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For SpaceNut ... when you get time to read the history of the region, you'll discover that every possible way that humans can think of has been tried to deliver fresh water to a region where is it not naturally present.
That is true across the entire planet. It is time to start to plan to use the power of atomic fission to meet the needs of humans for fresh water, and many other materials. There is no magic involved. The solution is well known. The challenge is entirely social.
The water to be delivered to the agricultural must cost less than or exactly equal to the known minimum feasible cost.
The known feasible cost has been published and is publicly available.
I'd have to go back to be sure, but my recollection is the amount is on the order of $2,000 per acre-foot.
There is NO feasible way to deliver water to the needing people using existing solutions. The reason is that the Earth's climate is changing, and water is no longer arriving due to random wind patterns.
The problem ** has ** to be solved. It is a fact that people around the world are dying due to drought.
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The reactor if it were cheaper would already have been built but they are not and its why it will not be done.
https://www.synapse-energy.com/sites/de … 0022_0.pdf
Nuclear Power Plant Construction Costs
Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant.
https://thebulletin.org/2019/06/why-nuc … -about-it/
Why nuclear power plants cost so much—and what can be done about it
AP1000 reactors in the state of Georgia original cost estimate of $14 billion has risen to $23 billion, but construction is proceeding, given the promise of government financial support for these reactors—the first of their kind in the United States.
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https://www.constructionreporter.com/ne … -this-year
12 mile-long water pipeline 66-inch diameter pipeline that will carry water from the Salt River Project to the rapidly growing northern end of Phoenix, a section of the city with more than 400,000 residents. The estimated $300 million pipeline will be built in three phases and could be completed by 2024.
https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/news/ … 81b78.html
A 10 ½ mile pipeline costing $90 million and snaking through east Mesa and through Gilbert would send a large amount of treated effluent to the Gila River Indian Community to irrigate crops.
In return, Mesa would receive rights toward supplies of potable water suitable for drinking after treatment, averting potential shortfalls an estimated four or five years from now in southeast Mesa.
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There used to be a graph on Wikipedia, but someone deleted it. The chart showed global temperature over land, not including the ocean. That showed global cooling from 1855 through 1970. There was a spike of warming during WW1 and another for WW2. In both cases it dropped right after the war; not just to what it was before the war, but what it would have cooled to if the cooling trend had continued. As I said before, this was caused by soot from coal burning spewed into the stratosphere by those tall concrete smokestacks. The soot caused global warming in the stratosphere, and global cooling over land. Environmental regulation was passed in 1970. Global cooling reversed to global warming in the summer of 1970. If you look at global temperature from 1550 through 1855, there was slow global warming. That was due to nature. If you assume the slow warming would have continued if humans hadn't screwed with it, then at the end of 1998 global temperature equalled what it would have been. That's exactly when global warming stopped. It didn't completely stop, it just slowed. It wasn't a gradual process, it made a sharp sudden change. If you look at the graph, it looks like global warming completely stopped. You have to zoom in very closely to see there still is a little global warming. The rapid global warming from the summer of 1970 through the end of 1998 was nothing but the planet recovering back to its natural temperature.
This means people have to accept the fact that the climate of the mid-20th century was not natural. It was artificially frigid. Scientists in the 1960s and 1970s raised the alarm of global cooling. Well, we solved that problem. Now we live in a world where global cooling is solved.
Tom, you emphasized "The problem ** has ** to be solved." But this *IS* the solution. People still haven't realized it. Stop comparing today's climate to the mid-20th century. Start comparing to the first half of the 1800s, before 1855.
Yes, this will mean some towns in southern California will have to actually build a storm sewer system. Most cities have rain, we have storm sewers, so they will have to as well. And yes, towns in the desert were never meant to support millions of people. Phoenix now has 4.8 million people in the greater metropolitan area. (4,845,832 people according to the 2020 census) With that many people, they're going to have to practice water conservation. Satellite image from Google maps shows most houses have lawns. They will have to replace landscaping with something that doesn't require water.
If you want to apply Mars technology, then an advanced sewage processing system. When I was in elementary school in the early 1970s, the school had a field trip to the sewage treatment plant. I think they wanted students to consider a job there. Anyway, the plant started with something that looked like an Olympic size swimming pool, but you really didn't want to swim there. A series of rakes were permanently across the surface. Toilet paper would float and get caught in the rakes. They removed the toilet paper for separate disposal; don't know what they did with it. The water then went to round settling tanks to settle out feces. Periodically a tank would be drained and the solid material at the bottom removed to digester tanks where bacteria would break it down. After the solids were broken down, the result was called "night soil". This was used as fertilizer, but only on fields that grow fodder for livestock. Manure from livestock is used as fertilizer for crops for humans, but "night soil" is only used on crops for livestock. That reduces the chance of spreading contagious disease. The liquid from the settling tanks was taken to a set of concrete rapids, where oxygen from air would cause urine to break down into ammonia and CO2. The ammonia would further break down into water and nitrogen. Today that's done with oxygen instead of just air. The sewage treatment plant has an oxygen plant; I think they use a filter to separate nitrogen from oxygen. Some car repair shops sell nitrogen to fill tires, they use the same filter. It requires pressurized air.
After doing all this, instead of just dumping the waste water somewhere, the plant could use an artificial wetland. Natural wastewater treatment uses a wetland to filter water. Several European cities do this, but take it one step further: final water from this could be used to irrigate crops. Evaporation may be a concern because Arizona is so arid. Instead of just a wetland, cover it to prevent evaporation. And instead of just a natural wetland, grow crops for fodder (animal feed). There are probably wetland crops that could do the job and provide fodder. Growing a crop that can be sold for revenue would justify the expense of maintaining a roof. And the roof has to allow sunlight through, either transparent or translucent.
