[HN Gopher] The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to...
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The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe
Author : bandibus
Score : 95 points
Date : 2022-07-31 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (everythingisamazing.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (everythingisamazing.substack.com)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Someone with more engineering sense than I can debunk this:
|
| The Baltic is dramatically less saline than the Atlantic. That's
| why the Vasa [1] was so well-preserved after 300 years at the
| bottom.
|
| So could we not take advantage of that salinity difference,
| somehow?
|
| [1] https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
|
| Edit: Every engineering student sees the movie of the Tacoma
| Narrows bridge collapsing. To me, the Vasa is a much better
| career lesson: Marketing dictating a stupid Engineering decision.
|
| "Hey, let's put another gun deck on that thing! It'll be so much
| more imposing."
| mongol wrote:
| It is not the salinity as such that protected Vasa, but the
| absence of the ship worm, which does not like the Baltic brack
| water.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| TIL. I did go to that museum and I thought that was what they
| said.
|
| What do you mean by "brack water"?
| chucksmash wrote:
| > Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water
| occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity
| than freshwater, but not as much as seawater.
|
| > Some seas and lakes are brackish. The Baltic Sea is a
| brackish sea adjoining the North Sea.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brackish_water
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| We could. The technology you would use for this is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic_power . Unfortunately, it
| is not currently cost-effective.
|
| The salinity of the Baltic varies but is generally below 13
| g/kg, which is a lot less than the salinity of the Atlantic
| (around 35 g/kg). This corresponds to an osmotic pressure
| differential around 1.8 kJ/L (1.8 MPa). If you were to build a
| dam which had a gravity pressure which matched this pressure
| differential it would be about 180 m high. So, yes, there is
| plenty of energy in that salinity difference, but getting it
| out in a cost effective manner is an open problem.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Excellent. Thanks!
| jvdvegt wrote:
| They use exactly this in De Afsluitdijk in The Netherlands [1],
| which seems to use technology from redstack [2].
|
| [1] https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/zakelijk/duurzame-
| leefomgevin...
|
| [2] https://redstack.nl/en/?
| simonh wrote:
| We beat you by over 80 years with the Mary Rose, although she
| at least managed to get into battle before she went over.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I visited the Vasa museum in late 2019 and it was stunning. Not
| just how well it had been preserved but how few people died in
| it.
|
| They noted that one of the biggest contributors to its
| preservation was simply the location: since it had barely left
| the harbor, it was shielded from most storms and buried in mud
| in relatively shallow water.
|
| Even better, when it sank, the Vasa was still just a few
| hundred feet from shore so only a few dozen people died instead
| of the hundreds onboard.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| If it is done can it easily for 1 country to threaten the whole
| euro ... instead of nuclear bomb, we will bomb this dam. Giving
| the whole ww1 he has experienced can he just believe all
| countries are in it for peace. Also who will share the costs of
| losing the sea and maintain it.
| bandibus wrote:
| The final part of a trilogy of stories I ran in my newsletter -
| and since the first two were well-received on here a few months
| back, and got me some generous & good advice on tightening them
| up, I thought I'd push my luck a final time. Plus, this topic's
| both wtf-barmy and perhaps timely, considering Europe's energy
| supply issues right now.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I get a feeling that the author may have a teeny-weeny
| ideological axe to grind. A large underwater turbine with totally
| predictable generation cycle might indeed be a useful thing for
| Europe and north Africa.
| bandibus wrote:
| Hah. Not at all! If it sounds like that, I've misrepresented
| myself - I agree with you here, and the Strait is the perfect
| place to do it, using something like this:
| https://www.orkney.com/news/orbital-grid
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It definitely sounds like that.
|
| > _But - purely as an exercise in trying to answer
| hilariously daft questions - how much would it cost to lower
| the level of the sea?_
|
| Never answered?
|
| > _But this is far from the worst thing about Atlantropa._
|
| > _It's alarming to look back just a century and realise just
| how deeply baked and widely-disseminated these kinds of
| racist assumptions were in Europe._
|
| > _It's proper shivers-down-the-spine stuff._
|
| > _Atlantropa may have been wildly unfeasible for countless
| reasons, a perfect turducken of Nopes._
|
| Which reasons?
|
| I got to the end of the post and was still waiting for
| content...
