[HN Gopher] Panama Canal Draught Restrictions Spark Liner Surcha...
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Panama Canal Draught Restrictions Spark Liner Surcharges
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-08-08 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gcaptain.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gcaptain.com)
| version_five wrote:
| Wikipedia says this about the northwest passage:
| Therefore, the Canadian commercial marine transport industry does
| not anticipate the route as a viable alternative to the Panama
| Canal within the next 10 to 20 years (as of 2004).
|
| Curious if there is an update. Seems a no brainier for Canadian
| sovereignty to invest in this, so I expect we won't.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| What type of investment did you have to mind? Investments to
| boost commercial viability? Or improvements to boost Canadian
| sovereignty claims?
| grecy wrote:
| A friend is sailing it right now. There is still a good deal of
| ice. It's almost a certainty to open every year now, but only
| for 1-8 weeks, then it's blocked by ice again.
|
| 20 years ago there was no guarantee it would open at all during
| the summer.
| sp332 wrote:
| There are some extremely sensitive habitats up north. A spill
| could be a disaster for some endangered species.
| version_five wrote:
| That's really a throw away answer. Is there something
| concrete you want to share? As written it just sounds like a
| lazy excuse for not engaging with something, which could have
| been done by not commenting. I don't understand what the
| point of even writing it was.
| stickfigure wrote:
| For anyone interested in how the new (bigger) locks use less
| water than the old locks (reclaiming 60% of the water - without
| pumps!), this old Practical Engineering video explains with
| diagrams:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBvclVcesEE
|
| They store the water in a series of basins at different levels,
| and use those basins to fill the portion of the lock below. It's
| more obvious with diagrams.
| daveslash wrote:
| Glad I read the article. At first I ( _naively_ ) thought _" why?
| just pump more seawater?"_ But according to the article " _it
| takes around 50 million gallons of fresh water to move a ship
| through a lock. The panamax locks lose more fresh water than the
| neo-panamax locks, which have a recovery system that can reclaim
| 60% of the water_ " -- A spot check on the maps shows Gatun Lake
| (freshwater) in the center of the isthmus. Wikipedia says it is
| fresh, but human made.
|
| Is anyone aware of the reason for creating the interior of the
| canal as a freshwater passage, as opposed to just mixing ocean
| water willy-nilly? Such mixing of water would probably not pass
| current environmental concerns (with good reason), but curious
| what the reasoning was from a 1913 perspective?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| FTA: "...the canal and the lakes and rivers that make up its
| watershed, which also provides fresh water to three cities,
| including the capital."
|
| Presumably, "people actually need to live in the area, and
| cannot drink salt water" was a factor.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's because the Panama canal was constructed by connecting
| several previously naturally existing (fresh) waterways and a
| big lake, to the ocean on both side. The whole point of the
| locks is to raise and lower the ships to the higher elevation
| at which the lake sits. Water runs downhill, it starts as
| rain, then to rivers and lakes, then the ocean. So in this
| case rain and natural watershed basins drain into the lake
| and then the locks release it slowly down to progressively
| fill each lock, until the water is at the ocean, at which
| point it can't efficiently be separated from the seawater, so
| it just becomes part of the ocean.
|
| The people there drink the fresh water and chose to settle in
| that area originally because ot was there. We then built a
| canal after. It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a
| water source for the local folks.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a water
| source for the local folks.
|
| Right, I am saying that the effect it would have on the
| existing water source is a probably a factor in why "allow
| more free mixing of saltwater / pump more seawater to deal
| with drought conditions impacts on the canal" is not done.
|
| Not that the Canal was built as a water supply.
| michael1999 wrote:
| From the article: "This was to reduce salination of the
| freshwater in the canal and the lakes and rivers that make up
| its watershed, which also provides fresh water to three cities,
| including the capital."
|
| Panama City is pretty thirsty.
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| This is how they made the lake:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatun_Dam
|
| I'm assuming flooding the other way around was more expensive
| than creating a fresh water reservoir by building a dam.
| pseingatl wrote:
| One of the reasons was to control the Chagres River. The
| creation of Gatun Lake created a freshwater reservoir higher
| than sea level. Vessels enter the Canal, climb up to the level
| of the Lake and are dropped back down to sea level. I have to
| wonder if the third set of locks (what I think they're calling
| Neo-Panamax locks) uses more water than the original 110 x 1000
| locks. There must be a way to recycle water for use in Panama
| City and Colon. It's not practicable to re-use the water for
| canal operations because the water would have to be raised back
| up to the level of Gatun Lake and it would take an enormous
| amount of energy to do so. As I recall, spillage from canal
| operations was never used to generate electricity, but that
| might no longer be the case.
| kgermino wrote:
| Salinity issues aside, in my understanding locks generally
| don't pump water at all: they work entirely on gravity. In
| effect this means that a burst of water flows downstream every
| time the lock is cycled.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Correct.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Exactly, they basically harness the natural water cycle (rain
| to watersheds to waterways to ocean).
|
| The one exception is with these new locks, I bet they pump a
| bunch of the water back now instead of releasing it, that's
| how I expect they get the 60%.
| Animats wrote:
| Nope, it's not pumped. It's a clever system where there are
| several storage basins at different levels.[1]
|
| In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a nuclear reactor mounted
| on a ship to provide power for the Panama Canal. This
| reduced water loss via the hydroelectric plant at Gatun
| Dam, leaving more water for the locks.[2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_pr
| oject...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Truly incredible, thank you!
| lokar wrote:
| Much of the route is pre-existing river and lake, the whole
| thing is an extension of a watershed.
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(page generated 2023-08-08 23:00 UTC)