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I agree with Robert that it is likely to be more cost effective focusing on water recycling, before we begin exploring options for desalination. This article provides some statistics.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/11 … -ener.html
Around 6kWh of electricity is needed to produce 1m3 of water. So a 1000MWe nuclear reactor, operating at 90% capacity factor, could produce around 1.3 cubic kilometres of water per year. However, if we use PWRs to generate the required electricity, then 0.8m3 of cooling water is needed per m3 of fresh water generated. We should devise systems that use salt water for reactor cooling, I.e evaporation ponds. But it means you need at least 1.8m3 of salt water to produce each m3 of fresh water. Maybe more.
This is not to pour cold water on the idea of water desalination. But for it to be affordable, all reasonable measures should be taken to extract the most economic value out of each cubic metre of water thus generated. That means improving efficiency and reusing processed domestic water for agriculture where we can.
The same is obviously true on Mars. Though the specifics are different in this case. On Mars, we must inject large amounts of heat into the ground to melt permafrost. To do this, we need at least 500KJ of heat per kg water, to first heat the ice from -60°C to 0°C, melt the ice and warm the water to ~10°C. I say 'at least' because the ice will be mixed with other solids that will absorbe heat and some heat will escape into surrounding materials. We must then desalinate the liberated water. So we are probably looking at around 1MJ of energy per kg of water, most of which is in the form of heat. That works out to be nearly 300kWh of energy per m3 of water - which is around 50x more energy than is needed for desalination of water on Earth. Most of this will be heat, but it is still heat that we must generate. Mars water will be expensive. We need a very cheap source of low grade heat. And we need to use water efficiently. But all systems will be more closed on Mars compared to Earth. Water will not just evaporate from dirt. It will be extensively recycled in habitats that are air tight.
Last edited by Calliban (2021-12-20 07:16:56)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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Thanks to everyone for participating in development of this topic!
Part of the challenge I face (as topic manager) is trying to help new participants to get up to speed.
Few NewMars members have time to read every post. In fact, it is possible that NO NewMars member has time to read every post. let alone think deeply about each post, separating good information from wild speculation. In the context of NewMars forum, even wild speculation can lead to unexpected insights about how the Universe works, or how we humans might take advantage of capabilities we were unaware of.
This topic is not about how the people of Arizona, Mexico, or any of the regions of the world where water supplies are failing can reuse water they already have.
This topic is ** entirely ** devoted to the proposition that atomic fission yields between 1,000,000 and 20,000,000 more energy per kilogram than chemical fuels, and that water provided by natural random distribution of evaporated ocean water cannot be counted upon by an advanced civilization.
The settlement of Mars will require robust solutions to the problem of extracting water from heavy brine solutions, and nuclear fission power is the key to successful settlement of Mars.
Technology that will meet the needs of a civilization on Mars is perfectly suitable for development on Earth, and the region where Phoenix sits is well suited for development of that technology. The people of the region have been dealing with insufficient water for centuries. They have built dams, rerouted rivers, sunk straws into underground aquifers and performed a myriad of water saving devices and methods.
Due to changes in rain patterns, rivers are drying up. There is no rain water into which to capture drainage from the roof.
A forecast of an eventual change of rain fall patterns is speculation based upon imaginings.
The people of Arizona are already having to forgo agricultural production because there is insufficient water to meet the needs of the existing population, let alone the needs of future residents who are (astonishinly) continuing to flock to the region.
At some point, leaders of any population have to face the facts of the world they live in. There are signs that a few leaders are beginning to engage in preliminary bouts of thought about the problem, and how to deal with it.
Meanwhile, for future Mars settlers, the solution is obvious so arguments about collecting rain water in basins are less likely but could still happen.
The purpose of this topic is to assist the people of Arizona who would like to consider the solution for Mars, as they confront the reality of diminishing natural rain fall, dwindling stores of water underground, and a growing population.
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So how many Electrolysis units, Sabatiers or RWGS running to convert undrinkable water in to water that can be as part of the waste stream of sewage and road drain offs?
Has anyone processed the top meter of soils via heat and sold the dried sands to gather funds plus captured the water?
Of the population number how many of them are legal age to generate funding from to build what is needed?
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The post here is primarily intended to hold contact information for the author of a study of desalination for Tuscon, Arizona. The estimated cost is $4.1B, and estimated approval time is four decades (or so).
About 8 results (0.90 seconds)
Contact Us Results - Pima County https://webcms.pima.gov › cms › One
Address: 201 North Stone Avenue, 8th Floor, Tucson, AZ 85701 | Phone: (520) 724- ... Regional Wastewater Reclamation Department (RWRD) - Community Relations.
Missing: Eric WieduwitzDepartment Directory - Pima County https://webcms.pima.gov › cms › One
Addressing Official, Robin Freiman, (520) 724-7570, Robin.Freiman@pima.gov. Deputy Director, Chris Poirier, (520) 724-6596, Chris.Poirier@pima.gov.Wastewater Reclamation - Pima County https://webcms.pima.gov › government › wastewaterrec...
The Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Department (RWRD) provides design, management and maintenance of the sanitary sewer system, including the ...Eric Wieduwilt - Pima County Wastewater Reclamation Dept https://www.linkedin.com › eric-wieduwilt-841a0460
Tucson, Arizona, United States · Deputy Director planning and engineering · Pima County Wastewater Reclamation Dept
View Eric Wieduwilt's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional ... Deputy Director at Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Department.
