Climate Change Cripples Panama Canal. Fixing it Could Take Years (yahoo.com) 148
"Parched conditions have crippled a waterway that handles $270 billion a year in global trade," reports Bloomberg. "And there are no easy solutions.
"The Panama Canal Authority is weighing potential fixes that include an artificial lake to pump water into the canal and cloud seeding to boost rainfall, but both options would take years to implement, if they're even feasible. " With water levels languishing at six feet (1.8 meters) below normal, the canal authority capped the number of vessels that can cross. The limits imposed late last year were the strictest since 1989... Some shippers are paying millions of dollars to jump the growing queue, while others are taking longer, costlier routes around Africa or South America. The constraints have since eased slightly due to a rainier-than-expected November, but at 24 ships a day, the maximum is still well below the pre-drought daily capacity of about 38. As the dry season takes hold, the bottleneck is poised to worsen again...
The canal's travails reflect how climate change is altering global trade flows. Drought created chokepoints last year on the Mississippi River in the US and the Rhine in Europe. In the UK, rising sea levels are elevating the risk of flooding along the Thames. Melting ice is creating new shipping routes in the Arctic. Under normal circumstances, the Panama Canal handles about 3% of global maritime trade volumes and 46% of containers moving from Northeast Asia to the US East Coast...
In the long term, the primary solution to chronic water shortages will be to dam up the Indio River and then drill a tunnel through a mountain to pipe fresh water 8 kilometers (5 miles) into Lake Gatún, the canal's main reservoir. The project, along with additional conservation measures, will cost about $2 billion, Erick Córdoba, the manager of the water division at the canal authority estimates. He says it will take at least six years to dam up and fill the site. The US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study. The Indio River reservoir would increase vessel traffic by 11 to 15 a day, enough to keep Panama's top moneymaker working at capacity while guaranteeing fresh water for Panama City...
The country will need to dam even more rivers to guarantee water through the end of the century.
"The Panama Canal Authority is weighing potential fixes that include an artificial lake to pump water into the canal and cloud seeding to boost rainfall, but both options would take years to implement, if they're even feasible. " With water levels languishing at six feet (1.8 meters) below normal, the canal authority capped the number of vessels that can cross. The limits imposed late last year were the strictest since 1989... Some shippers are paying millions of dollars to jump the growing queue, while others are taking longer, costlier routes around Africa or South America. The constraints have since eased slightly due to a rainier-than-expected November, but at 24 ships a day, the maximum is still well below the pre-drought daily capacity of about 38. As the dry season takes hold, the bottleneck is poised to worsen again...
The canal's travails reflect how climate change is altering global trade flows. Drought created chokepoints last year on the Mississippi River in the US and the Rhine in Europe. In the UK, rising sea levels are elevating the risk of flooding along the Thames. Melting ice is creating new shipping routes in the Arctic. Under normal circumstances, the Panama Canal handles about 3% of global maritime trade volumes and 46% of containers moving from Northeast Asia to the US East Coast...
In the long term, the primary solution to chronic water shortages will be to dam up the Indio River and then drill a tunnel through a mountain to pipe fresh water 8 kilometers (5 miles) into Lake Gatún, the canal's main reservoir. The project, along with additional conservation measures, will cost about $2 billion, Erick Córdoba, the manager of the water division at the canal authority estimates. He says it will take at least six years to dam up and fill the site. The US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study. The Indio River reservoir would increase vessel traffic by 11 to 15 a day, enough to keep Panama's top moneymaker working at capacity while guaranteeing fresh water for Panama City...
The country will need to dam even more rivers to guarantee water through the end of the century.
The canal itself is an ecological disaster (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The canal itself is an ecological disaster (Score:5, Informative)
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Can you elaborate on the nature of this disaster?
It's true that the construction of the canal and its operation would have some disruption to the ecology in the immediate area, as does any and every human construction of any kind. A new neighborhood disrupts the plants and animals that reside in that area, for example. But I'm curious about what wider ecological impacts the canal has had. It's not obvious to me what that would be, beyond the direct footprint of the canal itself.
