[HN Gopher] South Pole Water Infrastructure
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South Pole Water Infrastructure
Author : loeber
Score : 201 points
Date : 2024-06-08 05:41 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brr.fyi)
(TXT) w3m dump (brr.fyi)
| anself wrote:
| Where did the wastewater go before the first rodwell was
| finished?
| joshvm wrote:
| I guess something fairly simple - a hole in the ground. Or it
| gets bagged and put into waste drums (or deposited directly) -
| this is still what we do at outbuildings where there's no
| sewage or water infra.
|
| The answer is probably on Bill Spindler's website somewhere
| (southpolestation.com).
| bunabhucan wrote:
| https://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/history/history.html...
|
| Lots of mentions of sewer outfalls, pipes freezing and lift
| pumps being replaced. Probably an excavated hole in the ground?
| cozzyd wrote:
| At Summit Station in Greenland (much smaller than Pole, Pole
| feels like a luxury resort comparitively), an outfall hole +
| usually we use the outhouses (which are just made using hot
| air).
|
| Fresh water comes from the snow cave, and shoveled into the
| water melter.
| namanyayg wrote:
| Always great to see a brr.fyi post on HN.
|
| Living in the south pole is basically like living on an alien
| planet.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| That's a great metaphor - and a reminder that settling Mars
| will be much harder than an antarctic operation.
| perihelions wrote:
| One thing not mentioned: McMurdo desalination (the first one in
| OP) historically used to be nuclear-powered, but they abandoned
| that and currently use diesel.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Nuclear_power_...
| consumer451 wrote:
| Diesel sounds much more practical:
|
| > "Nukey Poo" began producing power for the McMurdo station in
| 1962, and was refuelled for the first time in 1964. A decade
| later, the optimism around the plant had faded. The 25-man team
| required to run the plant was expensive, while concerns over
| possible chloride stress corrosion emerged after the discovery
| of wet insulation during a routine inspection. Both costs and
| environmental impacts conspired to close the plant in September
| 1972.
|
| > This precipitated a major clean up that saw 12,000 tonnes of
| contaminated rock removed and shipped back to the USA through
| nuclear-free New Zealand. The clean up pre-dated Antarctica's
| modern environmental protection regime by two decades, and
| required the development of new standards for soil
| contamination levels.
|
| https://theconversation.com/remembering-antarcticas-nuclear-...
| jsjohnst wrote:
| Little surprised that there aren't contamination concerns with
| pumping waste water back into the snow pack. I guess at -60deg it
| doesn't travel far, but still.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| >Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60degF to a
| reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50degF) means heating
| it up by a whopping 110degF. That's 268 watt-hours of raw energy
| required just to bring a single gallon of water up to
| distribution temperature!
|
| It's actually more than this, because the phase change from solid
| to liquid takes a lot of energy too.
| jimmyswimmy wrote:
| Yes, this bothered me too. It's impressive how much energy is
| required to just melt water much less bring it to temperature.
| It's 330 kJ/kg, which is 1250 kJ/gallon: 350 Wh. So it costs
| more energy to defrost one gallon of water than it does to do
| the rest of the 110F temperature change.
|
| The physics term for this is the "latent heat of fusion," or
| the energy required to change states from liquid to solid, or
| vice versa.
|
| A few years ago I saw someone calculate the energy required to
| melt the ice in front of a locomotive (I think) at speed; IIRC
| it required a (not small!) nuclear reactor's worth of energy.
| Not practical!
| ta1243 wrote:
| I was shocked that such a scientific station is using Fahrenheit
| to measure the temperature of the water
| defrost wrote:
| It's a blog for general US public reading, I'm inclined to
| think the seriousstuff is all Celsius and SI units and
| Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups so than regular folk
| in the US know what the tempretures are.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I'm inclined to think the serious stuff is all Celsius and
| SI units and Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups [...]
|
| There are two photos in this article which show thermometers
| (search for "Temperature of the "), which clearly are in
| Fahrenheit (the scale goes from 20 to over 140, which would
| be from "comfortable room temperature" to "beyond boiling at
| normal pressure" if it were in Celsius), and both having a
| printed label "EACH LINE: 2degf" (with lowercase F for some
| reason) glued below them. So, at least for this water
| treatment plant, it seems to be using Fahrenheit for the
| instrumentation.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Application-specific industrial instrumentation probably
| sourced from USA. I'm sure all their scientific instruments
| are in Celsius.
