Seven Ways Nuclear Science Improves City Life, From Clean Water to Safer Buildings

The IAEA’s examples explore how nuclear facilities and scientific techniques can provide additional benefits for urban residents.

Nuclear science is helping cities address everyday challenges, from heating homes and securing drinking water to checking damaged buildings and controlling disease-carrying mosquitoes. In its World Cities Day feature, the International Atomic Energy Agency highlights seven applications that connect nuclear technology with urban health, safety and reliable services. The examples show how these tools can support communities facing water shortages, pollution, growing populations and infrastructure risks.

The applications extend beyond electricity generation, using reactor heat, radiation and isotopic analysis to solve different problems. Some are already operating at city or industrial scale, including nuclear heating in China and mobile wastewater treatment in Brazil. Others remain under development or assessment, including a proposed desalination project in Jordan and mosquito-control work in Senegal and Austria.

Worldwide, 417 nuclear power reactors operate in 31 countries, with a combined capacity of around 380 gigawatts. Nuclear power supplied around 8.4 per cent of global electricity in 2025, accounting for roughly a quarter of low-carbon electricity production. The IAEA's examples explore how nuclear facilities and scientific techniques can provide additional benefits for urban residents.

Heating homes and turning seawater into drinking water

Nuclear plants can supply residual heat from electricity generation to warm homes, and that heat could also drive systems producing chilled water for summer air conditioning. In Haiyang, China, nuclear heating now serves 400,000 residents, replacing reliance on coal for household warmth. Between 2019 and 2025, the local plant supplied more than 14 million gigajoules of zero-carbon heat, helping improve winter air quality in Haiyang and nearby Rushan.

Nuclear desalination uses reactor heat and electricity to produce drinking water from seawater, offering a low-carbon option for coastal areas facing shortages. Jordan is exploring small modular reactors to power a planned plant that would supply fresh water from the Red Sea to Amman's four million residents. These smaller reactors are being developed for settings that include remote areas, smaller electricity grids and urban heating networks.

Treating wastewater, recycling plastics and protecting groundwater

Electron-beam treatment breaks wastewater chemicals into smaller fragments, making subsequent conventional biodegradation more effective and reducing potential risks to people and the environment. The process does not make water radioactive, and Brazil now operates a mobile electron-beam accelerator that treats industrial wastewater at sites around the country. Such treatment can support water reuse in industrial and densely populated areas where supplies are under pressure.

Only about nine per cent of plastic is recycled, leaving waste that can clog drains, worsen flooding, contaminate waterways, harm animals and cause respiratory problems when burned. Gamma rays and electron beams can complement conventional recycling, including by improving materials that partly replace cement in concrete with recycled plastic. Partners in Indonesia and the Philippines are developing wood-plastic composites for construction, with potential uses in affordable, sustainable housing.

Bolivia's growing cities of El Alto and Viacha depend on the 300-square-kilometre Purapurani aquifer, which also supplies businesses, crops and livestock. Isotopic techniques help scientists establish groundwater's age, quality and origin, providing information that cannot be obtained simply by observing the surface. Authorities use those findings to guide protection and sustainable management of a resource under increasing demand.

Checking infrastructure and reducing disease-carrying mosquitoes

Non-destructive testing uses ionizing radiation alongside other methods to identify hidden flaws in structures without damaging materials or leaving radioactive residue. The technology helped assess buildings and infrastructure after the 2023 earthquakes in Ecuador, Syria and Türkiye, when structures still standing could contain dangerous damage. The IAEA supports national expertise and trains specialists at its Non-Destructive Testing Service Centre in Seibersdorf, Austria, to examine critical infrastructure safely.

The sterile insect technique uses radiation to sterilize male insects before release, so mating with wild females produces fewer or no offspring. In Dakar, Senegal, scientists are preparing its use against Aedes aegypti, which spreads dengue and Zika, by testing locally sourced mosquitoes reared and sterilized at the IAEA's Austrian laboratories because Senegal has no irradiator. Large-cage trials resembling natural conditions showed that the shipped males could still compete with wild males for mates.

In Graz, Austria, the IAEA and city authorities are assessing the technique against increasing populations of invasive Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. Early results showed that sterile-male releases produced about 70 per cent sterile eggs, supporting further assessment of the approach. The work forms part of efforts to control mosquitoes associated with diseases including chikungunya, dengue, yellow fever and Zika through an environmentally friendly method.