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| Australian drought solution from 1966 Thunderbirds; Water and energy to the public | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 1 2007, 09:10 AM (965 Views) | |
| Supervolcano10 | May 1 2007, 09:10 AM Post #1 |
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Crazy Doctor's Apprentice
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In the 1950's, there was the drought, and people set up building the Snowy Mountains project, designed to trap meltwater from high altitudes. But at the moment the manmade lakes involved in the Snowy Mountains project were only one tenth of intended levels, and villages that were supposed to be 50m underwater are now thistle dry.Now we could buy rainwater tanks, and build desalination plants, but they are just not very effective, and desalination plants are very costly. How about we bring back an idea from the 1960's and put it up for debate?Let's take a look... One of my favorite episodes of the 1966 Thunderbirds series was 'The Mighty Atom'. In it it presented the idea of pumping seawater to a nuclear turbine plant in the Blue Mountains and, after desalinating it, pump it out into Australian deserts. Now if we did something similar in the area of the Snowy Mountains, we could have an ever increasing amount of water supply not only in Sydney, but across Australia, and turning the Australian yellow, orange and red into blue. white and green and more potential farmland. This is the working sequence: Seawater, meltwater from snow and used water taken from coastal and mountain areas across Australia is sent to a site in the Snowy Mountain area. Then the water runs through a massive array of turbines contained in a massive twisting pipeline running for thousands of kilometers. After it has gone through the massive pipeline it goes into several nuclear centres, evaporated and condensed. Then, after being desalinised, it will go into a massive pipeline in the centre of the hydronuclear plant, through more turbines going down for uncertain depths - it will go down to 100 m above the shallowest magma pact, roughly 10 km down. Hopefully. If it doesn't evaporate going down the pipeline, it will go up yet another pipeline to the surface, into a concealed tank 10 km away, where it will condense and turn into a liquid. When it had condensed, it will go down into a pipeline which will eventually split. One way leads to Australia's major cities - another goes into a massive pipe system, that will make the water flood into the deserts. Each seperate pump will pump around a megalitre per hour on a steady flow rate, and it covers a radius of 10 km- but they will be overlapping to ensure full coverage. The third leads to a second power plant in the centre of the pre-desert [in other words, in the middle of Australia] that will split the hydrogen and oxygen atoms and use it for power. The station in the Snowy Mountains will not just be a water source, it will also be a power source, which could produce so much energy that anyone in Australia could leave the lights on, and kids wouldn't be scalded for leaving them on. Also, it would be practically cost free [ for the government and casual people, that is ] as the water and power could be sold to the cities. And the water, after running through several treatment plants, could be sent back to the Snowy Mountains power plant. Of course, there are risks. The perfect disaster is that there's a meltdown from one of the many reactors because of some sort of a freak fire, and that it pollutes the water supply. But at least we'd be able to see the radiation cloud because of water vapour. |
Okay, now for my - AH CRAP! I was just getting ready for my photoshoot and now this happens! This is just ridiculous. | |
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| DirkNL | May 1 2007, 10:10 AM Post #2 |
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Horrific poster
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Wrong forum. -Dirk |
![]() Hail the wallflipping monochrome computer thingy 98% of the internet population has a Myspace. If you're part of the 2% that isn't an emo bastard, copy and paste this into your sig. | |
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| Supervolcano10 | May 1 2007, 10:44 AM Post #3 |
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Crazy Doctor's Apprentice
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What forum? |
Okay, now for my - AH CRAP! I was just getting ready for my photoshoot and now this happens! This is just ridiculous. | |
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| DirkNL | May 1 2007, 10:45 AM Post #4 |
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Horrific poster
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I think this would fit better in the Apocalypses forum... NEO!!! PIERCE!!! -Dirk |
![]() Hail the wallflipping monochrome computer thingy 98% of the internet population has a Myspace. If you're part of the 2% that isn't an emo bastard, copy and paste this into your sig. | |
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| Supervolcano10 | May 1 2007, 10:47 AM Post #5 |
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Crazy Doctor's Apprentice
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[Cough] no, it's about an idea i added onto from Thunderbirds. If it should be ANYWHERE else, it's 'The Easel And Tv' forum. Sorry if i'm mistaken. |
Okay, now for my - AH CRAP! I was just getting ready for my photoshoot and now this happens! This is just ridiculous. | |
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| Kip1 | May 1 2007, 10:48 AM Post #6 |
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Apocalyptic Usher
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We already have solutions kicking in-Desalination Plant-massive water resivoir directly under my city were tapping in to-diverting water from the Murray and other rivers And Supervolcano i doubt that idea is practical-incase you dont realise it dosnt snow very much down here |
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| Supervolcano10 | May 1 2007, 10:55 AM Post #7 |
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Crazy Doctor's Apprentice
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The main supply is used water, groundwater and seawater. I only mentioned meltwater because there's a small possibility that there would be some. Anyway, that's what the original Snowy Mountains project is all about, to collect meltwater from very high mountains. There isn't much snow at the moment because it's all melted and falling on the coast. That's why the lakes are only one tenth of their intended depth. And desalination plants don't produce power or sell their resources, do they? Edit: Diverting the Murray is the worst we can do. It cuts off water from farmland. This project I'm thinking about provides water for the farmlands earlier than cutting off the Murray will ever do, if the Murray water gets to the farmers at all. It's a waste of resources and would damage the environment for certain. |
Okay, now for my - AH CRAP! I was just getting ready for my photoshoot and now this happens! This is just ridiculous. | |
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| Kip1 | May 1 2007, 11:02 AM Post #8 |
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Apocalyptic Usher