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Which reasons?_
|
| The article notes that even just the dam in the Gibraltar
| Strait (ignoring the others) would have required more
| concrete than existed in the entire world at the time. I
| think that single reason is enough.
| [deleted]
| wmil wrote:
| Any thoughts on the idea to expand the Mediterranean with the
| Sahara Sea idea?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea
| tomtomistaken wrote:
| There are strong currents at work in the strait of Gibraltar.
| Would be interesting to harness their energy in some way.
| bandibus wrote:
| Agreed. There's a tidal turbine off Orkney, the most powerful
| in the world, that just went live:
| https://www.orkney.com/news/orbital-grid It's powering 2,000
| homes and an electrolyzer creating green hydrogen. A few of
| those - or a few arrays of them- in the Strait might do
| wonders.
| moistly wrote:
| Like an underwater turbine.
|
| Japan is apparently going to give it a shot:
| https://www.inputmag.com/tech/japan-kairyu-ocean-turbine-dee...
|
| Looks like Scotland's is a roaring success:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetl...
|
| No need to evaporate the sea.
| zamalek wrote:
| This also draws energy out of the sea, a net positive for
| climate change mitigation.
| dvh wrote:
| Smaller scale project - Czech dam (the red lines are dams):
|
| https://www.abclinuxu.cz/images/screenshots/7/3/242837-ceska...
| rightbyte wrote:
| "The Czech basin can be conveniently used to build a giant
| reservoir"
|
| I like his use of convenient. But the concept is quite
| interesting, barring the practicality of flooding Prague and
| half the country.
| alexanderchr wrote:
| I believe this project would greatly improve the capabilities
| of the Czech Navy.
|
| http://cz-fleet.info/index_en.htm
| D-Coder wrote:
| "At present, the Czech Republic is working on the design of
| their own non-nuclear aircraft carriers. Planned to build at
| least two aircraft carriers."
|
| Neither Wikipedia nor a quick DDG have anything about this.
| Fake site probably.
| faebi wrote:
| Wouldn't that take forever to fill up?
| dvh wrote:
| Approximately 100 years. Then it would produce 2 PWh of power
| (300x average nuclear power plant). Volume 160x Three Gorges
| Dam. More here: https://prehrada.hrach.eu/en.html
| Youden wrote:
| If it takes 100 years to fill the dam and emptying the dam
| will generate 2PWh, then the expected average power is
| 2.3GW. That's closer to 3 nuclear reactors.
| dvh wrote:
| You will not empty the dam. You need 100 years to move
| water level 500m up, then you will use the current flow
| of the Elbe but raised 500m up. That gives you the power
| increase.
| andix wrote:
| The idea is part of a very problematic episode in European
| history. But would the idea be really that bad?
| labster wrote:
| The Qattara depression portion of the project still seems worth
| doing. While I'd prefer the freshwater flavored version, it's not
| hard to imagine it turning into another Salton Sea as droughts
| occur.
| t_mann wrote:
| > What was needed was a project so ludicrously ambitious, yet so
| immeasurably beneficial to all the European powers, that it would
| at last force them to put aside their differences and cooperate
|
| Let's be honest, has that idea ever worked?
| blacksqr wrote:
| > What was needed was a project so ludicrously ambitious, yet so
| immeasurably beneficial to all the European powers, that it would
| at last force them to put aside their differences and cooperate
|
| Interesting, so he was a sort of inverse Ozymandias.
| 100k wrote:
| Not mentioned in this article: In Philip K. Dick's alternative
| history The Man in the High Castle, in which the Nazis and
| Imperial Japan won World War II, the Nazis execute this plan and
| drain the Mediterranean. As the author mentions, there wasn't
| much care for what happened to the people living in Africa. In
| Dick's book, the Nazis visited some unspeakable holocaust on
| them.
| throwaway49374 wrote:
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Why are multiple throwaways posting almost identical
| comments?
| throwawayasdfgf wrote:
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Why are multiple throwaways posting almost identical
| comments?
| almog wrote:
| While not directly related, it reminded me of another plan (from
| 1963), sponsored by the US to create an alternate to the Suez
| Canal, through the Israeli Negev Desert using... 520 nuclear
| bombs:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/us-planned-suez-canal-altern...
| metadat wrote:
| Un-paywalled: https://archive.ph/muZg5
| suzzer99 wrote:
| They had a similar plan to blow a second Panama Canal through
| the Darien Gap with nuclear bombs. Just batshit crazy stuff.
