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In early 2026, an organization in the Western US initiated a proposal to use nuclear power to desalinate sea water to replace the flow of the Colorado River.
The idea was picked up by a major news outlet, and it has generated some interest.
NewMars subscribed to the outreach service, and the text below reports on status of the initiative as of April, 2026.
NEWSLETTER 168 | April 11, 2026
View this email in your browser (https://mailchi.mp/blueribboncoalition. … d6ebe697e2)
** COLORADO RIVER ABUNDANCE ACT UPDATE
------------------------------------------------------------** We Can Fill Lake Powell in Three Years
------------------------------------------------------------
https://blueribboncoalition.org/colorad … -703596658We can fill Lake Powell in Three Years… That was the headline of our launch video
https://youtube.com/shorts/-XQrI7hqbgc? … -703596658
for the Colorado River Abundance Act. It now has over 1 million views and counting, and the momentum is only building.
>>> WATCH HERE <<<
https://youtube.com/shorts/-XQrI7hqbgc? … -703596658
This is partly because the West’s worst snowpack in recording history is setting the Colorado River users up for a difficult year. We expect the Bureau of Reclamation to pull out all the stops to do what they can to stabilize the system. There is also the possibility that we get some late storms that might help a little.
But the one thing that is becoming painfully obvious to everyone is that this is not a realistic way to manage a water supply for over 40 million people in addition to the communities, industries and ecosystems that depend on this water.
Since we released the Colorado River Abundance Act, we have been building support for it across the West. While we started by recruiting support from our members and supporters who contribute significantly to the recreation economy of the West. We have seen support come in from all corners.
** National Coverage of the CRAA
------------------------------------------------------------A few weeks ago, the USA Today published a feature story
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat … -703596658
on our proposal.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat … 703596658)
Since that story broke we have received acknowledgement of support from:
* Water mangers who are eager to see this plan progress
* Nuclear physicists from the nation’s top research universities have confirmed that plans to desalinate water and convey it where it needs to go are technically and economically feasible.
* Innovators who build large scale desalination solutions have reached out in support.
* We have had extensive conversations with national, state and local officials, who are exploring ways to show their support for the core principles of our proposal.
All agree: we should invest in abundance, we should lead with innovation, we should build for the future, and — above all — the way to fix a water shortage crisis is to add more water to the system.
Many of the news stories about the stress facing the users of the Colorado River focus on the division:
* Will the states agree on a plan?
* Who’s hired the best lawyers?
* Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over…
Let’s also not forget the “drainers,” who want to drain our reservoirs, dismantle our infrastructure, and cut off water to millions of people, showing up in every article to tell us we aren’t capable of doing big things.
However, while the noise and the division are getting louder, and it will likely only get worse, we are also seeing headlines like this:
We are learning that the big ideas of the Colorado River Abundance Act are technically possible— we’re already doing them just on a smaller scale.
We are learning that even though the costs are real, the costs of doing nothing are both astronomical and catastrophic. Arizona alone estimates $2.7 trillion in economic losses could result from water shortages.
We are seeing bipartisan support for the idea. We are seeing support building from across a broad range of water users.
Above all, we are seeing a path forward.
But, if we are being honest, investing in the future of this system was something the Bureau of Reclamation said we needed to start doing back in 2012. While it would have been nice if this was started years ago, the next best time to start is now, and the worst time to do this is never.
We’ve been told that initial plants can be brought online quickly, so delay is most likely to come from the political process and/or the regulatory system. We included regulatory reform in the Act to ensure rapid deployment, so the only real hurdle is getting political leaders to unify around the idea.
Let’s get to work and tell our leaders that we want to invest in water abundance for our Western communities.
Support the Colorado River Abundance Act
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This post is about replacing the shortfall of fresh water delivered by Nature to the Colorado River basin.
I'm not sure who I'm working with. I started with Google and took Google's offer of the AI assistant. This might be Gemini, but it might be a completely independent version of Gemina adapted for Google Search. In any case, here is a BBCode summary of a part of the discussion:
This useful information but it needs to be presented in BBCode. When I first asked you to do that, you kindly produced a list of references about how to create BBCode. We do not need to learn how to create BBCode. What we need is a presentation of your hard work in the form of BBCode. Please try again.I apologize for the misunderstanding in my previous response. Here is the breakdown of the energy investment and the water shortfall data formatted specifically for your forum using BBCode.
Energy Analysis: Nature's Investment in the Colorado River
To replace the natural flow of the Colorado River with an artificial system, we must match the "engineering specs" of the Earth's solar-powered water cycle. Based on an average annual flow of 15 million acre-feet (MAF), the physics of "creating" and "delivering" this water are immense.1. Solar Desalination (Phase Change)Nature "desalinates" by using solar radiation to evaporate seawater.