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In Perth the desal plant saved our hides from basicly a total water ban cant argue with enough water to fill three olympic swimming pools every thitry minutes {thats a whole shitload of water i'll say that now} Not to mention the plants run 24/7 and in the long run produce more water than the Snowy Mountains would Not saying its a bad idea though-just that we have it covered{for now} |
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| Supervolcano10 | May 1 2007, 11:08 AM Post #9 |
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Crazy Doctor's Apprentice
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You have it covered. But here in Sydney I can't have the bath full or I'm scolded. And if I leave the lights on? [ which i always do cuz i forget ] my father nags me. I'm not putting down desalination plants at all. I'm just saying that i wouldn't be nagged when i had the bath full, or forgot to turn off the lights. Anyway, this thing could process billions of litres per month [ don't worry, some of it will go back in the sea] and maybe produce a gigawatt per hour [if it's big enough, and powerfull enough]. It probably would run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, although either there'd be four people living there or a thousand hired to check it. |
Okay, now for my - AH CRAP! I was just getting ready for my photoshoot and now this happens! This is just ridiculous. | |
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| FallenDeku | May 1 2007, 12:23 PM Post #10 |
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Planning World Domination
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but it just won't work. Energy can't come out of nowhere, you need to convert it. In the case of a turbine you use the kinetic energy to turn the turbine blades which in turns generates electricity (or whatever). Now considering how many turbines you're talking about here, and the predicted output, we have to give this water a hell of a lot of energy (hence why steam turbines are often used). And remember, the energy supplied by gravity is proportional to the difference in height when the water enters and exists a closed system (i.e. your pipeline), not to mention the fact you plan to use seawater which would need to be taken up to the mountains before you could even start. Next you mention the prospect of running this water through nuclear centres to be evaporated and condensed. Do you understand how dangerous this is? H2O is not the advised coolant for a nuclear reactor, reason being that the Hydrogen atoms tend to absorb too many neutrons and thus stop the reaction. To operate a reactor using H2O would require use of enriched Uranium, and do I have to point out how nasty that stuff is? Regardless, passing H2O through a nuclear reactor turns it into D2O or T2O, both of which are severely poisonous. Of course this is only at very high volumes, but this is our drinking we're talking about. Finally, this water is going to have all sorts of impurities (i.e. sea salt), if the water is evaporating and condensing this is likely to build up in your reactor core, which is a nasty thing, and is near impossible to clean. Not to mention you'd probably get radioactive chlorine forming which is again something you really don't want to drink. "will split the hydrogen and oxygen atoms and use it for power" Um, the formation of water releases energy, separating Hydrogen and Oxygen requires the plant to put energy into the water. Speaking of which, is a process that consumes more energy than reacting the oxygen and hydrogen gives off (due to our inefficient machines and equipment). |
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| Rhas BloodBear | May 1 2007, 05:44 PM Post #11 |
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I FUCKING SUCK AT EVERYTHING GOD DAMN
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Volcano: Well, turning the center of Australia into farmland is really selfish. It destroys the ecology. It is a good idea, however, but the amount of funding would be vast. Deku: Ah, but you forgot the laws of Thermodynamics. |
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| NeoAegis | May 1 2007, 05:50 PM Post #12 |
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Israel thug life
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Sounds more like Technology forum to me since it's not End of the World nor is it specifically about the show Thunderbirds. *Moves* |
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| Killer Bee | May 1 2007, 06:59 PM Post #13 |
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...and you start playing with the natural balance of the environment, you could get water to the desert and cause somewhere else to have a localised climate shift resulting in a severe drought. Playing with ecological balances is a very dangerous game that nobody should have the authority to play.
It is an interesting idea, but not a very good one to make real. |
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| Rhas BloodBear | May 1 2007, 07:06 PM Post #14 |
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I FUCKING SUCK AT EVERYTHING GOD DAMN
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That, and animals go extinct, habitats are destroyed, people die, It's a pain in the ass. |
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| FallenDeku | May 2 2007, 03:39 AM Post #15 |
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Planning World Domination
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What do thermodynamics have to do with this? Half the laws don't apply because we're not dealing with a system in equilibrium and we're not tending to absolute zero. Now thermodynamics does tell us that adding heat to a system increases it's energy and performing work decreases its energy, hence we can add heat to a system and have it perform work. The problem is getting the heat to go into the system in the right way as to produce the work we want. A simple steam turbine heats water, funnels the steam through the turbine and then condenses the water again, taking advantage of the fact that the steam will want to rise out the top of the heating container. Unfortunately for the proposed system the water never behaves in this cyclic manner, and the water undergoes uniform heating at it's lowest point, the water is therefore just as likely to drive back against itself as it is to flow forward, hence the water just won't flow (because of the Earth's heat). The system can still be driven by gravity, kind of like a giant siphon, but still, the energy provided by a siphon system pales to that required to turn the mammoth turbine farm described, especially when you factor in friction (both with turbines and water against the pipe). The nuclear component is the only area capable to introducing the required energy to the system, however as stated above this section is wrought with its own problems, and even then, the entire operation would be a simple nuclear power plant, in which case it would be more cost effective to build several of those around the nation. (As to then reduce energy lost in transmission). Long story short: A nuclear power plant attached to a desalination plant would be significantly more effective, not to mention safer and easier to maintain (as each component can be isolated if need be). |
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