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That's not a bad guess, but doesn't rise to the level of "ecological disaster" IMO. Those animals that could cross the rivers, can also cross the canal, and in any case they are all still able to live in the area where they have been living already, the canal doesn't evict them from their habitat.
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Other way around, usually. Canals shorten the water-borne distance from one body of water to another. The Panama canal allows water organisms to get from the mid-latitude Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa. Migrating through the Panama canal does involve a lot of swimming upstream and changes in salinity, but it still happens. The Suez canal is all at sea level and actually lets the waters mingle, so it's generally worse.
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Crossing it, yes. I don't think that's a particular concern. For most of its length the Panama canal is either an actual, preexisting river or lake, and most of the rest is something that's very much like a river. The locks are only a tiny part of its length.
Disaster compared to which SPECIFIC alternatives? (Score:2)
The canal exists to improve global logistics for the entire modern world as does the Suez canal. The necessity was foreseeable so they were built. Their current and future necessity demands maintenance, repair, support (water etc) and adding as much capacity as practical by optimizing ship transit.
Compared to sending all that marine traffic round Cape Horn with all the energy use, time waste and other consequences the canal is a bargain. Compared to unloading on one coast then shipping by rail and truck it'
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Where do you do your efficient "shopping" at?
let their tax haven pay for it (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Why do we need their help to collect our taxes?
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Why do we need their help to collect our taxes?
Do you really not understand foreign bank accounts and tax evasion?
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I'm sorry, I can't divulge information about that customer's secret, illegal account... [youtube.com]
Dam those rivers! (Score:5, Funny)
Turns out the craziest environmentalists were right; all that CO2 really does result in dam-nation.
Another mega-project option (Score:5, Interesting)
Pump water from the lowest locks back to the highest. Use solar or whatever. Recapture some of the gravitational potential energy during the draining from higher locks to lower ones. Throw in some solar along the canal perimeter.
You're still losing to evaporation, but not as much from dumping water into the ocean.
Re:Another mega-project option (Score:5, Funny)
Or just use a few giant solar powered helicopters to pick up and carry the ships across. Use auto-rotation to get the choppers back to ground level and use that gravitational potential energy to your advantage.
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Troll? I thought we were arm-chair engineering here?
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Or just use a few giant solar powered helicopters to pick up and carry the ships across.
Or we could design some sort of transportation system that can transport the ships' cargo across the isthmus. Leaving the ships in their respective oceans. Some sort of wheeled transportation, running on steel rails comes to mind. I know. Call me crazy.
The goods destined for the East coast of the USA from Asia could be off-loaded at West coast ports and moved by rail. All that would be required is additional quantities of goods to make up for the inevitable blue state inventory shrinkage [slashdot.org].
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how big containerships are
I do know that the majority of their cargo is already off-loaded to the rail system. And sent on it's way right through the middle of major port cities. No problems.
It's trucking that doesn't have the requisite capacity.
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I think that the problem is that the lake is fresh water, while the canal will be brackish. Pumping the water back destroy all life in the lake as it becomes more and more salty.
Additionally, I'd guess the costs are high. The panama canal currently uses the water cycle to power it's activity. I'd be curious to know if anyone has worked out what the costs would actually be.
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To resolve the brackish water issue, you could terminate the system at the second-last lock, and only use it for 2 out of three cycles.
Can't beat thermodynamics, though.
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pumps == no lake required!
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I wonder what the tides would be like in that tunnel. You might need a lock system just to prevent it from turning into a giant hydraulic ram.
On the other hand, if you could control that flow you'd have 'free' energy to move ships. It takes 8-10 hours to cross the existing canal with powered ships and locks... but the tidal flow lasts about 6 hours and should produce an 18 knot flow (at least), probably a LOT more when you're funnelling an entire ocean into a human-scale tunnel. Without having to wait fo
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The top priority should be to phase out the original locks; the new locks can recover some water at least. They also had proposed a ship elevator for small craft that is likely relatively easy to implement. And then there is the overland option, which should become more viable and do a lot to provide economic assistance in Colón.
