The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area faces issues of water shortage, restricted arable land, and soil degradation which is exacerbated by local weather change, threatening water and meals safety. As the area experiences fast inhabitants progress,1 states should cope with rising demand for water, power, and meals (WEF),2 that are all inextricably linked. To adapt, the area is striving to enhance climate-smart agricultural practices,3 cut back waste, and improve resilience.
This article argues that the usage of nuclear science and applied sciences can provide viable and sustainable pathways for mitigating these challenges. It maps previous and potential purposes of those applied sciences for meals and water safety in MENA, whereas evaluating each feasibility and obstacles to implementation and scaling.
The following paragraphs define the potential purposes of nuclear science on numerous improvement domains in the MENA area.
Strengthening Climate-Smart Agriculture
The MENA area faces the problem of land degradation from soil erosion in addition to worsening soil high quality resulting from sea degree rise-driven salinisation,4 rising temperatures, and use of recycled wastewater,5 negatively affecting crop yields. Nuclear strategies assist assess and mitigate soil erosion.6 Leveraging neutron probing sensors may also help measure soil moisture ranges to find out optimum irrigation utility for soil remediation and crop progress.a,7 This is beneficial for saline soil circumstances in MENA, the place standard moisture sensing tools is inadequate. To illustrate, isotopic strategies have supported the cultivation of excessive manufacturing volumes of millet in Lebanon, barley and safflower in Jordan, and quinoa in the United Arab Emirates, materialising via a technical Food and Agriculture Organization- International Atomic Energy Agency (FAO-IAEA) cooperation programme.8
Enabling Safe Food Storage
Improving meals storage capacities throughout the worth chain is essential for mitigating meals loss and waste in the MENA area. Food irradiation techniques9 are light and non-invasive practices that remove microbes by exposing meals to radiations like gamma or X-rays, whereas preserving dietary worth and high quality.10 Contrary to misconceptions, irradiation strategies don’t flip meals radioactive. Food irradiation yields well being and meals security benefits, eliminating microbial contamination and decreasing food-borne illness threat, and is taken into account more practical in comparison with warmth and chemical strategies.11 Moreover, it dietary supplements different shelf-life extension strategies.
Food irradiation adoption in MENA is at the moment in early-stages,12 with Egypt main in purposes for meat preservation and phytosanitary compliance. Demand for shelf-stable meals and vegetable imports in the UAE and Saudi Arabia has contributed to funding in new irradiation infrastructure services since 2022. Irradiation options are extra widespread in North America and Europe, which have developed authorized frameworks to reiterate its security. A 2025 research by Maataoui et al. evaluating international acceptance of irradiated meals discovered that MENA international locations are extra cautious in regards to the viability of irradiated meals, demonstrating the necessity for public info campaigns to extend public acceptance and implementation feasibility in MENA.13 Increasing meals shelf-life can be worthwhile for meals safety issues in distant MENA areas in addition to in battle zones that want humanitarian provides.14
Enhancing Water Access and Efficiency
While the worth proposition of nuclear applied sciences to meals manufacturing is defined by its distinctive scientific skill to extend crop yields and meals shelf-life, it’s needed to focus on the underlying logic of utilizing nuclear power per se for water desalination, for occasion, in a area identified for its oil and fuel wealth.
Conventional desalination depends on non-renewables like oil and fuel which produce vital emissions, regardless of being dependable. Although many international locations in the area have substantial hydrocarbon assets, not all of MENA can rely on such fossil gas abundance. Many international locations in the area have suffered fiscal strains due in no small half to relatively massive power import payments. For occasion, the liberating up of oil and fuel assets in locations like Egypt, the place it’s getting used for water desalination, would make fiscal sense given excessive import payments for these hydrocarbons.
On the opposite hand, the energy-exporting MENA international locations should cope with the chance value of the consumption of each barrel of oil domestically—which means one forex-earning barrel of oil much less on the worldwide market. This has cost-implications for many of those international locations working in the direction of financial diversification and funding of their hydrocarbon earnings into new sectors corresponding to AI or manufacturing.
