Water has always been a volatile topic in Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent, but the political row that broke out last week was perhaps surprising. Protesters are complaining that a planned desalination facility outside Melbourne, Victoria, will generate too much freshwater.
As Neil Rankine ( a spokesman for protest group Your Water Your Say) and his supporters gear up for a new round of protests, Melbourne could do worse than look west to the city of Perth. Its US$329-million desalination plant, which opened in 2006, has won grudging approval. In fact, a second, US$811-million plant is now planned. The secret: renewable energy — the power comes mainly from a wind farm, and up to 90% of it can be recycled by energy-recovery devices.
From Nature News, 19th March: ‘Water: Purification with a pinch of salt’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Some people always have to be miserable and oppose any kind of progress. I’m surprised that they haven’t figured out some eco-balance that this would disrupt. I guess they want to wait until a “real drought” to add more production capacity, and then blame the government for not being prepared.
It is a fact that protons spin – (why we have proton precession magnetometers) but these atomic particles never seem to lose energy (slowing down of spin) so it would be interesting if that energy could be harnessed in some way.
Oh and the earth has an enormous electrical field, but no one seems intrested in harnessing that either.
And let’s remember that Big oil (the nasty ones) only control about 4% of the planet’s oil reserves, State and Government owned ones own the the other 96%.
Woody you are obviously unaware of issues surrounding various desalination projects in Australia.
Louis Wu
Ah, the dreaded unspecified “issues”.
Real name, or Larry Niven fan, “Louis Wu”?
Desalination plant and it’s energy requirements could be just the thing to make a nuclear power station an economically viable proposition.
Lance Endersbee in his book polinted to ground water depletion and that most of it cames from the crust and not as recycled rainwater.
If this is right, then desalination plants become crucial indeed for our future water supplies and while nuclear might be for the short term, long term energy requirements need to come from new sources.
In any case given the periodic collapse of civilisations, one wonders what really caused those collapse in the past and whether the present alarmism is actually fear of an impending future catastrophe?
Louis,
Thanks for the reminder about Lance Endersbee, I haven’t got this book, but will try get it in my library.
Considering how deep some of the wells had to go to begin with (500M), let alone the ones that had to be deepened to over 1000M, it’s not surprising that they are running dry.
Even if we assume, that the aquifers are recharged by surface water, how long would it be before an aquifer that deep would be recharged?
Shallow wells are a different matter altogether, they are no more than ground water wells.
Certainly food for thought.
Jan – I think TRIGA reactors would be ideal:
http://triga.ga.com/50years.html
Paul – I think TRIGA reactors would be ideal:
yes and no
Inherently safe is good they are a bit low power at 16 MW continuous operation when we consider the oil/coal fired power stations are 600 MW or more. Most reactors built these days are run sub-critical and are inherently safe because neutrons have to be cooled by moderators e.g water to actually keep them running. If the moderator leaks away or otherwise removed the reactor shuts down.
For example;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
There are elements in our society like Greenpeace who for inscrutable reasons of their own would deny it.
There are also possibilities for some designs to recycle fuel thus extending fuel life – lots of interesting possibilities and if there wasn’t this irrational opposition there would be more about, more expended on research and possibly we might have had even better and more options available and Louis can be kept gainfully employed prospecting for Uranium;)
Jan: bet we could have this nuclear industry up and running like our national health programs any day hey
Gavin: bet we could have this nuclear industry up and running like our national health programs any day hey
Heaven forbid that the government actually runs the system.
Correction:Most reactors built these day
Should be most *research* reactors built these days …
Sub critical reactors are also low output reactors.
Hhhmmn, so now Melbourne is building a desalination plant, to join Perth, Sydney and Gold Coast City. And all this time the one city that should have been first in line, Adelaide, persists with it’s parasitic extractions from the Murray-Darling.
The major energy cost in desalination is heating up the water to boiling point. This can be done by first pumping the sea water into shallow black lined warming pools before feeding into the desalinator. Or it can be done by way of heat exchange from hot rock resources.
South Australia is particularly well endowed with both hot rock resources and/or vast areas of flat land suitable for warming pools. But no, this city of water parasites demands increasing volumes of MDB water as if it was their divine right to deprive another hundred farmers of their water allocation every time they build a new suburb.
It is a question of social responsibility. They must be made to take all reasonable and practical steps to help themselves before they go holding their hand out for someone else’s property.