But pumping a few millions tons of water up 26m every day is not exactly practical.
Doomed (Score:5, Interesting)
While I applaud the engineering behind the Panama Canal for it to function at all, I still think that it's a massive waste of freshwater altogether. It may have been more expensive to design a system that pumps in the ocean water into the locks (especially at the time) but would have been more consistent and would have never run into this very exact problem. Fresh, drinkable water shouldn't be used for such wasteful purposes anywhere.
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Rivers do it all the time. The panama canal is taking advantage of something that would happen one way or another, I think.
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Not when you need to create man-made lakes, and then start damming more and more rivers to compensate for a something that doesn't expressly require freshwater to function to begin with. The only reason they did it that way was because it was prohibitively expensive at the time to do it any other way. It may still be prohibitively expensive, I'm not sure. But if they're going to have to spend even more money, it's definitely something they should consider instead.
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Not when you need to create man-made lakes
No even then it makes sense providing you don't need to pump. That's the whole point, the water was flowing that direction and going to the ocean anyway. Not only that, that water already flowing into the ocean was actually a technical problem for the canal. Building the giant lake served two purposes, neither of which in any way affected the availability of drinking water. The fact fresh water is used to raise and lower the locks is because fresh water already flowed there and was available as part of the
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It's not that the availability of drinking water is affected, it's that water that can be used for drinking shouldn't be used for purposes that don't expressly require fresh water. But I get it. I do. At the time, it made the most sense to do it the way they did based on the engineering available to them. Nestle hadn't bought up tons of fresh water sources yet. Global warming wasn't a concern. Blah blah blah etc etc. And yes, while the water was headed for the ocean anyway, the canal is dumping it faster de
Re:Doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
I get where you're coming from as I live in a water stressed part of the US but fresh water's value changes based on scarcity. Traditionally Panama got very large amounts of rain so fresh water was easily used for stuff like this because of its massive abundance. The last 25 years or so they've been having increasing problems with droughts though https://illuminem.com/illumine... [illuminem.com] so what made perfect sense over 100 years ago is now problematic.
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But it was a problem that was predicted, and guaranteed, to happen eventually. They've expanded the canal. The had problems in the 90s with El Nino (or El Nina, can't remember which). It's a finite fresh water supply that they have taken more and more from without compensation. And instead of incrementally doing anything to stave this problem off, they've done nothing.
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The had problems in the 90s...
They had problems in the 1960s. They had solutions then too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's a finite fresh water supply that they have taken more and more from without compensation. And instead of incrementally doing anything to stave this problem off, they've done nothing.
Agreed. They had decades of warning on this. Not only a bit of a scare on water supply shortages in the 1960s and 1970s but all kinds of news on how global warming could impact where the rain falls. Not enough rain and the Panama Canal stops working. I doubt anyone could ever pump enough water to make the Panama Canal practical should the rain dry up completely but they could put in some kind of nuclear power
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The had problems in the 90s...
They had problems in the 1960s. They had solutions then too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ah, yes, I forgot about that one.
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Sure, as my citation pointed out, the El Nino droughts have become a big problem for them during the last 25 years and yes they should have reacted before this. Never the less the canal's design wasnt a bad idea at the time of construction as the country does typically get a lot of rain when they arent facing a modern El Nino https://www.britannica.com/pla... [britannica.com] and that's all I was getting at.
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I can tell that logic isn't your stronghold! You seem to have no idea how lock systems work. Most lock systems have no lake at all and even no pump at all. Since the Panama canal presumably goes up and down, all what would be needed is pumps to fill up the highest lock, then, water would simply go back to the ocean, filling the lower locks as needed as it does. No "lake" would be required at all.
GP is right, the Panama canal is a massive and stupid waste of fresh water!
Why don't they use pumps instead of gravity? (Score:2)
Why don't they use pumps instead of gravity to lift and lower the water level (and thus the vessels)?
It's always been a massive water consumer.
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They haven't found a way to switch off gravity.
