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I'm wondering why the whole thing is an issue anyway. Why is there a water shortage? There's an entire ocean on both sides of the canal. Gatun Lake provides the

I'm wondering why the whole thing is an issue anyway. Why is there a water shortage? There's an entire ocean on both sides of the canal. Gatun Lake provides the water buffer for the canal. Currently it's freshwater based but it's also artificial to begin with. Why not transition to using salt water pumped from the oceans to top it off as needed? Seems a hell of a lot easier than trying to replace the canals with rails.

timeagain 3y ago
Gatún Lake is 425 km^2. It provides the drinking water for Panama City. It has a watershed covering a large portion of the country. You might be underestimating the scale of the problem.
- RagnarD 3y ago
  A refinement of the thought, then, would be to install a small modular nuclear reactor to power desalination plants to replenish the freshwater when needed. Panama City must also be threatened if the lake level is that low.
- creer 3y ago
  It's not the lake that needs to be filled. Just the locks - and the lower ones at that.
jodrellblank 3y ago
"Every ship traversing the canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans requires 50 million gallons of fresh water"[1]. And it can transit 40 ships per day[2]. So, lifting 2 billion gallons of water, just over 9 billion litres, up to the 26 metres altitude of Gatun Lake. Wondering how plausible that is, the numbers match very closely to the Dinorwig pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant in the UK[3], which stores ~9.2GWh of energy by pumping 9.2 million cubic metres of water, 9.2 billion litres, up 536 metres to Marchlyn Mawr reservoir. And it takes 7 hours to do that[4]. If the same amount of water has to be lifted only ~5% of the height, assume 5% of the energy, that would be ~450MWh/day for the Panama Canal. I see it wouldn't be good to dump ocean water into Gatun Lake, but could the lowest locks of freshwater be pumped back up, instead of released into the ocean? [1] https://ctmirror.org/2023/08/27/the-panama-canal-is-running-out-of-water/ https://ctmirror.org/2023/08/27/the-panama-canal-is-running-... [2] https://www.marineinsight.com/guidelines/10-important-panama-canals-facts-everyone-should-know/ https://www.marineinsight.com/guidelines/10-important-panama... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station# [4] https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/cos/dinorwig-hydroelectric-plant/ https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/cos/dinorwig-hydroelectric-pla...
- RagnarD 3y ago
  Good idea as well.

timeagain 3y ago

Gatún Lake is 425 km^2. It provides the drinking water for Panama City. It has a watershed covering a large portion of the country. You might be underestimating the scale of the problem.

RagnarD 3y ago
A refinement of the thought, then, would be to install a small modular nuclear reactor to power desalination plants to replenish the freshwater when needed. Panama City must also be threatened if the lake level is that low.
creer 3y ago
It's not the lake that needs to be filled. Just the locks - and the lower ones at that.

jodrellblank 3y ago

"Every ship traversing the canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans requires 50 million gallons of fresh water"[1]. And it can transit 40 ships per day[2]. So, lifting 2 billion gallons of water, just over 9 billion litres, up to the 26 metres altitude of Gatun Lake. Wondering how plausible that is, the numbers match very closely to the Dinorwig pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant in the UK[3], which stores ~9.2GWh of energy by pumping 9.2 million cubic metres of water, 9.2 billion litres, up 536 metres to Marchlyn Mawr reservoir. And it takes 7 hours to do that[4]. If the same amount of water has to be lifted only ~5% of the height, assume 5% of the energy, that would be ~450MWh/day for the Panama Canal. I see it wouldn't be good to dump ocean water into Gatun Lake, but could the lowest locks of freshwater be pumped back up, instead of released into the ocean? [1] https://ctmirror.org/2023/08/27/the-panama-canal-is-running-out-of-water/ https://ctmirror.org/2023/08/27/the-panama-canal-is-running-... [2] https://www.marineinsight.com/guidelines/10-important-panama-canals-facts-everyone-should-know/ https://www.marineinsight.com/guidelines/10-important-panama... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station# [4] https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/cos/dinorwig-hydroelectric-plant/ https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/cos/dinorwig-hydroelectric-pla...

RagnarD 3y ago
Good idea as well.