County Government Offices
Map of address for Pima County, Ariz., official, Eric Wieduwitz waste water department
Pima County Regional Wastewater
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Tucson, AZ · (520) 724-6500
Water & Energy Sustainability Center
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(1) · County government office
Tucson, AZ · (520) 724-6200
Pima County Wastewater Plant
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Tucson, AZ · (520) 443-6464Pima County Considers Building Costly Desalination Plant https://www.governing.com › next › pima-county-consi...
Aug 19, 2021 — That's how a Pima County, Ariz., official, Eric Wieduwilt, describes a new proposal for a $4.1 billion desalination project that would start ...
A quirk of the Tuscon plan is that desalination would be performed in Mexico, and fresh water would be shipped to Arizona.
The Phoenix plan (the one with which NewMars is affiliated) envisions shipping sea water from the Sea of Cortez, and returning 10% fresh water to Mexico, as a trade in-kind for the courtesy of permitting sourcing sea water from their territory, and transporting it North to the US.
All processing would be performed in the US, in the Phoenix plan, and NO salt or other waste would be produced.
Another feature of the Phoenix plan (very much in early stages) is that from the outset, the project would be designed as a profit making venture.
However, I saw a misunderstanding in a recent post in this topic, so I'll clarify for the record ...
The entity that operates this facility is now and would then be a private/public not-for-profit entity The ** profit ** of the enterprise would flow to the Citizens of Arizona as shares of Common Stock, after all expenses are accounted for.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/history-litt … 20847.html
The Desert Sun
History: Little-known desert history of the Bradshaw Trail
Tracy Conrad
Sun, December 19, 2021, 11:00 AM
The earliest accounts mark the next stop at Sand Hole, an unreliable watering spot on the trail beyond Agua Caliente in what is now Palm Desert.
The route trekked eastward toward Point Happy. “Indian Wells was just that. First called Old Rancheria on the maps, it was originally a Cahuilla village, and the present name developed from the known presence of a deep well dug there by the Indians ... where a permanent station was built of stone and adobe.”
Because some of our NewMars members do not live in the desert, the history described in the link above may be of interest. Lack of fresh water has been a feature of the landscape, and the little snippet above illustrates the situation that existed when Europeans began exploring the West. Native peoples had been dealing with water scarcity for thousands of years.
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Since share cost needs to be calculated with a benefit of investment interest for marketing them needs to be tied up with total project costs. Not for profit can be left out of initial startup funding as you need every dollar and then some to create the supply system. The profit is used to pay the investment shares.
Projected cost
total buyers for shares
projected share count
investment return for share
Having undrinkable water is not just a desert issue in the US but infrastructure to deliver it is also a problem.
With enough free energy anything can be done.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-chan … 08172.html
BuzzFeed News
“This Is Climate Change Barging Through The Front Door”: Water Scarcity Is Forcing Changes In How The Colorado River Is Shared
While progress has been made toward addressing current shortages, it remains to be seen whether long-term agreements on more fundamental changes can be reached in a basin accustomed to incremental policy adjustments — and whether political promises of cooperation and inclusion result in concrete actions.
“Water gives us life,” McDowell said. “People need to start thinking about the impacts of our use of this river from a long-term perspective — not just about how much money this company or person is going to make. If we’re not careful in what we decide, we will cease to exist.”
This article provides a concise summary of the history and current state of water shortages in the Colorado Basin.
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Of course the issue is the unknown quantity that will come into the water shed followed by the rate of consumption even if you know the limits of what each municipality will get from it.
Total fresh water consumption in the world can be classified into three categories; about 70% is used for irrigation, 20% is used for industrial purposes, and only 10% of the fresh water is consumed for domestic uses as drinking and cleaning water.
Desalination techniques used for fresh water production
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For SpaceNut re #37 ... thank you for this helpful addition to the topic!
Today, I'm adding a perspective from the American State of Utah ...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/drying-west- … 15045.html
Cox "is thinking about Utah's water supply into the future, and that is something every Western governor has to be doing right now," said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group based in Denver. "That is the reality of life in the West right now. Every governor is going to have to deal with water shortages, every governor is going to have to deal with megafires, because that is our reality."
The article at the link above reports on the debate about water going on in 2022 in the American West.
I am posting it in the Phoenix topic because it reflects the overall scope of the situation.
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Summary of issues.
1 what is the quantity of need in gallons per day to be used by the population count?
2 Is there a means to control the number allotted to each?
3 Is there a weekly number rather than a day amount per house hold rather than per person?
4 Defined source of the water good, bad, fresh or salty.
5 how is it being moved to be processed?
6 Whats the property costs to build the system for the through put?
7 Is there a backup storage and how large will it be?
8 What is the power level required to make the equipment work to deliver to the facet for the entire system?
9 what will be the start up cost an reoccurring taxes and fees to make the water quality which the customer requires?
There are many things to consider
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For SpaceNut re #39
Thanks for a thoughtful post with a list of excellent questions!
My impression (from first reading) is that the list is exactly right for Mars.
In the case of Utah, there is collective anguish over the loss of an entire lake!
So, to try to reflect that, it might make sense to ask...
Would we like to have a lake in our State?
Would we like to have so much water we don't even ** think ** about rationing?
Would we like to have so much water we don't have to ** think ** about allocation by household, by business, or any other way?
That describes the situation in much of the US East of the Mississippi River.
West of the Mississippi River, conditions appear to be more and more stringent.
Vast populations are already competing with each other for scarce water resources.