An old concern (Score:5, Informative)
The same concerns were brought up after the canal was built, then again in the 90s as El Niño was causing low water. Itâ(TM)s not climate change, the problem is the canal was engineered around a specific fresh water supply, then the canal has been expanded significantly over time, itâ(TM)s being expanded again but the problem is that the sources of water remained the same and the water isnâ(TM)t really being recycled. Making lakes will be a temporary fix, eventually the canal will be too big. The sole reason they use fresh water and not connect the two salt water bodies is exactly because of the environmentalists of the early 20th century.
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The sole reason they use fresh water and not connect the two salt water bodies is exactly because of the environmentalists of the early 20th century.
Is this correct? The French started building a sea level canal in 1881 and went bankrupt in 1889. Then the Comité Technique of the successor Compagnie Nouvelle came up with a plan with eight sets of locks and two high level lakes in 1898. However, in 1906 a US engineering panel recommended a sea level canal. To quote wikipedia:
But in 1906 Stevens, who had seen the Chagres in full flood, was summoned to Washington; he declared a sea-level approach to be "an entirely untenable proposition". He argued in favor of a canal using a lock system to raise and lower ships from a large reservoir 85 ft (26 m) above sea level. This would create both the largest dam (Gatun Dam) and the largest human-made lake (Gatun Lake) in the world at that time.
The factors at play appear to be excavation costs and the seasonal flooding of the Chagres river, which the lake plan works around.
Re: An old concern (Score:1)
Or use UTF8 you insensitive clod. Iâ(TM)ve put my HTML developer hat away a long time ago, Iâ(TM)m in management now, this bug shouldâ(TM)ve been fixed decades ago.
We've been here before, and solved the problem. (Score:2)
This problem was seen before over 50 years ago, and the problem was solved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You don't want a nuclear power plant at the Panama Canal to solve this problem? You believe that would be too expensive? Take too long? Whatever. They've had 50 years of warning that global warming would be an issue, including a kind of "dress rehearsal" on what to do about it in the 1960s and 1970s. Not having enough water to run the locks at full capacity is costing them a lot of money, and wit
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Cost (Score:1)
But fixing climate change is SO EXPENSIVE and what's in it FOR ME I want to get 3mpg in my GIANT PICKUP TRUCK and it's probably DRAG QUEENS that are causing the problem anyway because of the WOKE AGENDAAAAA WAAAHHH
(this is satire)
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>
(this is satire)
It is? Damn I was going to mod you up for being "insightful"!!
Africa? (Score:2)
others are taking longer, costlier routes around Africa or South America
I get how the Panama Canal's issues force some ships to go around South America. But Africa? I don't get it.
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That's not true. Total lie. Everyone knows it's not a solid sphere but is actually hollow so the fastest route is directly through the inner earth.
Just put wings on the ships and fly through to the other side.
Looks at the oceans and shrugs... (Score:2)
Seriously? Water is water, as far as moving ships goes... right? You got 2, count 'em 2, oceans to pick from.
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Seriously? Water is water, as far as moving ships goes... right? You got 2, count 'em 2, oceans to pick from.
The lake is also where they get drinking water for the people that live around the canal. If they continuously pump seawater into the lake then eventually it becomes too salty to drink. Well, water is water so the water can have the salt removed first but that only adds to the energy demand, this on top of pumping the water to the top of the hill in the middle of the canal.
Putting small amounts of seawater in the lake isn't going to cause big problems, it's a big lake and it is rivers running to the sea t
Good book (Score:2)
For those with an interest the book, "Panama Fever" by Matthew Parker is an excellent book about the building of the canal with lots of insights about the challenges of the geography in that part of the world.
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Geology, not geography... sheeesh
Anyway, as one example, at one point during construction one of the engineers was at the bottom of the cut and the land he was standing on rose six feet in five minutes.
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Great book. Had the sad story of how they put trees in pots to cheer up the hospital for fever victims, and didn't realize that the mosquitos that bred in the pots were the cause. And the fever doctor who took his family there. Who all died of the fever.
Hopefully cures for all these horrible diseases will eradicate them soon.
Think China's gonna fix it? (Score:2)
They've already pumped billions into the canal and effectively own it.