| ta1243 wrote:
| It's the photos that confused me. They weren't even dual-
| marked in C and F, just in F
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Fahrenheit is based on what a human body finds hazardous, and
| this is a life support system for humans. It's the right tool
| for the job.
|
| I doubt they're using Fahrenheit in contexts that don't benefit
| from a human bias.
| Mumps wrote:
| This never made sense to me. What "feels" special about 32,
| or 98, or 212? If anything this argument is way more
| applicable to Celsius (0 noteworthy, 100 noteworthy).
|
| I once read that it had to do with making a calibrated scale
| (divisions of 2) - and that felt like it held water - to me.
| ano-ther wrote:
| It's a US government operated facility, so this is not too
| surprising.
|
| Also, most equipment (especially things like plumbing) will be
| from US suppliers and that will just be easier to procure by
| the inch.
| p3rls wrote:
| Wait until you find out what PSI means
| langsoul-com wrote:
| To think that beneath the south pole lies a metric shit ton of
| shit.
|
| I think some things are better left unknown.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Tomorrow, a nuclear war happens. Next, nuclear winter and the
| slow death of the human race. Antarctica? Sits untouched for
| millions of years, then aliens land, and find a mysterious
| additional lake filled with all sorts of microbes.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Given the extent of human impact on the planet, these aliens
| can probably deduce this whodunnit.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Not so sure about that. My implied scenario had an implied
| ice age, and the last one scoured the land clean to
| bedrock.
|
| Sure, I suppose there'd be _some_ evidence, but in millions
| of years everything would be fallen, dozens of ice ages
| would have happened, plants and animals would have grown
| over everything, and so on.
|
| We've found structures thousands of years old, but not
| millions. We've found fossils that are quite old, but that
| doesn't tell use anything about the intellect, or true
| capabilities of the species.
|
| Millions of years is a really, really long time.
|
| It's hard for me to imagine a single bit of data about
| humans existing, still.
|
| Maybe some datasets on the moon, wasn't someone going to
| send something there?
| dave4420 wrote:
| Wouldn't nuclear war leave a distinctive layer in the
| geological record?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Maybe. I know there are a lot of isotopes with short half
| llves after a blast, but not sure how much plutonium or
| what not would be left.
|
| It could look like a massive series of asteroid strikes.
|
| But outside that, it wouldn't show anything about humans.
| Just "some beings did that".
| akira2501 wrote:
| Or a metric ton of untreated fertilizer.
|
| It's always good to have some optimism.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| It's always fun seeing these posts, it's a look into such a
| strange way of living and supporting life. And there's something
| subtly terrifying about the whole operation too, seemingly
| teetering on a knife's edge between the ever-forward marching of
| entropy and all of the energy they need to put in to keep that in
| check, even more so with it being so cold. How fast it could
| collapse if, say, there was a generator problem and how diesel
| fuel is the only thing that's keeping it afloat.
|
| I'd love to see a post, maybe there is, about maintenance of all
| of this, perhaps a story or two about an issue that maybe had
| some existential threat to the station and how it was overcome. I
| look at the majority of the infrastructure there and just keep in
| the back of my mind how fragile it all seems. And yes, obviously
| there are redundancies, but even with redundancy, things can
| still fail, they exist in the physical world after all.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Nit: McMurdo uses diesel since its climate is more forgiving
| but the South Pole station the author was at uses kerosene-
| based JP8 jet fuel since it comes with additives for subzero
| temperatures. They even have their own arctic recipe called
| AN8.
|
| There is a _lot_ of redundancy and they 're equipped to fix
| things on site:
| https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-pole...
| m4rtink wrote:
| IIRC McMurdo even had a nuclear reactor for a while. :-)
| ironchief wrote:
| More info on the PM-3A reactor
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/
| immibis wrote:
| TL;DR: They mine the Antarctic for ice, creating huge sinkholes,
| then fill the holes in with raw sewage, a gift for future
| generations. Environmentally friendly, right!
| icapybara wrote:
| Do you have a better idea?
| michael9423 wrote:
| drying and burning.