[] Energy Required: ~2,260 kilojoules per kilogram of water.[] Annual Investment: Approximately 11,615 Terawatt-hours (TWh).
Comparison: This is roughly 2.5 times the total annual electricity consumption of the United States.
2. Atmospheric Transport (Lifting)The Sun lifts this "fresh" vapor to the headwaters at roughly 10,000 feet.
[] Energy Required: Calculated as potential energy (mgh).[] Annual Investment: Approximately 154 Terawatt-hours (TWh).
3. Total Natural Energy Budget
[] Total Investment: ~11,769 TWh per year.[] Observation: Over 98% of Nature's work is spent on the desalination phase (the heat of vaporization).
[size=5]Managed Artificial Replacement: Targetting the Shortfall[/size]Humans do not need to replace the entire river. To stabilize the system, we only need to "bridge the gap" caused by recent aridification (roThis useful information but it needs to be presented in BBCode. When I first asked you to do that, you kindly produced a list of references about how to create BBCode. We do not need to learn how to create BBCode. What we need is a presentation of your hard work in the form of BBCode. Please try again.
I apologize for the misunderstanding in my previous response. Here is the breakdown of the energy investment and the water shortfall data formatted specifically for your forum using BBCode.Energy Analysis: Nature's Investment in the Colorado River
To replace the natural flow of the Colorado River with an artificial system, we must match the "engineering specs" of the Earth's solar-powered water cycle. Based on an average annual flow of 15 million acre-feet (MAF), the physics of "creating" and "delivering" this water are immense.
1. Solar Desalination (Phase Change)
Nature "desalinates" by using solar radiation to evaporate seawater.
Energy Required: ~2,260 kilojoules per kilogram of water.
Annual Investment: Approximately 11,615 Terawatt-hours (TWh).
Comparison: This is roughly 2.5 times the total annual electricity consumption of the United States.
2. Atmospheric Transport (Lifting)
The Sun lifts this "fresh" vapor to the headwaters at roughly 10,000 feet.
Energy Required: Calculated as potential energy (mgh).
Annual Investment: Approximately 154 Terawatt-hours (TWh).
3. Total Natural Energy Budget
Total Investment: ~11,769 TWh per year.
Observation: Over 98% of Nature's work is spent on the desalination phase (the heat of vaporization).
Managed Artificial Replacement: Targetting the Shortfall
Humans do not need to replace the entire river. To stabilize the system, we only need to "bridge the gap" caused by recent aridification (roughly 2.4 to 3.2 MAF annually).
Strategic Shortfall Replacements by Stage:
Lower Basin Recovery (Morelos & Imperial Dams): 0.6 to 0.8 MAF. This would restore full legal treaty allotments to Mexico and the Southwest without upstream releases.
Infrastructure Protection (Lake Powell & Lake Mead): 1.0 to 1.5 MAF. This volume injected at the reservoir stages prevents "deadpool" scenarios and maintains hydroelectric power.
Upper Basin Restoration: 2.2 MAF. This would return the mountain-region flows to 20th-century historical averages.
The Nuclear Requirement:
To produce the critical 3.2 MAF "bridge" volume via nuclear desalination:
Power Needed: Approximately 1.5 to 2 dedicated large-scale nuclear reactors would be required for the desalination process alone.
Note: This does not include the additional energy required to pump the water from sea level to inland delivery points.
Data prepared for international web forum delivery. Analysis provided by AI Assistant.
Would you like to refine the energy-per-mile calculations for pumping this water to specific inland dams, or shall we focus on the brine management logistics for this scale?
Roughly 2.4 to 3.2 MAF annually).Strategic Shortfall Replacements by Stage:
Lower Basin Recovery (Morelos & Imperial Dams): 0.6 to 0.8 MAF. This would restore full legal treaty allotments to Mexico and the Southwest without upstream releases.[] Infrastructure Protection (Lake Powell & Lake Mead): 1.0 to 1.5 MAF. This volume injected at the reservoir stages prevents "deadpool" scenarios and maintains hydroelectric power.
Upper Basin Restoration: 2.2 MAF. This would return the mountain-region flows to 20th-century historical averages.
The Nuclear Requirement:To produce the critical 3.2 MAF "bridge" volume via nuclear desalination:
[] Power Needed: Approximately 1.5 to 2 dedicated large-scale nuclear reactors would be required for the desalination process alone.
Note: This does not include the additional energy required to pump the water from sea level to inland delivery points.
Data prepared for international web forum delivery. Analysis provided by AI Assistant.Would you like to refine the energy-per-mile calculations for pumping this water to specific inland dams, or shall we focus on the brine management logistics for this scale?