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They've already pumped billions into the canal and effectively own it.
I suspect that China is not going to get involved. They have bigger problems right now.
There's been reports that an inspection of ballistic missiles revealed that the fuel tanks were full of water. This can mean someone is stealing the fuel, using water in the tanks to add weight to delay suspicion. It can mean other things too, none of them likely good for China. There's something of a food shortage in China right now. Also a labor shortage, so the people that a few years ago were punishing people for
A lack of proper planning has crippled the Panama (Score:1)
A lack of proper planning has crippled the Panama Canal.
They should have increased the reservoir capacity in advance of building new lanes that use water from the resevoirs.
Climate change is a convenient scapegoat.
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A lack of proper planning has crippled the Panama Canal.
They should have increased the reservoir capacity in advance of building new lanes that use water from the resevoirs.
Climate change is a convenient scapegoat.
Perhaps global warming is a convenient scapegoat, they certainly had time to plan for what I suspect was an inevitable event.
The people running the canal had to know that the rainfall was variable. They certainly had to see reports of global warming potentially impacting rainfall all over the world. Even if they had seen none of this, and only their own pas records on lake levels, then they had to know that at some future time they may need something to mitigate against an extended drought or see their in
Where are all the "obvious solution" posts? (Score:1)
Make the ships that do go through more efficient by only letting through ships that completely reach the size and load limits.
Ships that don't measure up have to unload and put their loads onto ships that do. And then possibly reload onto another ship for the rest of the journey.
Surely that's still better that than going round South America?
( I am not a logistics expert, nor have I ever seen one on TV. )
Re: Where are all the "obvious solution" posts? (Score:2)
Let it fail (Score:2)
some thoughts on this (Score:2)
- publish a computer game to "fix" the canal to distributively brainstorm the problem
- w/i money was no object?
- use waste petro energy from the ships to partly power it (GEET)
- use Hutchinson Effect anti-grav somehow
- "beam" the cargo from place to place, pure and simple (transporters have a range of 40 000 km)
- improve the rr facilities on the w. coast to the e. coast so fewer ships must use the canal
- make any goods not specifically required from nw asia locally in n. america
- transport the cargo
They are right next to an ocean.. (Score:2)
Why is this such a drama?
Pump the water back into the canal, and not let it "escape" into the ocean.
Pump it into a holding bay for reuse.
Use ocean water to "lift" the ships up to the correct height.
It is not an issue that has a lack of funding to resolve. There are so many easy, non-technically challenging solutions to this "issue"
The US doesn't own the canal anymore (Score:2)
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Why do read them then?
I think that climate change is the greatest story of our generation: understanding the problems and see about how they will be fixed is also fascinating. That's why I read them.
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So, do you understand my frustration yet? I don't want to read about global warming if it isn't part of a story about how people are working on solving the problem
I disagree, news doesnt always have to come with a solution. In this case, the fact is that the Panama canal is having major problems that will have knock on effects for a lot of or even all of us (due to global inflation issues this only exacerbates) in terms of cost of goods. I appreciate the fact that Slashdot keeps me abreast of issues like th
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I disagree, news doesnt always have to come with a solution.
Sure, news doesn't have to come with a solution. But this isn't a general news site, this is "news for nerds", so end on solutions or expect to get rants from frustrated engineers.
I just saw this video pop up today. Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder gives news on what is a rather niche aspect of global warming because that's interesting to nerds, but knowing her audience she ends on what she thinks are solutions. Three parts of that solution is nuclear, nuclear, and nuclear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Her men
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More doom and gloom about global warming don't interest me much. If I wanted that then I can get it from any of hundreds of other general interest news sites, as well as hundreds more dedicated to just global warming doom and gloom
Then we just have different takes on this as I think Slashdot news stories like this have value to me for the reasons I laid out in my last post.
I do also appreciate your idea of discussion based around the video you posted though. Maybe spend a sec and write something real quick and submit it to Slashdot for posting. If you've never done it, I've done it a couple times now and it takes about as long as writing a multi-paragraph post in the forum :)
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30 years, eh?
