According to projections, water for cooling reactors will likely become severely limited by 2040-2070. The crack Rockhouse research time has not further validated the credibility of the claim but quickly increasing demands for water are already creating crises elsewhere so on the surface it seems credible in this context.
Said in the tone of the first "Die Hard" when all the FBI guys blew up, "We're going to need more desalination plants."
In the context of a sci fi book, it's easy to say, sure, let's build a whole squad of desalination plants ... but then there are political realities. Many of the reasons for sci fi books is to blow past stupid political realities so we will do that and continue blithely forward.
The function of the cooling tower for a nuclear reactor comes from evaporative cooling in which the evaporation of the hottest or most energized water draws enough energy from the remaining water due to the energy required to do it that the water on exit is close to the dry bulb ambient temperature of the air.
A great deal of water is lost as vapor to the atmosphere and who knows how long that comes back as rain but maybe a long time so the thinking now is the cooling tower needs a giant condenser to reclaim the water which is lost that way. Maybe this is getting gratuitously complex but we have some crackerjack scientists inventing things for this project and we're confident they can build anything ... regardless of whether (cough) it will actually work.
From the latest ridiculously compulsive reading has come the better insight that the cooled water won't kill the crops so that's an immense improvement since I also found if crops are flooded in water at ninety degrees for ten days then they're deceased crops. The problem is eliminated but now there's another one. Even if we ensure total recycling of the water, there may not be sufficient water to further supply the reactor and the city. Therefore it has to be a closed system but eventually the people in the Rock City will drink it all and then they're screwed all over again.
If we solve the global water supply problem then we won't just one Nobel but a stack of them and that's a bit daunting ... but we will go for it anyway because we are highly motivated and we are reckless.
Note: if you're not quite getting it with obsessive / compulsive behavior, the pursuit of the solution for cooling the Rock City should give a fair idea of it. There is no reason for doing it but that makes it all the more entrancing.
Said in the tone of the first "Die Hard" when all the FBI guys blew up, "We're going to need more desalination plants."
In the context of a sci fi book, it's easy to say, sure, let's build a whole squad of desalination plants ... but then there are political realities. Many of the reasons for sci fi books is to blow past stupid political realities so we will do that and continue blithely forward.
The function of the cooling tower for a nuclear reactor comes from evaporative cooling in which the evaporation of the hottest or most energized water draws enough energy from the remaining water due to the energy required to do it that the water on exit is close to the dry bulb ambient temperature of the air.
A great deal of water is lost as vapor to the atmosphere and who knows how long that comes back as rain but maybe a long time so the thinking now is the cooling tower needs a giant condenser to reclaim the water which is lost that way. Maybe this is getting gratuitously complex but we have some crackerjack scientists inventing things for this project and we're confident they can build anything ... regardless of whether (cough) it will actually work.
From the latest ridiculously compulsive reading has come the better insight that the cooled water won't kill the crops so that's an immense improvement since I also found if crops are flooded in water at ninety degrees for ten days then they're deceased crops. The problem is eliminated but now there's another one. Even if we ensure total recycling of the water, there may not be sufficient water to further supply the reactor and the city. Therefore it has to be a closed system but eventually the people in the Rock City will drink it all and then they're screwed all over again.
If we solve the global water supply problem then we won't just one Nobel but a stack of them and that's a bit daunting ... but we will go for it anyway because we are highly motivated and we are reckless.
Note: if you're not quite getting it with obsessive / compulsive behavior, the pursuit of the solution for cooling the Rock City should give a fair idea of it. There is no reason for doing it but that makes it all the more entrancing.
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