Water that cannot be delivered to farm fields might as well cost an infinite amount.
As you say, there are many things to consider.
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tahanson43206,
If there's no way to convince "The Powers That Be" that a nuclear reactor is the most resource efficient option for producing the enormous quantities of heat and electricity required for water desalination and electrolysis (for Hydrogen fuel), then they at least need to be convinced that they must have solar thermal power plus storage to generate 24/7/365 power. Photovoltaics and wind turbines are 25 year assets at best, and then they have to be substantially replaced or refurbished. Solar thermal, despite requiring more steel and concrete than a nuclear reactor, is also a 75+ year power generation asset, just like a nuclear reactor or hydroelectric dam. The best way to secure power and fuel for the future is to stop "throwing energy away" on short term assets. This requires long term / "generational" thinking. The Asian cultures seem to instinctively understand this, whereas western cultures don't seem to hold the same view of infrastructure investments.
All short term solutions are "feel good" solutions. It "feels good" to do anything at all to rectify the immediate problem, but the overarching problem is all of the energy we "throw away" by creating disposable electronic appliances. That is directly related to planned obsolescence. You can't build a stable energy future or economy with that approach to energy infrastructure. Sooner or later, a technologically advanced civilization must maintain multi-generational power generation / infrastructure assets that are still productive when our children are ready to take ownership of those assets.
I think photovoltaics and batteries are about as mature as they're reasonably going to get over the next 25 years. There is no indication at all that the current workhorse technologies (GaAs / CdTe / CIGS / Lithium-ion batteries) will radically change or improve in performance. Silicon wafers and thin films and Lithium-ion batteries have had numerous process improvements applied and variant technology branches created over the decades since the 1970s, but the underlying technologies are little changed because nobody has come up with anything that provides performance improvements so great that it warrants a shift away from the existing technologies. There are no radically more efficient photovoltaics or batteries in the pipeline. Nearly everything in mass commercial production right now, with gradual continued process improvements or material substitutions, will be what is on offer 25 years from now. Short of breakthrough discoveries made by AI-directed computing, it's not even feasible that most of the bulk of those industries can switch to some as-yet-to-be-perfected transformational new technologies. For example, if we had solid state Lithium-ion, then that gives us around 600Wh/kg. Through existing process improvements, we're nearly already there using conventional "jelly roll" Lithium-ion batteries, so why would anyone switch? It takes about 10 years to build a chip fab, 5 years to build a photovoltaic or battery or wind turbine manufacturing plant, and 25 to 50 years to actualize major shifts in generational technology. If a new battery tech like Sodium-ion or Sulfur-ion is thoroughly tested and proven today, then it would be 5 to 10 years before the industry could supplant Lithium-ion manufacturing and another 30 years before they substantially replace Lithium-ion. Will that happen eventually? Sure it will, but not over a timeframe that's relevant to replacing the burning of natural gas or coal.
Electronic fuel injection tech has existed in the form we use it today since about the early 1990s. No radically new or different way to squirt gasoline or diesel into a combustion change have occurred during the past 30 years. There have been continuous improvements to the reliability of the computer control systems for combustion management and to the fuel injectors themselves, but we're still using technology that's functionally identical to what was available 30 years ago. The same applies to carburetors. We've taken carburetor technology as far as we can reasonably take it, and it's still not competitive with EFI, which is why EFI gradually supplanted carbs over the last 30 to 40 years. I would expect new photovoltaics or batteries that are substantially improved over what we use right now to take at least that much time to supplant the existing state-of-the-art technologies. The only technologies that I expect will feature radically improved performance 25 years from now are microchips / computers / visual display technologies / AI / biomedical tech, because that's what past industry performance indicates.
Heat engines have advantages over electronics in the areas of simplicity (computer control system complexity is real complexity), maintainability (serviceable parts), and recyclability (you can't simply "melt down" old microchips or photovoltaics or modern batteries to produce a new ones). Those physical characteristics define a multi-generational power plant asset. A good plumber can be taught the flow of heat / fluid within a solar thermal or nuclear thermal power plant in less than a week. You may not be able to convey the finer points of a GigaWatt-class photovoltaic array and battery storage farm to an electrical engineer over a month. Sure, with enough education and explanation, either system can be taught to the next generation so that they can maintain it, but one is clearly simpler to understand than the other, which means more educational / training time can be devoted to other tasks. That may seem like a minor consideration, but it's not. I would rather have the electrical engineers that we do have, focused on designing the next generation of microchips instead of running down faults in a rat's nest of wires and electronic control systems. As the birth rate declines and the work force contracts, simplicity will become an increasingly relevant design factor.
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For kbd512 re #41
I'm planning to read #41 carefully tomorrow morning ... this is just a quick note of thanks for your thoughtful contribution to this topic.
Because I'm a bit closer to the action, I've been brought into contact with some of the positions taken by some who are opposed to human intervention in the drought that is sweeping the West.
Thanks again for the generosity of your calculations that were forwarded to the gent on the scene, who is trying to see a way through the thicket of human caused obstacles.
** All ** NewMars members (except for one) understand that Mars can ONLY be settled if nuclear power (fission or fusion or both) are enlisted to deliver the copious amounts of energy needed. However, for a great number of humans living on Earth, what we may see as obvious is so shaded by fear that it cannot even be considered.
I am counting heavily on the precedent that makes Arizona a halfway decent candidate. They already have (according to reports I have seen) the largest fission reactor in the United States. However, that does ** not ** mean the entire population can be enlisted in a campaign to deliver fresh water using a nuclear reactor as an energy source.
