea liquid has become an attempt to overcome this disadvantage. No other purpose the process of water desalination in its pure state does not pursue and does not solve any other problem. Nowadays more than 30 ways of sea water desalination are well-known, but even the new modern industrial  technologies do not provide complete desalination of the large amount of sea water because of salt variety and very high power imputs of the very process of desalination. Therefore the sea water desalinated has low gustatory and even visual qualities, and is often bad for the health..
This result has not changed since more than hundred years ago Russian sea-scapes writer K.M. Stanukovich in his shortly sold out sensational story "Round the World on "The Kite" (1895) wrote that making for the voyage, the seamen used to diligently provide themselves by stale water "to possibly avoid drinking the ocean water".
     Another distinctive property of the waters of seas and oceans interfering their participation (even after desalination) in vital activity of all flesh is an essentially enriched (in comparison with stale water) concentration of stable heavy isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium), oxygen (oxygen-17 and oxygen-18) and heavy water - water, where the easy isotopes of hydrogen (protium) and/or oxygen (oxygen - 16) are replaced by heavy isotopes. While the ordinary stale water contains about 0,015 % of heavy water, the sea water makes 0,020 % of heavy water.
     The discovery and obtaining of heavy water (1932) became an outstanding scientific and technical achievement of mankind called rough burst of R&D activity along with major new openings. In the wake after that it was determined that heavy water is an ideal fuel for thermo-nuclear processes, the stock of which in the seas and oceans are practically inexhaustible. It’s highly applicable as a decelerator of neutrons and heat-carrier in nuclear reactors; for reception obtaining deuterons in accelerators of particles; in spectroscopy of a magnetic resonance etc. But at the same time it’s been found out that the fishes, worms and microbes can not live in the presence of heavy water, and the animals perish of thirst  in case they are given to drink heavy water. The seeds of plants do not sprout in heavy water either.
     The point is that the living being is a set of delicately balanced chemical reactions, and heavy water varies speed of some of them which breaks balance between various reactions. The ions of deuterium and heavy water are even less mobile, than ions of protium and usual water. It results in many infringements of normal vital activity: the inhibition of biochemical processes and physiological reactions; change of character of action of pharmacological preparations; the inhibition of the processes of the muscle contraction; the change of resistibility concerning some external physical factors - to the hydrostatic pressure activation, fluctuation of temperature etc. And as long as deuterium easily replaces protium, in particular, in molecules of DNA and RNA, it can cause genetic changes in the division of cells, and, as long as deuterium is considerably less mobile than protium, the oxidizing and regenerational reactions will stop first of all.
     Certainly, the expendable or rare use of heavy water will cause no tangible change of  the health condition in living things for it is chemically similar to the usual water of protium: in some hours or a couple of days the deuterium having got into a body, will be completely removed from it. But if the heavy water will get in rather often (it’s for this case th will occur in water supply with the sea water desalinated), protium in a body will be being replaced gradually by deuterium, and the destruction described previously will unfortunately come true. The experiments over the mammalia have shown that the 25 % replacement of hydrogen (protium) in their fabrics by deuterium results to sterility of animals. At a higher content of deuterium the animals would perish.
     From the explanations afore mentioned the inadmissibility of the use of the sea waters – even desalinated – in  processes connected with the people’s and animals’ vital activity is quite evident if heavy water is not removed from them.
     Thus, both afore considered variants of recycling of practically inexhaustible stocks of sea water as an initial material both for thermonuclear fuel and for harmlessness of water supply require the very same water-refinery processing: separating of heavy water from that of protium. Nowadays, it’s been found several methods of heavy water extraction. The most effective of them are: electrolysis, isotopic exchange, burning of the deuterium-enriched hydrogen. However, allocation of significant (industrial) amounts of heavy water by any of these methods is a rather intricate and highly expensive scientific-and-technical problem. So, for obtaining of 1 ton of heavy water it is necessary to process about 40 thousand tons of sea water to a very complex and secret technology, having spent herewith some 60 millions kw-h. Therefore, it is no wonder that there are only 9 countries all over the world where the allocation of heavy water from the usual water to the amount minimally necessary for the industrial purposes has been mastered; therewith, the ninth country was shortly determined quite recently - last decade of August, 2006. This country, as we know, - Iran, which has estimated its achievement as an outstanding historical, scientific, technical, economic and military-political victory.
     In brief we conclude that in the foreseeable future it is of no prospects to hopefully rely upon the removing heavy (and fatally dangerous) isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen from the sea water being subjected to desalination. The refinery like this can be carried out only after discovering of new, much more economic ways of its fulfillment or after distribution of industrial ways of obtaining the enriched deuterium for the energetic purposes, the collateral product of which would become the sea water purified from heavy isotopes. This unequivocally means, that when offering and realizing the desalination of sea water today we are forced to drink water containing heavy isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen.
      The third of disastrously dangerous obstacle for making use of the desalinated sea water in water supply of the population and the economy of Israel (just like of other countries) is the pollution of the seas and oceans. Water of the seas and oceans contains enormous stocks of gold, iron, uranium and other chemical elements. The uncountable stocks of mineral deposits are latent on their bottom. The oceans and the seas are the richest source of vegetative and organically nutritious substances necessary to the mankind either now and in the future. But nowadays the aquatic area is being used as a dump, as the cheapest and widespread way of getting rid from industrial and household waist. The seas and the oceans are being permanently showered with lots of either badly refined or simply crude organic waste shortly turning these aquatic areas into a disease-breading hotbed for those like dysentery, cholera etc. As a result of dump of the crude and unsuccessfully refined industrial and household waste the planetary waters are being annually polluted by approximately 100 thousand tons of waste. Also the seas and oceans  are being polluted by petroleum and combustible gas: as a result 30 % of the world-wide oil production now comes from the bottom oil-wells. Besides, a lot of the oil production keeps periodically flowing down into the seas after numerous traffic accidents, fuel tanks washing etc. The enterprises throw out lots of wasted metals in the seas and oceans mercury, chrom, zinc, lead, etc. The burial of radioactive nuclear waste out of nuclear reactors, the chemical weapon and other toxic substances into the seas and oceans is still going on. It is found that the metal containers to store the waste like this would destroy in sea water in 10 years on the average; the concrete ones - in 30 years. The contents of the collapsed containers get surely washed away from them and gets right into the sea water. The intrusion of radioactive substances into sea water occurs continuously for a long time. So, since 1991 the ingress of Cesium-137 and others radionucleids in the sea water is being continuously noticed. Since 70th of the 20th century, the steadily amplifying and still disturbing threat to the seas and oceans is becoming noticeable.
 This threat is caused by still growing penetration in the seas long-living of radioactive isotopes of plutonium and uranium from any nuclear enterprises and NPSs
.     But the special threat to all flesh is represented by the third, superheavy isotope of hydrogen – tritium which does not exist constantly. It is an intermediate radioactive product of the nuclear reactions and, though it does not make problems from the view point of a long-term burial of radioactive waste (its half-life period is 12,3 years), it is very dangerous to the man. It can penetrate into the body of the man through his skin, or through the respiratory system,or, surely, with water. Especially negative peculiarity of the tritium is its high fluidity. It is able to instantly mix with the flows of air or water. While deuterium kills gradually, tritium kills in a flash. You cannot drink it,  you cannot wash up with it, you cannot inhale its steam.
     The above mentioned contamination of all sort  and even many others represent themselves in the waters of the World ocean.
The Mediterranean sea, the desalinated water of which we are supposed to be fed up, is considered to be one of the most dirty sites of the World ocean to actively pollute the other nearest areas. And clear as it is: the coast of the Mediterranean Sea is densely and intensively populated; its aquatic area and the bottom are ruthlessly and actually uncontrollably have been being exploited and littered for a long time. It is easily possible to imagine to what extent the water of these seas – even desalinated – may be pernicious for the man.

