Undersea Nuclear Reactors to Power Undersea Cities?

DCNS, the French state-controlled naval company, said it will work in partnership with French companies Areva, EDF, and the French Atomic Energy Commission to build small- and medium-sized underwater reactors to provide electricity to consumers....Radio France Internationale reported Wednesday.

The company said its Flexblue project, expected to enter the building phase in 2013, is in response to global energy challenges and renewed interest in nuclear power. _UPI

Video h/t NextBigFuture
Small, portable nuclear reactors that are made for placement under the sea, could be used for many porpoises purposes. Besides running power cables to land to serve terrestrial customers, such undersea reactors could also serve floating installations and seafloor industries -- even undersea cities.

Akin to the submarines that DCNS has been making for the French navy for 40 years, Flexblue is a cylindrical unit 100 metres in length and 12 to 15 metres in diameter. Inside would be a small nuclear power reactor and well as steam generators, turbines and a generator to produce 50 to 250 MWe.

The vision is for such a unit to be installed on the seabed under 60 to 100 metres of water, several kilometres from a centre of power demand such as a city, industrial base or remote community which it would serve via underwater cables.

A video released today depicts the unit's deployment under naval guard. It is transported to sea on a heavy lift ship which lowers itself to allow Flexblue to maneuvre under its own power. Descent occurs under the watch of divers before a cutaway view reveals four stories of plant within the hull. The structure is then covered by a net and power is transmitted by cable to shore. _WorldNuclearNews_via_NextBigFuture

WNN
Brazil is already planning for "undersea cities" as replacements for deep ocean offshore oil rigs:

The plan is to construct 'cities’ more than 2,000 metres under water, containing machines, giant pieces of equipment and robots that could inspect the systems being used to extract millions of barrels of oil. Many operations would be fully automated while others would be controlled by humans at a distance.

“Our target is that we won’t need platforms in ten years from now,” said Carlos Tadeu Fraga, executive manager of the Petrobras Research Centre.

Petrobras already owns virtual reality laboratories where engineers can inspect 3D images of oil fields. But now they want to take a further technological leap by installing floating rig equipment on the sea bed.

The machinery under the sea would be capable of separating oil, gas, water and sand, compressing substances and generating enough energy to keep the operation functioning.

As deep sea mineral mining and deep sea science and exploration joins deep sea oil & gas drilling, the need for self-powered seafloor installations will grow in urgency. Sealed nuclear reactors that can run between 20 and 50 years on a single fueling will provide the necessary energy security for such installations.

A few years ago, the Estonian Maritime Academy proposed the development and installation of a subsea nuclear reactor off the Estonian coast in the Baltic Sea, for provision of basic power to the country. US naval submarines have traversed the world's oceans for several decades, powered safely and reliably by small nuclear reactors, so the concept of undersea reactors is well proven.

The idea of nuclear powered undersea cities may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but show me a better way to power a post-apocalyptic undersea civilisation. And what better place to survive the great lefty-Luddite environmentalist-engineered dieoff of humans on the surface? Abundant electricity allows for producing freshwater via desalination, oxygen for breathing via electrolytic splitting of water, hydrogen for fuel cells and chemical processes, etc. Nuclear reactors produce plenty of heat, so there would be no reason to be cold, regardless of outside sea temperatures.

Last but not least, plentiful small modular nuclear reactors -- both on land and sea -- should put a quick end to all of the EROEI nonsense one hears batted around at peak energy religious websites. ;-)

Using Near Space as a Waystation to Orbit

Skycat via Brian Wang
The Lockheed P791 can provide an observational platform at 20,000 feet for 3 week time periods. It is similar to the Skycat hybrid aircraft, which due to its buoyancy is able to take off and land vertically and saves 75% of fuel costs over conventional aircraft.

Lockheed P791 via Brian Wang
At 20,000 feet, you would need a well-insulated pressurised cabin to survive. But who wants to stay at low altitudes like 20,000 feet for only 3 weeks, when they could be living high at 50,000 feet?

Flying City for 5,000 ResidentsStratospheric flying cities provide a novel living environment for scientists or adventurous vacationers willing to accept a bit more risk for more excitement.

High altitude stations such as the JP Aerospace Stratostation (or Dark Sky Station) will provide permanently manned transfer stations for those going farther up and out.

JP Aerospace Dark Sky Station PDF

JP Aerospace is developing the technology to fly a balloon or more accurately, their relative, the airship directly to orbit.

Flying an airship directly from the ground to orbit is not practical. An airship large enough to reach orbit would not survive the winds near the surface of the Earth. Conversely, an airship that could fly from the ground to upper atmosphere would not be light enough to reach space. The resulting configuration is a three-part architecture for using lighter-than-air vehicles to reach space.

The first part is an atmospheric airship. It will travel from the surface of the Earth to 140,000 feet. The vehicle is operated by a crew of three and can be configured for cargo or passengers. This airship is a hybrid vehicle using a combination of buoyancy and aerodynamic lift to fly. It is driven by propellers designed to operate in near vacuum.

The second part of the architecture is a suborbital space station. This is a permanent, crewed facility parked at 140,000 feet. These facilities, called Dark Sky Stations (DSS), act as the way stations to space. The DSS is the destination of the atmospheric airship and the departure port for the orbital airship. Initially, the DSS will be the construction facility for the large orbital vehicle.