Edit 2022/01/07 after careful reading of Post #41
This post deserves a tag, but I can't think of one that covers it.
I come away from the reading with the impression your argument is for simple thermal energy devices for long term delivery of energy to meet the needs of a human population that is aiming to survive for an extended period. There might be a tag in there somewhere.
I am open to ** anyone ** helping to try to categorize Post #41
There appear (to me at least) to be two (or perhaps three) primary contributors to resistance to the idea of delivery of fresh water to the population of Phoenix, to the entire State of Arizona, and to the American Southwest taken as a whole ....
1) Fear and lack of trust (this state of mind is particularly significant in the United States in 2022)
2) Ignorance (not intended as a criticism) Human beings are born ignorant... parents and other elders attempt to encourage learning, but ignorance is infinite
3) Momentum
Members of this forum have demonstrated generosity in trying to think about what it means to be faced with drought. The people of the American Southwest have been dealing with fresh water scarcity for hundreds (and probably thousands) of years. Kind suggestions offered by those who are approaching the problem for the first time are decades or centuries late to the party.
The NewMars forum, and the Mars Society as a whole, are faced with an entirely different problem.
On Mars, there is NO water to conserve by collecting downflow from the roof, helpful as that suggestion might be on Earth.
Those who would settle Mars have the distinct advantage of knowing from the outset that nuclear power (and lots of it) are essential for any chance of a comfortable life on Mars. Any benefit that might come from capturing Solar energy at Mars will be a welcome bonus on top of the nuclear power base that must be in place.
There is a lot of wishful thinking going on about finding clean water in great repositories on Mars. My suggestion is to assume there is water heavily mixed with local materials that must be processed at great energy cost on Mars, so assume the need for great energy and just plan for it.
The same goes for nuclear energy production of fresh water on Earth, and particularly in the vast regions that do not have fresh water, or which are seeing flows of fresh water decreasing as wind patterns change on Earth.
***
For kbd512 .... your point about needing personnel to be trained to build and maintain heat production facilities over many decades is one I take to heart.
In another topic, I am advocating for a simple, easily memorable Rule-of-Thumb for a survivable atmosphere off Earth.
In that topic, I am advocating for the 3-5-8 rule, even though I understand the 431 rule is better.
The same concept is going to hold true for all advanced technologies that humans are going to depend upon for survival off Earth.
** Every ** human off Earth needs to have a rudimentary set of survival skills, adapted to whatever environment clever folks can create for them.
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tahanson43206,
Mars is so energy-poor that any significant settlement will require nuclear power. No amount of "green ideology" will affect the fact that anyone living on Mars, energy-wise, is between a proverbial "rock and a hard place". The energy usage at our Antarctic research station is sky-high, yet they produce no food for themselves, no atmospheric breathing gases are produced or recycled, no construction takes place on-site except using diesel powered machinery, and they do very little in the way of waste water recycling (they treat grey water and then they discharge it, because they're literally sitting on a functionally limitless supply of fresh water). To support those very limited scientific research activities in the Antarctic, they burn an incredibly amount of diesel fuel each day. The researchers do get supplemental power from wind, solar, and batteries. Antarctica is rich in wind, but relatively poor in solar. There's no usable wind power or hydro power on Mars, which leaves solar and batteries as the sole alternative, which also happens to be the least energy-dense form of fuels that humanity has learned how to use.
We supply 300,000 liters / 79,250 gallons of diesel fuel per year, in order to support 10 (winter) to 80 (summer) people. Each gallon of diesel fuel represents 40,700Wh of thermal power, or 3,225,475,000 / 3.2GWh of power for 10 to 80 people over 1 year. Each kilo of U235 is 24GWh per kg, if fully consumed in a nuclear reactor. To supply daily power, batteries would have to store 8,836,918Wh, and to have any kind of reasonable battery life, that has to be doubled to 17,673,836Wh. That equates to 70,695kg of batteries, which is either at or over the shipping weight of 10MWe class truck-transportable nuclear reactor cores. If we're lucky, those batteries might last for 10 years (3,650 charge / discharge cycles) before replacement is required.
Mars InSight lander has an active array area of 5.14m^2 and generated approximately 4,600Wh on Day 1 (IIRC, actual output was 4,585Wh or thereabouts). That equates to 895Wh/m^2 of "Day 1" / "perfectly clean" output. Total array output dropped like a rock to, IIRC, a mere 700Wh in less than 2 years, due to accumulation of atmospheric dust. Therefore, solar arrays DO have to be kept clean on a routine basis to prevent dramatic loss of power output. We will assume that we can clean the arrays, though, because we do that in the deserts here on Earth, where it is equally necessary to maintain output.
That info comes from this document. This is a comprehensive analysis of measured versus estimated output using state-of-the-art photovoltaic array equipment optimized for LILT (Low-Intensity / Low-Temperature) conditions:
Scientific Observations With the InSight Solar Arrays: Dust, Clouds, and Eclipses on Mars
Maximum Wh/m^2 is therefore around 900Wh/m^2 on Mars, under ideal conditions using 35% efficient triple-junction Silicon wafer-based photovoltaics with a very thin but very hard cover-glass that prevents the crazing problem that both Robert Dyck and myself have stated is a real issue with soft plastics. Therefore, an absolute bare minimum of 9,819m^2 of array area (99m by 99m; a professional soccer field is 7,140m^2 and a NFL football field is 5,351m^2, for comparison purposes), at 900Wh/m^2, is required to supply power before any losses are taken into account. Recall that here in Texas 23% of the electrical power is lost in the wiring and PMAD (Power Management And Distribution) equipment before the power touches the main line that feeds it into the grid. Using my proposed 2kg/m^2 advanced CFRP / Kevlar honeycomb backer board with the same wafer-based photovoltaic panel design with 0.5kg allocated to a CFRP or CNT support structure (vastly lighter than anything used commercially here on Earth and lighter than ISS arrays), we're looking at 24,548kg for the panels without any wiring or PMAD equipment.