| consumer451 wrote:
| There are some smart folks making the decisions for the
| procedures down there. I wonder how that decision process
| went, to end up with burial. I would love to know the
| details.
| noprocrasted wrote:
| The alternative would be to collect and ship it back which
| would require tons of energy that will have to be in the form
| of fossil fuels given current technology. Said fossil fuels
| have a huge environmental footprint (greenhouse gas emissions
| and depletion of fossil fuel reserves) that is affecting us
| _now_.
|
| In contrast, the ice shelf is huge and still has a lot of
| capacity to contain sewage. It should remain frozen for the
| foreseeable future - if it melts (to the level where this
| sewage will become liquid) it means the global warming
| situation is so bad that there's likely no longer any humans
| around to actually witness this sudden deluge of sewage.
|
| As long as we manage to keep that ice shelf frozen, we're fine.
| If we somehow fail at it it's likely there wouldn't be anyone
| around to complain about the sewage anyway.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Wait until you learn about landfills!
|
| Although considering the desire to survive on the Moon and
| Mars, one would think recycling sewage in more of a closed
| system would be worth funding.
| immibis wrote:
| Landfills aren't usually in Antarctica. I thought we were
| supposed to be trying to keep Antarctica relatively pristine
| _because it 's Antarctica_. Also, the sewage doesn't
| decompose in those temperatures, like it would in a normal
| landfill.
| tekla wrote:
| Wait until you learn where the penguins shit
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's otherwise uninhabitable.
|
| Aside from that what do you think our ancestors did with their
| waste?
|
| People overestimate the impact of individuals on the planet.
| Which is a game corporations play so you underestimate the
| impact of their profits on the planet.
| immibis wrote:
| This would be valid if it was a small natural amount of
| sewage from a few humans, not tens of millions of gallons.
| Penguins shit somewhere, so the ecosystem probably won't mind
| if a few humans shit where a few penguins shit. But this is
| like noticing a few burger wrappers on the side of the road
| so you dump your commercial trash bin there every week.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Humans have been living in cities for thousands of years
| yet we've only very recently began treating our waste.
| Humans outside of cities have been using septic systems for
| centuries.
|
| "Tens of millions of gallons" of human waste sounds
| significant, but, it likely isn't. I also feel that
| equating the unavoidable byproduct of human scientific
| research in remote locations with road side burger wrappers
| is bordering on luddite hyperbole.
| davidw wrote:
| These are the sorts of deep dives into something interesting that
| I've always enjoyed on HN.
|
| I was also a bit surprised by everything being in Fahrenheit,
| even in the pictures.
|
| The ice tunnels are really cool. Having grown up with Star Wars,
| who wouldn't love those?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Fascinating!
|
| >"Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60degF to a
| reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50degF) means heating
| it up by a whopping 110degF. That's 268 watt-hours of raw energy
| required just to bring a single gallon of water up to
| distribution temperature!
|
| This is one of the reasons we're restricted to two-minute
| showers."
|
| Everyone reading this should try to get by on a two-minute shower
| once a day for one week, to see if we could be candidates for
| this job.
| jimmyswimmy wrote:
| > try to get by on a two-minute shower once a day
|
| This is pretty typical aboard ship for smaller vessels on long
| voyages. Not so hard as it sounds: get wet, turn off; lather
| up, rinse off, turn off. You can do with 20-30 seconds of water
| and be quite clean, with some practice.
|
| It's not satisfying though. And I can't imagine how those
| numbers scale if you have long hair, or use conditioner.
| verve_rat wrote:
| See also: all the shower scenes in M*A*S*H.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I like what a cold shower does to my brain. It's uncomfortable
| in the moment but it sort of stays with you all day in a nice
| way. I used to time them at 5m when I was building the habit
| but now I gravitate to around 2m.
|
| Admittedly, Colorado "cold" is not Antarctica "cold". Just
| saying that 2m is plenty of time for a shower if you're not
| luxuriating in world of steam and shower thoughts.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Or even less often.
|
| Daily full-body bathing is unnecessary unless you do very
| physically demanding or dusty/dirty work.
| robocat wrote:
| A friend working up North said they collected the meteorites
| after melting the snow they used for water.
|
| I wonder if there is a little pile of meteorite dust at the
| bottom of the rodwells.
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