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Drought caused by global warming countered by using desalinated water which is produced using energy from fossil fuels which contributes to more global warming.

Drought caused by global warming countered by using desalinated water which is produced using energy from fossil fuels which contributes to more global warming. Although in CA looks like the majority of their electricity comes from natural gas and renewable resources[1] which is a start, I suppose. [1]http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.h...

logfromblammo 11y ago
I have wondered for a long time whether pairing a desalinator with a generation III+ or later fission reactor could be made more efficient than having both built separately and linked via transmission lines. It seems like there ought to be some opportunity for synergy there, but there are now so many reactor designs that include light water that I have no idea how that might work for any of them.
- ivankirigin 11y ago
  This is an already popular idea called cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Cogeneration
- mrfusion 11y ago
  And potentially the same plumbing for incoming water could be used to cool the reactor. In fact now that I think about it, all of the waste heat of the reactor could go toward evaporating the water.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    Waste heat? Evaporating the water? Nuclear power plants are steam engines. All their heat goes to evaporating water. Come to think of it, I wonder if you could harvest the steam from a nuclear plant, run it through a condenser or distiller, and in that way produce electricity and purify water at the same time.
    - cpeterso 11y ago
      Harvesting the steam is a clever idea, but I don't know if the average consumer is ready for what would be spun as "radioactive Franken-water".
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      Not all fission reactors use the same cycles to turn heat from the nuclear reaction into usable power. Most existing reactors in the US use the reactor core as the heat source, a convection cooling tower as the heat sink, and water/steam as the working fluid. Using salt water as the working fluid in a BWR or SCWR would probably be dangerous, as it circulates around the reactor core. In a PWR, the working fluid and the fluid circulating past the reactor core are separated via heat exchangers in the steam generator, so that's probably the only widely used reactor type that could do distillation-based desalination without heavy modification. But probably the most useful way to go about doing it is to keep the rest of the reactor as it is, and just attach the reverse osmosis desalinator pumps to the same driveshaft as the electricity generator. Even though boiling and condensing water is an integral part of steam engine operation, it really works best when that water has been completely demineralized already. Otherwise, your boiler fills with salt sludge, and your condenser gets clogged with mineral scale. You're saving efficiency by taking out the two conversions between electrical and mechanical work and the transmission loss between generator and pump motor. The purified water and waste brine could also carry heat away from the steam engine's heat sink if it can go out hotter than the ocean water that comes in. I'm thinking that you'd heat the waste brine as hot as possible before dumping it in a solar evaporation pond. The infrastructure required to pump pre-heated water to the nearest community along with cold is probably not going to pay off unless you're supplying high-rises or a university campus.
hukep 11y ago
It is a difficult task. SA needs plenty of water for the nearest decades. What are the options to get it? How much will it cost? Many difficult questions to answer. Many approaches to choose. If the ideal is to built a great dam, then everything else burden the environment more. Creating of the desalvation factory take a lot of earth resources as well as the energy which also comes mostly out of non-renewable sources. If you produce electric energy you have a great impact on the environment too.
mentat 11y ago
How exactly does one draw the connection between the drought and global warming? Both are warm?
tsotha 11y ago
There's no actual evidence the drought has anything to do with global warming.

logfromblammo 11y ago

I have wondered for a long time whether pairing a desalinator with a generation III+ or later fission reactor could be made more efficient than having both built separately and linked via transmission lines. It seems like there ought to be some opportunity for synergy there, but there are now so many reactor designs that include light water that I have no idea how that might work for any of them.

ivankirigin 11y ago
This is an already popular idea called cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Cogeneration
mrfusion 11y ago
And potentially the same plumbing for incoming water could be used to cool the reactor. In fact now that I think about it, all of the waste heat of the reactor could go toward evaporating the water.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Waste heat? Evaporating the water? Nuclear power plants are steam engines. All their heat goes to evaporating water. Come to think of it, I wonder if you could harvest the steam from a nuclear plant, run it through a condenser or distiller, and in that way produce electricity and purify water at the same time.
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    Harvesting the steam is a clever idea, but I don't know if the average consumer is ready for what would be spun as "radioactive Franken-water".
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    Not all fission reactors use the same cycles to turn heat from the nuclear reaction into usable power. Most existing reactors in the US use the reactor core as the heat source, a convection cooling tower as the heat sink, and water/steam as the working fluid. Using salt water as the working fluid in a BWR or SCWR would probably be dangerous, as it circulates around the reactor core. In a PWR, the working fluid and the fluid circulating past the reactor core are separated via heat exchangers in the steam generator, so that's probably the only widely used reactor type that could do distillation-based desalination without heavy modification. But probably the most useful way to go about doing it is to keep the rest of the reactor as it is, and just attach the reverse osmosis desalinator pumps to the same driveshaft as the electricity generator. Even though boiling and condensing water is an integral part of steam engine operation, it really works best when that water has been completely demineralized already. Otherwise, your boiler fills with salt sludge, and your condenser gets clogged with mineral scale. You're saving efficiency by taking out the two conversions between electrical and mechanical work and the transmission loss between generator and pump motor. The purified water and waste brine could also carry heat away from the steam engine's heat sink if it can go out hotter than the ocean water that comes in. I'm thinking that you'd heat the waste brine as hot as possible before dumping it in a solar evaporation pond. The infrastructure required to pump pre-heated water to the nearest community along with cold is probably not going to pay off unless you're supplying high-rises or a university campus.

hukep 11y ago

It is a difficult task. SA needs plenty of water for the nearest decades. What are the options to get it? How much will it cost? Many difficult questions to answer. Many approaches to choose. If the ideal is to built a great dam, then everything else burden the environment more. Creating of the desalvation factory take a lot of earth resources as well as the energy which also comes mostly out of non-renewable sources. If you produce electric energy you have a great impact on the environment too.

mentat 11y ago

How exactly does one draw the connection between the drought and global warming? Both are warm?

tsotha 11y ago

There's no actual evidence the drought has anything to do with global warming.