I don't know what voltages would be used, but if we use a small town photovoltaic array as our facsimile, then I estimate another 5,000kg for wiring / PMAD / circuit breakers using lightweight equipment, assuming Aluminum wiring is used. CNT is likely required to achieve that mass target. We can only be so smart about how we wire the panels to minimize wiring runs, and the more amps of power we provide, the thicker the gauge of wiring required. Looking at lower output Earth-bound arrays, we'll see that 5,000kg is much nearer to a pipe dream than a practical tonnage figure. In all probability, the wiring and PMAD mass will be a significant fraction of the array mass than my optimistic estimate, but let's be "dreamers" here.
That's around 100t to supply power for 10 people in Antarctica or on Mars, where the life support power requirements are much much higher. The batteries, which represent 70% of the equipment mass, will not last more than 10 years before replacement is required. If we assert that that amount of power could also keep 10 people alive on Mars (even though it cannot if food must be grown, CO2 scrubbed, and water ice melted for consumption). That equates to 10,000,000,000kg / 10,000,000t for a 1,000,000 person Mars colony. Total mass of all objects sent into space is 9,800t, but we'll call it 10,000t for easy math. This 1,000,000 person Mars colony therefore requires 1,000X as much mass, not to Earth orbit but to Mars- "JUST" TO PROVIDE BASIC LIFE SUPPORT POWER, NO FOOD OR ISRU, IF WE INSIST ON USING PHOTOVOLTAICS AND BATTERIES! Anyone who thinks that's practical to do is living in their own personal fantasy land. That's 100,000 launches at 100t per launch, except we need 6 to 8 launches to deliver that tonnage to Mars, which means 700,000 launches. At a mere $2M USD per Starship launch, that's $200B per 100,000 launches, or $1.4T USD for 700,000 launches. You have to wonder about their inability to do basic math and accept. We have to replace 70% of that mass every 10 years and 90% to 100% every 25 years, until 100% of the colony's power requirements are met by local production. If it takes 25 years to grow the colony to 1,000,000 colonists, how practical does that seem to you?
We could obviously set up a photovoltaic or battery manufacturing plant on Mars using ISRU, but what would that require?
More equipment mass, more input power, more people to work in the factory, which in turn requires more mass and power... It's a vicious cycle.
It's a fool's errand. It's a fantasy-based proposal from people who refuse to accept basic math, because the results of the equations are so devastating to their ideologically-motivated beliefs. Similarly, my admonishment to use simpler but more reliable and longer-lived heat engines, despite having a lower overall efficiency, is all about basic math. Anyone who asserts that math doesn't matter does not believe in science, they believe in their own form of religion. Those who know me also know that I am not a fan of any kind of religion, and have a particular mistrust of organized religion. This is the reason why- the solutions they come up with are seldom, if ever, practical solutions that can be applied to a real world engineering problem.
Recall that at least several times I've stated that fission power alone is not enough, and that we probably need fusion power, in addition to the fission and solar thermal heat engines to generate the staggering amount of power required. Power production is and always has been the name of the game. You need mass and energy devoted to every other aspect of life apart from merely generating or storing enough power. The use of low energy density batteries drastically adds to the total mass of the solution. The greater the tonnage of power generating or storage equipment you have to ship, the less tonnage devoted to every other aspect of living on Mars. I go over this aspect of living on Mars again and again and again, because it dictates how fast the colony can grow and how many people it can realistically support at any given time. There are no other "natural resources" that can be used without the master resource- ENERGY!
It's not my fault that existing energy generation and storage technology does what it does, and can do no more. That's the entire reason we continue to pursue fusion power. Every big "jump up" the "order of magnitude scale" that you make, with respect to energy output, the greater the technological capabilities of your civilization. None of it is truly "clean", none of it is truly "renewable", it's just a question of trade-offs and what you want to devote energy output to- "making more energy" with diffuse / intermittent power sources, or "all other human activities" with reliable and continuous generation with minimal "natural resource" consumption. The more you understand of the basic math involved, the less prone you are to having someone sell you a bill of goods that does not meet or even approach the terms of the sales pitch.
If it was up to me, we'd be using hydro / geothermal / solar and nuclear thermal engines to power human civilization while devoting all available brain power and funding to fusion power. Whereupon we have pervasive deployment of practical fusion reactors, then we can supply the electrical power to attempt to electrify nearly every aspect of human life- from transportation to home heating. We also have excess power to tinker endlessly with photovoltaics and batteries (satisfy the curiosity or religious beliefs of scientists and environmentalists), with virtually no threat to the continued existence of a technologically advanced human civilization capable of space flight and colonization. Unfortunately, politics and ideology have been unrecognizably contorted to promote a self-destructive anti-humanist ideology of scarcity and austerity, which have historically been abject failures every single time they're attempted, much like communism. I like the arts and artists, so to preclude energy poverty from forcing those people to instead become farmers or mechanics or pursue any other career path for which they are manifestly unsuited, humanity requires abundant power / food / clothing / shelter / medical care (all the "good stuff" that comes from energy abundance). Abundance only continues while the machinery of human civilization is kept well-oiled and humming along at full output.