     Up to the present time the mankind has already experienced the period of the water supply problem solution with the help of water desalination of the seas and oceans, followed by disappointment with this event. The industrial desalination systems were created and are being used in many countries and regions all over the globe experiencing water deficiency - on the Canary islands, in Tunis, in England, on the island Aruba in the Caribbean sea, in Cuba, in Venezuela, in California, on the islands of the Indian ocean, in the north-west part of the Black-Sea and Asov-Sea Shores in Ukraine, in the city of Turkmenbashy (former Krasnovodsk) etc. But very soon the above stated organic defects of desalinated water supply system were shown up. On the one hand, it is high cost of the very process of water desalination (and, hence, of the very product), caused by the very large power input into desalination, for the realization of which it is recommended even to use an atomic energy. On the other hand, the desalinated water, as it should be expected, has occurred to be fatally dangerous to the people, animals and plants. In this connection here pertinently to remind of tragical events of 70 years of the last century. On a peninsula Manghyshlak (the Caspian sea, Kazakhstan) in 1973 there were built up an atomic power station and a powerful desalination plant for power supply and, mainly, water supply for the citizens and supposedly in favour of the economy of the new city Shevchenko (nowadays renamed in Aktau). The people used this water for meals, watering the food plants and gave it to the domestic animals. Shortly thereafter, the sanitary inspection has driven an alarm: the amount of oncological diseases and cases of birth of stillborn children in the city has abruptly increased.. Below, it will be shown, that after these events the Republic of Kazakhstan no more consider the desalination of sea water a sources of the water supply.
     Anyhow, according to the items of information published by Sandra Postel, “Worldwatch” Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts, the  desalination of the waters of the seas and oceans as the way of water supply has never been popular, and nowadays the desalinated water makes only 0,2 % of worldwide water consumption, while half of all the water desalination plants are concentrated in the area of the Persian gulf.
     All the up-to-date countries -- advanced and less developed – being aware of importance to preserve genetic fund of there nations let the plants existing on their territories work for technical and economic needs only, however, excluding the obtained water to get inside of a living thing. This statement holds true for all the countries of Mediterranean Sea and Persian gulf without exception, in which, as stated above, more than 50 % of water desalination plants available in the world are concentrated right in the specified area. On Malta, in Qatar, United Emirates, where the domestic sources of stale water do not exist and in their waterpipes they have preliminarily desalinated sea water, the last is being used for economic and technical needs only, while the drinking water is delivered from abroad and is being sold in bottles and/or on flood; the same way the water problem is being solved in Saudi Arabia, where the drinking water is being usually imported from New Zealand, and vegetables with fruits – from Australia.