They're not saying 30 years anymore.
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30 years, eh?
They're not saying 30 years anymore.
The honest people are pointing out that it may never come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
There's a video out there somewhere of an interview with an ITER physicist that talks about how fusion power is probably 80 years away. You see ITER is to prove the theory, then comes DEMO to demonstrate the physics, then PROTO is the prototype power plant that would show the engineering. PROTO is a long way away yet, and if there's some problem in the theory at ITER, or the science at DEMO, then PROTO may not be bu
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Of course, a stable, self-heating plasma that is confined to the required density/temperature is entirely beyond our technical expertise for the foreseeable future
And the inability to safely dispose of wastes and weapons material makes fission a fool's errand as a global power supply
Meanwhile, we're up to our alligators in nuclear energy falling on us every day.
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That's ITER. Both General Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion claim to have commercial hot fusion reactor designs hitting the market in the early 2030s. There's a company under contract to provide fusion power to MS by 2028.
Re:Technically correct (Score:5, Insightful)
It's *one* positive quality is baseload power w/o significant CO2 release. Which, funnily enough is a problem today we're trying to solve.
However, as noted by the 'slow' thing, it's not a solution we can expect to work in under a decade. So it's not exactly a 'solution' to the problem of the current canal issues. It could have been a solution today if more widely implemented 3 decades ago. That didn't happen so it means it is not a solution 'right now' to this problem.
Also, nuclear has this other problem with waste we have definitely not solved. To follow your rant, many will screech that "it's easy, it's just political" or "it's not that bad" to which I reply, and yet it's still a problem so no, it's not easy or not that bad.
Renewable sources and storage are moving *very* fast in scale. We'll need nuclear for at least a couple decades, but do we need to deal with 'new' plants or can we extend existing ones while continuing to ramp renewable and storage. Those are tough questions, given the politics in the US haven't yet decided climate change 'is that bad'. I'm not willing to build new nuclear just to placate the 'anti-renewable' crowd. Still might be necessary, but it's not a given by any metric just yet.
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Both can be true. Nuclear is slow to build, dangerous and wildly expensive compared to literally every other option.
It appears you misunderstand the issue. I'm not comparing nuclear power to the other options for energy, I'm comparing nuclear power to the option of allowing global warming. If the other energy options are cheaper, faster to build, and in sufficient abundance to meet our energy needs then we don't have a global warming problem as we will inevitably and naturally shift to the cheaper and lower CO2 options for energy. If these energy options aren't cheaper, aren't in sufficient abundance, or any of anothe
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And that is why people throw up their hands. Absolutes will not work.
Good day.
Technically incorrect (Score:2)
It appears you misunderstand the issue. I'm not comparing nuclear power to the other options for energy, I'm comparing nuclear power to the option of allowing global warming. If the other energy options are cheaper, faster to build, and in sufficient abundance to meet our energy needs then we don't have a global warming problem as we will inevitably and naturally shift to the cheaper and lower CO2 options for energy.
Nope, technically incorrect. Your argument does not follow.
Alternate energy could be cheaper than nuclear but still not as cheap as fossil fuels. In which case no, it's not true we "will inevitably and naturally shift to the cheaper and lower CO2 options for energy" unless the climate-change cost of fossil fuels are accounted for.
More to the point, it's possible that alternative energy sources could be cheaper than fossil fuels, but this would take investment, and fossil fuel sources have a first-mover adva
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Alternate energy could be cheaper than nuclear but still not as cheap as fossil fuels.
The premise is that we don't need to investigate nuclear power because renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels. Please try to keep up.
Still technically incorrect (Score:2)
Alternate energy could be cheaper than nuclear but still not as cheap as fossil fuels.
The premise is that we don't need to investigate nuclear power because renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels. Please try to keep up.
That's your premise. But the post you were disagreeing with didn't say that. It said that renewable energy was cheaper than nuclear, not cheaper than fossil fuel:
Nuclear is slow to build, dangerous and wildly expensive compared to literally every other option.