Anyway, at this point I've restated this in as many different ways as I know how. Some people will "get it", while others will not. I have nothing against using any form of power, but its limitations should be well known unto its users and respected as such.
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The story at the link below is about the Governor of Arizona deciding to pursue desalination on behalf of the people of Arizona ...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gov-ducey-wa … 32806.html
AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Gov. Ducey wants Arizona to invest $1B in desalination, other water infrastructure
Brandon Loomis, Arizona Republic
Mon, January 10, 2022 8:57 PM
Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday proposed spending $1 billion from the state’s general fund over three years to help “secure Arizona’s water future for the next 100 years.”
In his final State of the State address, the governor said the budget he sends to lawmakers will prioritize water infrastructure including desalination.
“Instead of just talking about desalination, the technology that made Israel the world’s water superpower,” he said, “how about we pave the way to make it actually happen?”
Long discussed as an idea to deliver some of Mexico’s share of the Colorado River without drawing down Lake Mead, seawater desalination on the Sea of Cortez would pump treated water to Morelos Dam near Yuma for distribution in Mexico. The U.S. parties paying into the program would then take some of Mexico’s river water as compensation.
While desalination was the only new water initiative Ducey specified in his speech, his office later emailed a statement noting that the budget would promote new technologies and encourage reuse and efficiency upgrades.
Arizona, Salt River Project and partners in Mexico, California, Nevada and the federal government participated in a binational report on the desalination proposal in 2020. It is estimated that two plants, each situated on the sea’s eastern shore south of Puerto Peñasco and each producing 100,000 acre-feet a year, would cost $3 billion to $4 billion in upfront costs. That and annual operating costs would create a price of $2,000-$2,200 per acre-foot, which consultants determined would be in line with other potential sources of new water.
An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, which the Arizona Department of Water Resources estimates can support about three households for a year.
The binational desalination report estimated that the river’s users in the Southwest and Mexico will face a water deficit of about 1.2 million acre-feet a year by 2035, so a 200,000-acre-foot project would cover about a sixth of the need. Water recycling, conservation or other projects would need to cover the rest.
In a recent interview, Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke told The Arizona Republic that such a plant could come online in the next decade. With climate change creating a hotter and drier river basin, he said, “it’s being looked at much more seriously from both sides” of the border.
A view of the Hoover Dam from the Colorado River.
Arizona already has committed $100 million over the next two years pay users to keep water in storage behind Hoover Dam and is also in talks with California and Nevada for a potential water-recycling project in Southern California that would allow California to reuse the water and the other states to take a larger share of the river. That project could essentially create 161,000 acre-feet a year.Desalination carries with it environmental costs, such as heavy energy use and disposal of the resulting brine either at sea or in deep wells. For that reason, conservation groups have often suggested seeking other solutions first.
Rural crisis: Megafarms and deeper wells are draining the water beneath rural Arizona – quietly, irreversibly
Haley Paul, policy director for the National Audubon Society in Arizona, said desalination in Mexico “could certainly be on the table” if Mexico remains interested in the proposal.
“It’s not our end-all and be-all,” she said, though Audubon would not oppose continuing the binational conversation.
To secure the state’s water future, though, she said desalination would need to be paired with other programs such as groundwater recharge, stormwater capture, forest health restoration and wastewater reuse.
The Environmental Defense Fund likewise released a statement supporting broader measures.
"In addition to desalination, augmentation must include projects that treat and reuse wastewater, replenish local groundwater, and capture and recharge stormwater to benefit communities and ecosystems," said Kevin Moran, senior director of EDF's Colorado River program. "State lawmakers need to authorize rural Arizona communities to begin managing and conserving groundwater and strengthen our Active Management Areas’ programs and standards."
Active Management Areas are designated groundwater management zones authorized for urban areas such as metro Phoenix by a 1980 groundwater management act.
Sen. Regina Cobb, R-Kingman, has tried to lead the way in preserving water resources. She has introduced bills in the last few years that attempt to rein in groundwater use but was stymied by the chairperson of the House committee on natural resources, energy and water, Rep. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford.
Going into this legislative session, a Mohave County water users’ study committee that Cobb chairs has voted to recommend legislation that would enable the creation of rural groundwater management areas in counties that request them.
Ducey's pledge to put $1 billion in resources to the water problem encouraged Cobb, who said the governor's state of the state speech was the best she's heard from him.
The idea to work with Mexico on a desalination plant on the Sea of Cortez was not just about money, she said, but also about the details of the negotiations involved. One question she had was whether Mexico would agree to allow Arizona to use up some of Mexico's allocations in the Colorado River in return for helping to build the desalination plant.
Cobb's groundwater ideas "weren't touched on" by Ducey on Monday, she noted.
Drought: Colorado River forecast improves with early snow, but the outlook could still change
Republic reporter Ray Stern contributed to this report.
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Doug Ducey proposes spending $1B on water infrastructure
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Here is another perspective on the current Governor's recent state of the State speech ...
This writer seems to think that there is any water to be saved...
..........................................https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/many-arizonas-water-woes-1-231831045.html
AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
How many of Arizona's water woes would $1 billion solve? That's the question
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
Tue, January 11, 2022, 6:18 PM
Gov. Doug Ducey wanted to do something big on water in his last year.
And a billion dollars is big.
But how many of Arizona’s water woes would that investment solve?
That’s the key question after Ducey called for a billion-dollar investment “to secure Arizona’s water future for the next 100 years.”
The governor only spent a few paragraphs of his final State of the State address talking about such a large investment. There are far more questions than answers.