     The situation with stale water in Israel essentially differs from that of the waterless countries considered in the previous paragraph. Israel has sufficiently large stocks of stale water in the lake Kineret and small rivers, in underground sources and aquifers, and just this water flows now in its waterpipe. In such conditions the following 3 variants of inclusion of desalination plants in the infrastructure of water supply system of Israel are really feasible: 1) intake of desalinated sea water in the Israeli waterpipe and, hence, its miscibility with stale water; 2) construction of the second waterpipe specially for the desalinated sea water, and 3) Clearing of the operating waterpipe from stale water and making use of it for the desalinated sea water along with the sale of the bottled and unbottled stale drinking water, just like in the countries wanted of their own stale water stocks (see above). In all three variants water water will considerably go up (because of high-cost desalination, and, besides, in the second variant, because of expenses for the additional waterpipe system) and will thus become unfit for drinking both for the contents and for taste, while usual stale (drinking) water will turn into delicatessen practically inaccessible  for needy strata of society. It’s timely to note, that following the data submitted by professor Y. Kolodny to the newspaper "Vesty" on July, 7, 2005 (the article "Searches for an address"), the cost of 1 cubic metre of water desalinated in the desalination plant in Ashkelon makes 37 cents, that approximately 3,5 times exceeds the cost of recycling of rain-water.
     The scientists and politicians from all over the world, the international organizations and the specialized establishments unite the efforts for the scientifically proved research of both realization of effective ways and methods of providing all the inhabitants of the Earth by pure and harmless drinking water. Therefore, their conclusions and programs should be known to avoid any roughly mistaken choice of ways of water supply for Israel.
So, we have studied a number(line) of the international and foreign national programs and materials of forums of the beginning of the XXI-st century on problems of drinking water (UN Conference in 2002 in Johannesburg; 5-? annual all-European conference in 2003 in Ukraine; the international forum in 2003 on stale water; International conference in 2004 "Water partnership of Central Asia"; Decision of the Republic of Kazakhstan Governmental Decree # 93 from 23.01.03 and Program "Drinking waters" for 2002 – 2010, etc. In no one of the investigated documents there is no even a mention of smb’s intentions concerning sea water desalination. And in the Program of Republic of Kazakhstan which has survived the tragedy of the water desalination usage, it is said rightfully about the creation of an aqueduct filled in with water from the Volga-river as an alternative to the sea water desalination.
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     From the contents of the present clause it is obviously clear, that the apologists of water supply desalination of Israel like Y. Kolodny having declared smth. contrary to the world-wide science experience and conclusions like that of "the project of the desalination station in Ashkelon is “the basic funds of ours”. They will work on my grandsons". This will push our state to the adventure fraught with hardest social consequences and durably stretched genocide of the people. Let dear Sir, the professor mercy me, but I am sincerely in two minds that our great-grandsons will be able to estimate his predictions, if the desalination plants will really become a sort of "our fixed funds". On the contrary, for the sake of health and well-being of all the generations of the Israelis, the Government and Knesset should immediately stop financing of designing, construction and operation of all the industrial desalination plants in the country. Especially that the problems of water supply of Israel are actually quite solvable by a sort of harmless, cheaper and reliable methods I am planning to show in the publications to come up.

     P.S. The arguments and facts stated in the present clause, are gathered from dozens of Internet-sites, clauses and books, the list length of which is commensurable with the length of this article. Therefore I have not adduced this list in here and  I came to nothing more than a number of references to sources of the information in those places of the text only where it was required for clearness of a statement and confirmation of reliability of the information like that. As for the other cases I am ready to give any additional information by the phone # 0543102601 or by E-mail Адрес электронной почты защищен от спам-ботов. Для просмотра адреса в вашем браузере должен быть включен Javascript.
 

Ph.D.  Benzion Telianer
Haifa, September 5 2006

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