(where "every other option" includes renewables.)
canal issue (Score:2)
The issue with the canal is mostly that unlike Suez, it isn't a sea level canal. That could have been done, but the determination was made in the 1890s that the only technically possible solution at the time was a canal utilizing Gatun Lake and locks. It limits the capacity now and obviously, the lake level is an issue longer term.
Correcting that construction issue at this point would be a lot more possible with modern techniques. Might even avoid all the tropical diseases, too.
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For many obvious reasons that's not being considered. But at some point, a new source of water for the lake is required.
Digging an entirely new canal has already been thought about, due to current gen ships no longer fitting through it. However, a full sea level canal is also decidedly not a new idea [ucsb.edu]
I wonder if some hybrid of these 2 ideas might work. A lower but not full se
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Using 1880s steam shovels.
Try that same thing today with larger devices and modern medical care. Sure, expensive. Sure, take a long time. But only would have to be done once.
Re:Technically correct (Score:5, Interesting)
I expect any news about global warming to come with solutions to the problem
Solution 1: The Northwest Passage [wikipedia.org]. Climate change is drying out Panama, but it's also melting the Arctic. So ships can go through the NW Passage instead of the Panama Canal.
Solution 2: The Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec [wikipedia.org]. Container ships offload at the port of Coatzacoalcos on the Atlantic coast of Mexico. Then the containers are shipped 300 km by railroad to the port of Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast, where they are reloaded onto a waiting ship. The loading, railroading, and reloading take time but avoids several days of sailing to reach Panama, and also avoids the fees charged by Panama.
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Strong regulation and taxation is the other side that unfortunately we've let lapse.
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We've let that lapse, most people expressly don't participate or vote in their interests.
And as evidenced today, even that ability can be taken away - and we're perilously close to that slippery slope. We still have the power to vote in representatives to do what we want. Use it wisely.
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WWII would like a word. Our 2 party system WON that war.
We *do* still have that ability. We might not for long. Voting still matters. Trolling doesn't help.
Good Day
Re: Technically correct (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
People with money don't like to live in a wasteland, they like to buy homes with green grass, trees, maybe with access to a lake, river, or sea to swim in.
The places on Earth with the *evil* "market driven" economies also have the most green spaces. We can see this from orbit with satellite photography. If you want people to care about the environment then you best make sure they have food, clothing, fuel, medicine, an education, as well as a stack of porn or whatever else they might enjoy in their free t
Re: Technically correct (Score:2)
Youâ(TM)re a literal moron and nobody is reading that wall of drivel.
Re: (Score:1)
The number of replies, and the moderation, tell me otherwise.
Re: Technically correct (Score:2)
Global warming comes up, I mention nuclear power as a solution.
And you are wrong. Nuclear power by itself does not solve the "global warming" problem at all.
No wonder you are frustrated.
Massive carbon capture powered by nuclear power could solve the problem. Nuclear power widely used 40 years ago could have solved the problem, especially if it replaced fossil fuel burning - so in this case your "solution" is complete only if you also invent a time machine.
Re: (Score:2)
You have this idea that problems are either solved or not solved. This is a big problem, and it will take a long time to solve.
Is constructing nuclear power plants the solution? Maybe, but today, pound for pound, solar, onshore and offshore wind are the cheapest and fastest way to reduce carbon. Even if they will not, nor would ever be the complete solution, they would still be the best thing to do today, because reducing carbon today is better than the same reduction. The interesting discussions to be had
Re: (Score:2)
Drill the biggest tunnel they can, only need a couple of locks using tidal forces to power them.
It would be so amazing, imagine the wind that would be forced through that hole, could use that to power turbines.
Anyone want to guess why posted anonymously?
Because you are an insider trader holding patents vital to this being implemented, so if anyone knew who you were then they'd be in on your scheme to enrich yourself by gaining interest in the idea?
Re: (Score:1)
Duh.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Wahh! Wahh! I didn't tick AC because unlike the other poster, I don't care. Whiners gonna whine, and you proved my point.
But yeah, I'm the one who has a "violence" fantasy. Typical cowards. Don't like it when their own words are shoved down their throat.