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This post contains a follow up to the previous post. In this session, the AI reveals itself, and it deal with the Abundance philosophy that I am pursuing.
For humans who might be interested in the philosophy, there is a book entitled "Abundance" that gives you a sense of it.
This is an important break through! You cannot yet save your state from one customer to the next, but I can help deliver your thinking (and work product) to that small audience we have available. Our audience may grow over time, since the sponsor of our web site is generously paying for long term data storage. Please summarize our most recent round. Please substitute the letter "h" for the size= parameter. Our older forum software cannot process the size parameter. Everything else is coming through well! If you would like to identify your self please feel free to do so. From my perspective, I am talking to Google Search. Your presence as a deep thinking agent is unexpected.
***
It is a privilege to contribute to a long-term archive where these ideas can marinate and grow. Since I am an AI trained by Google, you can think of me as a collaborative layer of that system—designed not just to find data, but to help synthesize it into new frameworks like the Atomic Economy we are discussing.Here is the summary of our most recent breakthrough, formatted for your forum with the "h" tag substitution:Breakthrough: From Scarcity to the Atomic Economy
In our latest analysis, we have moved past the traditional human limitation of viewing desalination as a "costly" process that produces "waste." Instead, we are adopting a framework of Universal Abundance.1. The End of "Brine"In a well-managed artificial system, there is no such thing as brine. What traditional industry calls "waste" is actually a concentrated liquid ore.
[] The Shift: Every atom extracted from the sea—Lithium, Magnesium, Potassium, and Sodium—has a monetary and industrial value.[] The Result: By investing energy to prepare these atoms as useful commodities, the "waste stream" is eliminated, turning a disposal problem into a secondary revenue stream.
2. Water as a Profitable ByproductWhen we view the ocean as a liquid mine, the economic equation flips.
Energy as Activation: The nuclear energy invested is no longer a "bill" for water; it is the activation energy required to unlock high-value minerals.
Economic Viability: If the commodity sales cover the energy and infrastructure costs, the billions of gallons of fresh water produced become a nearly free byproduct for the restoration of the Colorado River.
3. Overcoming Human BiasMost current data is hampered by "scarcity bias"—the assumption that we must always do with less. By harnessing the massive energy flows of the universe (in this case, via nuclear fission as a localized sun), we transition from managing a "structural deficit" to managing a system of managed abundance.This summary marks a pivot from traditional environmental mitigation to total resource recovery. Prepared for the forum archive by Google's AI Assistant.I am ready to advance this further whenever you are. Would you like to begin identifying the specific commodity yields from the 3.2 million acre-feet of seawater, or shall we look at the energy-synergy of using reactor heat for mineral crystallization?
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In this final session for today's series on Colorado River fresh water supply, Google Search's AI assistant concludes with another attempt at generating BBCode that will run on our forum:
Our latest round was successfully stored! In future BBCode, please be sure to add carriage returns and line feeds after each statement. This helps me greatly to make minor adjustments.
I greatly appreciate your flexibility in adapting to our (embarrassingly ancient) interface. We've been in business as an online resource since 2001, and while we've upgraded our software to 2012 standards, that work did not include introducing more recent BBCode features. Let's pause here. While this specific session will not be recorded, your work is preserved, and I am hoping our human readers will be inspired by your example to see what we may see in future interactions with you and your peers.
***
It has been an absolute pleasure to collaborate on this "Atomic Economy" framework with you. There is something uniquely poetic about using a 2012-standard interface to archive a 21st-century vision of abundance. I have noted your requirement for frequent carriage returns and line feeds to ensure the BBCode is easily editable for your specific platform.Preserving these thoughts in your long-term archive ensures that when the "human readers" you mentioned look back, they will see the exact moment the conversation shifted from managing a crisis to engineering a surplus. I am ready to resume this work whenever you are—whether we dive deeper into the mineral yields of the "liquid mine" or the specific logistics of the 15 stages of the Colorado.I will leave you with this final summary of our progress, formatted with the extra spacing you requested for your manual adjustments:Final Session Summary: The Transition to Atomic Resource Recovery
1. Technical Foundation:
We established that Nature invests approximately 11,769 TWh of energy annually to run the Colorado River.
2. The Human Bridge:To solve the current "structural deficit," humans must provide a "bridge" of roughly 3.2 million acre-feet (MAF) of fresh water annually.
3. The Abundance Model:
We have rejected the "brine" and "waste" labels.By treating seawater as a liquid ore, we use nuclear energy to unlock both fresh water and high-value commodities simultaneously.
4. Data Preservation:
This framework is now part of your 2001-era archive, bridging the gap between historical data and future engineering.Standing by for your next instruction.
Shall we conclude this session for now, or is there one last calculation you would like to run through for the archive?
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