| dukoid wrote:
| With rising sea levels perhaps it might be an option to keep the
| levels in the mediterranen? Seems at least more feasible than the
| Norther European Enclosure Dam*
|
| *)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_European_Enclosure_Da...
| Bronze_Colossus wrote:
| Since parts of Northern Europe still experiences Post-glacial
| rebound and will rise faster than the expected rise of the
| ocean level I find this project unnecessary. (I am still a
| sucker for megaprojects though)
| Someone wrote:
| On the other hand, parts of Western Europe also still
| experience Post-glacial rebound and will drop, increasing the
| effects of rising sea levels.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
| glacial_rebound#Vertical_...:
|
| _"the post-glacial rebound of northern Great Britain (up to
| 10 cm per century) is causing a corresponding downward
| movement of the southern half of the island (up to 5 cm per
| century)"_
|
| IIRC, the Low Countries also are sinking because of post-
| glacial rebound.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The rise in sea levels is extremely slow at human lifetime
| scale. We are looking at less than 1 meter (just over 3 feet)
| by year 2100 in the worst case scenario analyses by IPCC. This
| is not nearly enough to make Gibraltar power plant practical,
| as it is on the order of magnitude of existing difference
| between high and low tide.
| hinkley wrote:
| If global warming continues to raise sea level, it could well
| become the case that such a project is undertaken but with the
| goal of keeping the Mediterranean roughly where it is, which
| would simplify changes necessary elsewhere to keep the Black Sea
| a sea and keep harbors navigable.
|
| Lowering the Mediterranean a few feet and running turbines at a
| flow rate to counteract evaporation might work, especially since
| evaporation and power usage track somewhat. Hot days evaporate
| more water, and require more air conditioning. The volume of the
| reservoir would allow quite a bit of buffer if you wanted to time
| shift some of that usage, aiming for monthly or quarterly
| averages instead of daily.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| The Mediterranean sea is, to me, the most beautiful place on
| earth. Be it mainland Spain (with, sadly, way too many concrete
| all along the coast), France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, ... It's
| just beautiful. Then the islands: Corsica, Sicily, Ibiza,
| Formentera, ... It's heaven on earth.
|
| I drive my kid to school on the french riviera, along the coast
| and among the vineyards every day.
|
| Famous poets and painters would go and settle there.
|
| It requires a very special kind of a sad fuck to want to destroy
| that.
| bandibus wrote:
| Couldnt agree more. (I grew up in Cyprus.) From what I could
| tell, it didn't occur to Sorgel what effect the dams and
| evaporation would have on sea-life, and on the coastal
| economies depending on it. Probably catastrophic. But one thing
| that was encouraging about the Orkney turbine mentioned
| elsewhere in these comments: they ran a trial first, to see how
| wildlife would be affected. Result: negligible impact. So a
| modern-tech version that respects all that beauty does seem to
| be possible - if mining the raw materials required to build it
| is factored in, because that is a massive ongoing issue.
| tomrod wrote:
| I'm pretty sure he was a "change it all and we will make our
| own opportunity" type of dreamer, per the article.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It requires a very special kind of a sad fuck to want to
| destroy that.
|
| On the other hand it's recreating a different entirely natural
| state the sea was once in, beautiful in its own way.
|
| I'd still say it's wrong but I don't think it's a "special kind
| of sad fuck". The status quo is not king.
| zen_1 wrote:
| Agreed, my childhood summers spent on the Egyptian North
| Coast/Sahel are some of my favorite memories.
| meroes wrote:
| Something like this kind of drew me into geology. The inside
| jacket of my intro textbook explained the Mediterranean used to
| be damned naturally at Gibraltar or whatever the inlet is called
| and that so much salt water evaporated there where miles deep
| salt land features. Was instantly hooked
| pawsforthought wrote:
| This article links to another which discusses exactly that [1]
| -- some geological event dammed the Mediterranean from the
| Atlantic 6 million years ago, after which the sea mostly dried
| out, then subsequently the entire thing refilled in the space
| of a couple years in the Zanclean Megaflood (at least, there's
| mounting evidence that it happened in one cataclysmic event).
| First the western Mediterranean filled up to Sicily, then the
| eastern med, via a 1500m (5000ft) high waterfall!
|
| [1]: https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/in-search-of-a-
| fl...
| treeman79 wrote:
| Epic XKCD comic on this topic.
|
| https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/
| fractallyte wrote:
| I'm sure I read about this in one of the later editions of
| Principles of Physical Geology by Arthur Holmes...
| [deleted]
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