Further, there are gradual adjustments in the income buffers from MENA’s fossil fuels exports. This downward stress on income streams might fairly be mitigated to some extent by integrating nuclear power into the power portfolio wherever possible, after duly contemplating each prices and dangers related to the kind. Studies which centered on Tunisia and Algeria in contrast the usage of oil and fuel with nuclear for electrical energy era and water manufacturing, and have successfully demonstrated substantial financial savings from the latter.15
Nuclear power, with its larger power density, affords the very best baseload different to hydrocarbons.16 Nuclear-powered desalination leverages reactor-generated warmth and electrical energy to separate salt from seawater, offering a three-fold benefit of lowered emissions, a steady water supply, and low-costs. The integration of nuclear expertise into the MENA’s water safety portfolios has been led by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) sharing of toolkits just like the Desalination Economic Evaluation Program (DEEP) and the Desalination Thermodynamic Optimisation Program (De-TOP).17 Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Tunisia have all invested underneath these tips in desalination and isotopetracing. b,18
SMR-Powered desalination is into account in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Kuwait,19 whereas the IAEA has evaluated research on utilizing SMRs to transform Red Sea water into consuming water in Jordan. In international locations just like the UAE which has established a nuclear plant and the place desalination is predominantly fuelled by pure fuel, coupling desalination vegetation with future nuclear SMRs is projected to yield feasible20 and cost-competitive outcomes.21 Future nuclear and desalination vegetation might be mixed to supply water as the one consequence or yield each electrical energy and pure water via a co-generation system.22 This mixture, together with strategies corresponding to Reverse-Osmosis, Multi-Stage Flash distillation and Multiple Effect Distillation, may have comparably beneficial financial savings in each value and emissions.c,23,24,25
Table 1. Feasibility, Added-Value, and Challenges of Nuclear Science and Technology Applications in MENA
Source: Authors’ personal, utilizing Neupane et al.29 and Ihsanullah et al.30
Challenges to Nuclear Uptake
Environmental
Without built-in planning,31 the deployment of nuclear power could inadvertently threaten home meals and water provide by consuming huge quantities of freshwater assets to chill techniques, and thereby competing with different water-intensive sectors. To illustrate,32 oncethrough cooling techniques withdraw very excessive volumes of water, recirculating cooling techniques trigger excessive water loss from evaporation, and dry cooling techniques increase air temperatures. While coastal nuclear vegetation can leverage desalinated water for cooling, desalination brine discharge can imperil marine ecosystems. Transitioning to water-efficient designs remains to be in nascent levels.
Moreover, routine emissions can pose hostile ecological dangers for soil,33 groundwater, and marine ecosystems. Nuclear vegetation located close to shallow aquifers threat potable water contamination, damages the coastal saline agriculture and endangers marine ecosystems. In arid soil, radioactive isotopes can permeate rapidly, resulting in elevated plant uptake.34 In the long-term, launched radionuclides can disrupt ecological meals chains, erode genetic range, and transport to human meals. Although the chance of radioactive waste is considerably mitigated, radionuclides might be launched underneath uncommon and excessive circumstances. Advancements in geospatial applied sciences and molecular biology strategies may also help mitigate these impacts however rising analysis on safer alternate options like steady isotopes are additionally essential.d,35
Regional
The presence of nuclear installations, no matter their kind or scale, will increase the securityrisk profile of any area, and these have to be factored into any issues relating to the adoption or deployment of the shape. Although nuclear-based science inputs for agriculture have marginal publicity to dangers of kinetic assaults and harm, the susceptibility of nuclear power powered desalination vegetation to related threats might be appreciable. It could be worthwhile to think about the safety umbrellas and supervision bandwidths of every nation when assessing expertise deployment. Furthermore, the extent of abilities and experience wanted for adoption and implementation of those applied sciences are substantial, and the area should strengthen its native expertise pool.
Financing
Although governments have signalled curiosity in leveraging nuclear power, there stays an absence of infrastructure, funding, and regional coordination to completely capitalise on its potential. Adopting nuclear power comes with prohibitively high-capex necessities, and governments could also be drawn to less expensive choices.36 Nuclear power and its worth as a strategic commodity additional entrench the centrality of governmental function in adopting this power kind in MENA. The gas provide chains intrinsic to the whole worth chain of nuclear power’s use additional ensures that governments would have a extra direct participation in the sector relatively than non-public gamers. As such, financing stays a governmental prerogative in the area that would profit from enhanced cross-border coordination. Notably, the World Bank’s decision37 to reverse its a long time lengthy moratorium on financing nuclear power tasks in early 2025, when coupled with the organisation’s commitments in the direction of meals safety as a part of its bigger human safety agenda, might show to be a worthwhile harbinger of change for the MENA area.
Conclusion
Advancing past feasibility assessments for nuclear strategies requires coordination between lecturers, technical consultants, and policymakers to evaluate long-term environmental implications, put together site-specific precautionary and remediation methods. Notably, initiatives like Atoms4Food38 and the FAO/IAEA’s Centre for Nuclear Techniques for Food and Agriculture39 coordinate utilized analysis and capability constructing and assist safe non-public financing sources.40
Thus, establishing regulatory frameworks that lower throughout the heterogeneity of MENA’s constituent nationwide talents would assist create a protected and conducive surroundings for nuclear deployment for desalination. This might be achieved by making a regional regulatory and supervisory physique to mandate and observe adherence to non-proliferation requirements.41 The UAE has, for occasion, set a benchmark via a provision to permit inspections of its nuclear services at quick discover. The physique may also mandate integration of mitigation strategies for all future desalination infrastructure and develop a strong data-sharing system to measure water ranges and desalination discharge. Such efforts will allow a policy-environment of sharing technical know-how and best-practices, and facilitate trusted adoptions.
Leigh Mante is unior Fellow, Climate and Energy, ORF Middle East, UAE.
Cauvery Ganapathy is Fellow, Climate and Energy, ORF Middle East, UAE.
Endnotes
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