But an accompanying news release suggests the billion dollars would be earmarked in the General Fund over three years – mostly, after Ducey is out of office – to “(lay) the groundwork for new large-scale water augmentation projects; (encourage) further reuse and efficiency with current supplies; and (lead) to the further integration of latest technologies, including desalination, into Arizona’s water portfolio.”
In other words, it would be up to a future governor and Legislature to set aside a heck of a lot of money – and while it would help, it alone won’t be enough to secure our water future.
We need augmentation and conservation
Don’t get me wrong: We are going to need new supplies. And if we’re serious about building large-scale projects, it’s going to take this size of an investment. Kudos goes to Ducey for bringing that to the forefront.But augmentation can’t happen in a vacuum.
It must be accompanied by an equally vigorous conservation effort – something that Ducey did not mention in his speech and only alluded to in the news release.
That’s unfortunate. If we only focus on finding new water, it leaves little incentive to use the water we have more wisely – something we could do quicker and, in most cases, at far lower cost.
That doesn’t mean we don’t also work on augmentation. We are horribly behind the eight-ball on this.
But even if the cash helps us move faster, it won’t change the fact that most large-scale projects – including desalination in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, a project that Ducey touted in his speech – are still years away (not to mention at the mercy of other parties).
It’s tough to say how a potential Sea of Cortez project might pan out for Arizona. A 2020 study suggested it could generate as much as 200,000 acre-feet of water, which would go to Mexico and free up Colorado River water for those upstream to share, in some yet-to-be-determined quantity.
Cash could sit for years (if it's not raided first)
That’s the case with most augmentation ideas. There are a lot of attractive technologies, in theory. But the devil’s in the details, and the details are site specific. We haven’t reached that level of debate for most ideas, desalination or otherwise.The good news is the governor’s long-term augmentation committee has pledged to come up with a plan to prioritize projects. But its first meeting on the concept hasn’t even happened yet.
That means most of this money would likely sit in the General Fund for years – if it’s not raided for other uses first.
The irony is that Arizona is probably going to need to put up some money for augmentation, and probably this year, if it wants to secure a decent share of the competitive federal infrastructure grants, particularly for a smattering of smaller in-state ideas.
But I fear that this will turn out one of two ways: Either we’ll spend months arguing over the size of the package, at the expense of other water policy ideas that really need our attention – like how we respond to dwindling rural groundwater in areas that are wholly reliant on it.
Or lawmakers will approve the cash and assume they’re done. After earmarking $160 million last year for projects that import water from out-of-state and another billion dollars this year for additional water infrastructure, the Legislature will have even less motivation to address the other issues vexing our water supply.
We made a 100-year investment, remember?
Somehow, this seems like the easy way out
Except there are no single, silver-bullet augmentation projects, a la the Salt River Project or the Central Arizona Project that Ducey alluded to in his speech, that will be large enough to allow us to continue using water exactly as we do now.We need to tackle the policy side of things, too – not only how we sustain the uses that are already here, but also how we grow and where and (importantly) who pays for all of this.
But those discussions will be much tougher and politically unpopular than putting a billion dollars in the General Fund during an election year and letting it sit – until the next big crisis forces lawmakers to raid that cash for other uses.
I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth. And I never thought I’d say that earmarking a billion dollars is the easy way out. But in this case, it certainly seems to be.
Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How many of Arizona's water woes would $1 billion solve?
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/state-engine … 00924.html
The governor also is proposing to add 15 staffers to the agency using $2 million in general fund money, Sackett wrote. These additional employees will help the agency address critical water issues — drought, climate change, dam safety and acequias — and implement the 50-year water plan, she added.
Casuga said the state engineer is involved in decisions and policies that affect irrigation, from determining how many new wells should be installed to how much river water should be sent downstream to Texas rather than dispensed to farmers.
This requires keen knowledge to manage the thinner water supply but also resources to carry out the plans effectively, Casuga said.
"To do the job right, there needs to be resources there," Casuga said. "We absolutely would love for the State Engineer's Office to have the funding it needs to do the job."
Schmidt-Petersen said whoever steps into the job will contend with a warmer, drier climate reducing river flows and groundwater supply.
"That really is what the new state engineer is going to be wrestling with," he said.
The situation in the state of New Mexico is similar to that in Arizona.
There's not enough fresh water now, and even less will be available in future.
In my estimation, this is an impossible job, and no one should accept it.
The human beings who could solve this problem do not (appear to) live in New Mexico.
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First question is how many are to be serviced for fresh water and then at what supply rate for use? Once you have that you can put together a meter for each to see how much they are using. Treat this just like electrical supply in that if you use just your rate you pay that fee per unit use but as you go above that amount the free rate goes up. That makes it such that if you do not care and can pay you stay connect for use but if you are unable to pay its shut off until you do.
Most towns that supply water use such meters for water and sewer use for its residents. This is just giving people a display so that they can conserve what they are using.
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For SpaceNut re #48
Thanks for noting the challenge of providing fresh water to the people of New Mexico. Much of the need is for water for agriculture. The need there is measured in acre feet. Much of the need is for manufacturing, where again, the need is measured in acre feet.
It would be interesting to see how much fresh water is actually consumed by residential households, as compared to the major consumers of huge quantities.
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This crop farming seems to and should be inside a building as a means to control evaporation, point of issue to the plants, hydroponics ect...
The building could have lots of solar panels to supply energy for the operations. We have talked about farming vertically as well as for inside.
Husbandry is a totally different issue for what to do with them in those states which are so dry.
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