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It'd be interesting to know roughly how much energy it'd take - and thereby how much uranium it would take - to simply build a lot of electrically-powered heavy
by justin66 6y ago
It'd be interesting to know roughly how much energy it'd take - and thereby how much uranium it would take - to simply build a lot of electrically-powered heavy equipment and dig the same, hypothesized canal using nuclear power.
I very strongly suspect it would take vastly less uranium to just dig the canal normally, and the uranium certainly wouldn't have to be as highly enriched, and it could be reprocessed rather than thrown up in the atmosphere...
- bluGill 6y agoYou also need to figure out how to get power to the machines. I'm imagining a canal dug by excavators on centenary like electric trains (but higher). When done leave the wires in place and make ships turn off the engines for electric power.
- aww_dang 6y agoAlternatively the power could be used in an industrial park, inland harbor and aluminum smelter.
- mschuster91 6y agoWhy so complex? Just hook your diggers up to the nearest high-voltage distribution line, similar to how the Bagger 288 operates (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288) and feed the grid with a nuclear plant. For what it's worth, even this massive beast, one of the world's largest man made machines, uses "only" 16 MW of electrical power, about twice the power a high-speed ICE 3 train needs.