The third part of the architecture is an airship/dynamic vehicle that flies directly to orbit. In order to utilize the few molecules of gas at extreme altitudes, this craft is big. The initial test vehicle is 6,000 feet (over a mile) long. The airship uses buoyancy to climb to 200,000 feet. From there it uses electric propulsion to slowly accelerate. As it accelerate it dynamically climbs. Over several days it reaches orbital velocity. _JPAerospace PDF

The large orbital airship pictured above is over 1 mile long, and takes several days to reach orbital velocity after departing the Dark Sky Station with its payload.

Other approaches to space which pass through "near space" include the space elevator, an inflatable space tower, Josh Hall's 100 km tall space pier (pictured above), the highly imaginative "Bridge to Space" described in Mike Comb's fictional account, suborbital flights, and sub-orbital ++, among other ideas.

Most of the same competencies and precautions required to survive in orbital space are also required for life in the stratosphere. Precautions against very low atmospheric pressure and high radiation levels will be mandatory. Only competent persons need apply for working positions.

One advantage of a stratospheric habitat is that a person in an insulated pressure suit (with a parachute) can simply jump away from the structure for an invigorating free fall to the surface, with a fair to good possiblity of survival. Attempting the same thing from an orbiting habitat without a re-entry pod would certainly be fatal.

Humans have been slow to establish a permanent presence in space. There are many reasons for this hesitancy -- including economic costs and health risks -- but eventually these barely advanced apes will find a way to answer the siren's call, and thus safeguard the future of the race -- or whatever it is to evolve into.

Mega-Project Deep Beneath the Earth: Sub-Alpine Tunnelling

In the drilling of the tunnels, workers relied on eight gigantic, 3,000-ton tunnel drilling machines simultaneously. "An exceptional logistical plan" was necessary, says Thewes. An 800-meter-long shaft was drilled vertically into the mountain, for example, so that workers could begin working in the middle of the tunnel. _Spiegel

Source

Eight workers died in the building of these two massive twin 57 km long tunnels. Each tunnel is 10 metres in diameter. The total length of tunnels drilled -- including side tunnels -- is 153 km. The work had to contend with some 90 different geologic problem zones, so perhaps the project is lucky not to have lost more men than it did.

After years of work deep under the surface of the earth, drilling on the Gotthard Base Tunnel is set to be completed on Friday. It will be years before the first trains roll through the 57-kilometer-long tunnel, but given the difficulties workers have encountered, it is a wonder they have come this far.

They are both celebrated as wonders of mankind's ingenuity and engineering expertise: the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, deep pathways slicing through the surface of the earth for the benefit of global trade.

On Friday, a third such wonder will take a decisive step toward completion. Only 1.8 meters (just under six feet) of rock stand in the way of the Gotthard Base Tunnel from becoming the longest tunnel in the world. On Friday afternoon, the gigantic drilling machine Sissi is scheduled to break through that final barrier far below the peaks of the Alps. Accompanied by a subterranean celebration and live coverage from the world's media, the breakthrough is a significant milepost on the road to completion for Europe's largest infrastructure project.

"Technically, it is an absolutely eye-popping project," Kurosch Thuro, a tunnel construction expert from the Munich Technical University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. His colleague Markus Thewes from the Ruhr University in Bochum says "the Swiss have set the bar so high that no one will easily be able to clear it." _Spiegel

Subterranean construction projects such as this are likely to become more important with time. It is important that we learn to build and drill deeply into the rock. Such experience will come in handy in the next ice age -- when vast underground nuclear fueled colonies may be necessary for some parts of the world.

Of course, once humans enter the environment of outer-space in a serious way, we will need to learn to engineer construction under the moon's surface, under the surface of Mars, and deep inside various asteroids and outer moons. We will need all the under-surface drilling and building experience we can get.

Energy and the Wealth & Poverty of Nations

Image Source via Robert Hargraves

Energy is the crucial factor which determines how well a people can live. In fact, the availability of energy also determines how many people can live comfortably in a given area. Leftists in the faux environmental movement want to shut down energy so as to eliminate at least 90% of the humans currently living on Earth.

Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. - Paul Ehrlich, ``An Ecologist's Perspective on Nuclear Power'', May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."
—Amory Lovins, The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22 _YVY_via_SeekerBlog

ImageSource

The map above is a look at world poverty by nation. The image below is a graphic look at global electric power production by region and nation. The comparison is stark.

ImageSource

With an abundant and relatively inexpensive source of energy, the Earth could comfortably support ten times the current human population of Earth -- living in health and prosperity. But such a large population would want to utilise the third dimension for both living and agricultural space. If they had the energy, it would be simple.

The political left, of course, is taking the opposite tack of energy starvation. Choking off energy supplies will force a rapid and drastic population shrinkage across the third world -- via famine, sickness, war -- and across the developed world via a further dropping of already-low birthrates.

It is clear that Mr. Obama is taking the low road of energy starvation at this particular crossroads. It is the easy and mindless choice, thus it is the one he chooses.

The best choice is to breed a tougher breed of human -- a pioneer breed who is eager to take up the challenge of the vast spaces beyond the current limits of human habitation and expansion. More on that topic later.