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Doesn't that post explain that this is just what they do, and that melting the snow is pretty involved?
by hibbelig 4y ago
Doesn't that post explain that this is just what they do, and that melting the snow is pretty involved?
- seanw444 4y agoThere's also limited fuel that they have to conserve, so infinite snow does not mean infinite water.
- ratg13 4y agoSeems like a decent opportunity to use a nuclear reactor .. something like what you would find on a submarine.
- fragmede 4y agoIt was tried! http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/
- throwanem 4y agoI wonder what it'd take to adapt NuScale's SMR design. Probably a lot, given the unusual rigors of the Antarctic environment, but for basically the same reasons it seems like something that'd be worth funding.
- quickthrowman 4y agoWe already tried that 60 years ago in Greenland, it didn’t end well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm
- sponaugle 4y agoThere is a fascinating film about that reactor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlmOQJW5Xis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlmOQJW5Xis
- kortilla 4y agoThat didn’t fail because of the nuclear reactor, it failed because the ice sheet movement deformed the tunnels over time and collapsed ceilings. Nothing to do with the feasibility of sitting a portable nuclear reactor on top of the ice like the settlements in Antarctica.
- raisedbyninjas 4y agoWith a 30 degree delta between temperature and wind chill, I'd think they're ripe for wind turbines.
- EricLeer 4y agoUnfortunatly wind turbines are also not really a big fan of the cold. When ice grows on the blades they can become unstable.