Some might fairly debate you with regard to whether Israel is considered to be geographically part of the Middle East, but that point aside, if not the "heart," might it be more correct to say the "brains" of the Middle East?
FReegards!
Posted on 05/31/2014 9:25:52 AM PDT by ckilmer
Small price to pay. The total motor rating at the Edmonston Pumping Plant on the Ca aquaduct is 1,120,000 hp or 835MW. No, that's not used all at once but it's there if they need it. That's just to move water up a mountain to the other side, not production.
Some years ago plans were developed to have large tugboats tow icebergs to Saudi Arabia.
Some might fairly debate you with regard to whether Israel is considered to be geographically part of the Middle East, but that point aside, if not the "heart," might it be more correct to say the "brains" of the Middle East?
FReegards!
well, yeah, after the formation of Israel, the next big thing that precedes the end of the world is that the deserts are all be turned green.
What turns the deserts green is the collapse of desalination costs (which includes the collapse of energy costs). Desalination costs have been falling in half about once decade.
Right now there are couple developments in the works that may/likely/will speed the decline rate of desalination costs— including lftr thorium reactors which will collapse the cost of energy and graphene membranes.
Small price to pay. The total motor rating at the Edmonston Pumping Plant on the Ca aquaduct is 1,120,000 hp or 835MW. No, that’s not used all at once but it’s there if they need it. That’s just to move water up a mountain to the other side, not production.
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You’d think that somewhere along the line they’d figure out how to put a propeller and generator in the pipes so that as the water moved back downhill they could recover the energy they used to move the water uphill.
The real key here is energy. What was described in the article is reverse osmosis, which consumes a lot of energy.
However, there is a new technology that desalinates just as much water but uses a quarter of the energy. The secret is in nanotechnology.
Imagine a pipe that looked like it was lined with carbon. But the carbon is actually nanotubes, small pipes just large enough to pass single molecules of water at a time, nothing larger.
The water filtered through is actually not good to drink, as it is deionized and degassed. So to be used as drinking water, it needs to have a little bit of sea salt added, then aerated.
In any event, the pipes are easy to clean and low maintenance. You still need the energy to pump the salt water to the plant, and the energy to pump the now fresh water from the plant.
Read in it’s entirety, the article is pointing out what a horrible thing Israel’s desalination program is.
Dumping brine, unfair to the Philistines, using too much electricity, it’s a long list of evils that Gods Chosen People have embarked upon.
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Yeah its about inoculating California liberals from charges of hopeless stupidity and incompetence.
I had the same idea. If California took care of its water needs from the Pacific, that would free up the enormous amounts they get from neighboring states which could go for irrigation, etc. inland.
Then I thought about the hoops they’d have to jump through to get the permits to build a desalination plant, and hopes grew dim.
I don’t disagree with you. I luv the promise of carbon nanotubes and more recently graphene. So far they have been just promises. But the science of materials research is moving so profoundly these days that somewhere in the next decade something is going to give in a big way.
On the energy side—there is an immense amount of smoke and excitement coming out of nuclear energy research people these days that suggests — in under a decade or so some big breaks will be made to collapse the cost of energy. (this compares with fusion energy which has been 20 years off for the last 50 years.)
Molten salt, lead and sodium nuclear reactors, along with some French-like standardization may reduce nuclear costs somewhat. I haven't run across forecasts of a major drop in costs, however, at least not until the advent of thorium reactors. What technology are you referencing?
Desalinisation is even more dominant in the Gulf Arab states - 90% of their water comes from it. So, if the drawbacks listed in this article were serious, one would expect them to be already evident in the Persian Gulf.
Molten salt, lead and sodium nuclear reactors, along with some French-like standardization may reduce nuclear costs somewhat. I haven’t run across forecasts of a major drop in costs, however, at least not until the advent of thorium reactors. What technology are you referencing?
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I’m referring to the lftr thorium reactors. they can also be used to burn up nuclear wastes. there’s a couple companies working on that including Transatomic, Flibe, and working off different designs Terrapower and a Canadian company whose name I’ve forgotten
Thorium may take off faster than many thought even a couple of years ago. We shall see!
It really helps if your not living in the 2nd century, or whenever the minions of Mad Mo want to take us back to.
Knowing the idiots in California any extra water from desalination would be used for....the fish.
The Navy installed a desalinization plant in Gitmo after Castro cut off our water supply. We lived off water from ocean tankers while they built the plant. The water from the tankers was rank. The desal water was a slight improvement.
I sure hope you’re right.
Right now I don’t think my much actual work is being done.
I think both Flibe and Transatomic Power are still promoting the concept rather than doing any actual work. They likely both have received a million or so to keep their principals in the game. I’m just talking about whatever you can google. So there may be more going on behind the scenes. Gates’ Terrpower is has the deeper pockets but they don’t have an lftr design and I wonder if their scientists are better at doing simulations than doing actual bench work. There’s also a canadian company whose name I’ve forgotten. I’ve seen them do presentations and they seem to be actively moving ahead. I think they’re running some tests with a Chilean nuclear power plant to see if thorium works there. Its much along the same lines as a successful experiment with a norwegian nuclear power plant. They tested thorium there to see if it would work. apparently it did.
The Chinese have moved up the date on which they want their first lftr thorium plant from 20 years to 10 years.
There was a big conference at CERN concerning thorium last fall after which one big french nuclear company signed on to test thorium.
The Indians have a conventional nuclear program running that doing tests with thorium.
There’s a lot of talk from half a bunch of different countries Including the germans english japanese australians about thorium reactors.
its mostly smoke for now. but you can do search on google for thorium reactor and set the search limit to one week and there’s always at least couple articles .
Here’s a google trends for thorium
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=thorium#q=thorium&cmpt=q
my own wag is that in a couple years a very public world wide competition will break out to develop the first thorium reactor.
LOL, yes I know what you mean. You’re probably thinking of Klammath. That’s in Southern Oregon, but the Lefties in California are not likely to want to see Oregonians outLeft them.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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