“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people…religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.” Linus from Peanuts.
Author: lenbilen
Retired engineer, graduated from Chalmers Technical University a long time ago with a degree in Technical Physics. Career in Aerospace, Analytical Chemistry, computer chip manufacturing and finally adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania State University, taught just one course in Computer Engineering, the Capstone Course.
The Transcontinental aqueduct at the starting point will have a carrying .capacity of 15 million acre-ft per year, or 21,000 cubic feet per second on average. Maximum flow will be 26,500 cfs, allowing the power generators to supply peak power to the grid for up to 5 hours per day instead of pumping water.
The starting point of the aqueduct is where the Red river empties out in the Atchafalaya river, and has a Mississippi River diversion dam. The elevation at the starting point is 7 feet, and the dam and pumping station will be located in the upper part of the never used Atchafalaya Floodway.
The Mississippi River flood control Morganza spillway is south of the Atchafalaya river diversion, and will not interfere. The place chosen is ideal to relieve some of the Mississippi river flow. Even in the lowest Mississippi flow in a drought year this diversion has sufficient flow to divert 26,500 cfs from it.
The first leg of the aqueduct is 360 miles long and is an open water river with pumping stations whenever the river has to rise about 30 feet. The river runs by gravity until it has sunk about 15 feet which is about 6.18 miles downstream. Since endpoint is at 537 feet elevation this requires about 58 pumping stations. During the course of the path the aqueduct crosses the Sabine River south of the Toledo Bend Reservoir, following the best climb it crosses the Neches River and the Trinity River following the geologically best way until it reaches the Aquilla Lake. The aqueduct is quite substantial, it will carry about 80% more water than the All American canal, seen here under construction. This canal has a drop of about 2.2 feet per mile to accommodate maximum flow.
Pumping 26,500 cfs water through 58 pumping station, each one raising the water about 30 feet requires 4 Gigawatts of power when rounding up for turbine losses. This can be accomplished by eight 500 MW LFTR reactors, also being able to provide up to 4 GW of peak power for 5 hours/day on demand. Two will serve the eastern power grid and six will serve the Texas electrical grid.
The end point for stage 1 of the channel is Aquilla lake, elevation 537 feet. It has a storage capacity of 50,000 acre-ft, which is only half a day’s worth of storage, so Stage 1 and Stage 2 will have to be managed as a unit. It is located 20 miles North of Waco, TX.
Acts 22. Paul gave his salvation testimony to the Jerusalem crowd in the Aramaic language. When Paul mentioned the stoning of Stephen and that he preached also to the Gentiles the crowd wanted him killed right away. Paul claimed that he was a Roman citizen, so the next day he was ordered to stand before the Sanhedrin.
2 Chronicles 31 tells of the Reforms of Hezekiah. “He did it with all his heart, and prospered.”
2 Chronicles 32. Sennacherib boasted against the LORD but was defeated and died. Hezekiah humbled himself,so the LORD sent an angel to deliver Judah. Hezekiah grew in wealth and honor, but he too finally died.
Chronicles 33. Manasseh, king of Judah became a sorcerer, repented and was restored but eventually died and was replaced by Amon , who reigned for two years, did evil, was killed and his son Josiah became king.
Acts 21. On the way to Jerusalem Paul was warned everywhere by the Holy Spirit not to go, but Paul continued unmoved, and people finally gave up, saying ‘The Lord’s will be done’. Paul was urged to make peace and purify himself with four other Jews that had taken a vow, which he did. A mob was stirred up anyway and Paul was arrested in the Temple. Because Paul was a Roman citizen he was allowed to address the Jerusalem mob.
2 Chronicles 30. Hezekiah celebrated the Passover and there was great joy in Jerusalem.
Psalm 49, of the Sons of Korah. This psalm is more of a teaching Psalm and give instruction on how to live and hope of salvation “But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,For He shall receive me”
Every day the news is devastating, depressing and seemingly hopeless. Some turn off the TV news altogether, hoping that ignoring the news will make them feel better. But we are called to be in the world, and it is our duty to leave the world a better place than we found it. To do that we must know what is happening. One way is to follow the Apostle Paul’s advice in Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—thinkabout such things.” (NIV). Then we find that there is much good happening for which to be thankful..
Here are a few examples: The Covid pandemic is finally diminishing, and we have vaccines and effective treatments avilable. HydroxyChloroQuine together with Zinc and maybe Azithromycine is a cure if taken early in more than 60% of the cases. It is even effective in the later stage of the sicness if taken in much larger doses. Ivermectine plus Zinc is even more effective, over 80% success rate if taken early. These are proven facts, but the media is still bound to promote vaccines as the only solution. Thinking positively, vaccines are good for people over 50, under 50 you are better off with either HCQ or Ivermactine, taken in proper doses of course. An overdose of Tylenol can destroy your kidneys and even cause death, yet it is safe and effective in proper doses. The point of all this is that we have learnt so much during this pandemic for which we should be thankful,.. and the proper treatments should be promoted.
I could go on with climate change. Yes, there is climate change, and this is on balance good. When you want hothouses to yield more, you increase the CO2 level, typically double it. This leads to increased yields. Since CO2 levels have increased, we can now feed 2 billion more people than before, and have fewer people starving. The temperatures in the tropics are not increasing, the control mechanism is clouds, they cool by day and warm by night. The control is so good that just one percent change in cloud cover means more than all the increase in the CO2 levels. One place where God’s temperature control doesn’t work perfectly is in deserts. With no clouds, no temperature control. So w must do what we can to prevent more areas from becoming a desert. One way is to plant more trees. This is especially important to lower temperatures in urban areas with all their roads, houses and parking lots.
My dream is to see built a transcontinental aqueduct from the Mississippi river to the Colorado River. It would save the southwest from becoming a desert, save Lake Mead, double the irrigation in the Imperial Valley and Mexico, water the people of Arizona and New Mexico and provide much needed hydroelectric power storage for the state of Texas. At the moment Texas has none, but they have a lot of wind power and no way to store the energy to use when the wind is not blowing. Arizona and New Mexico would like to have solar power, but they do not have the water to provide hydroelectric power storage. The aqueduct will provide the water for the hydroelectric power storage as the water flows down from the highlands. All it takes is twenty-three Liquid Fluor Thorium nuclear Reactors of 500 Megawatt capacity each to power the aqueduct, so it is very doable. Congress is now disussing an infrastructure bill. If there wver was a project worth their consideration this would be it!
Acts 20:17-38. From Miletus Paul called the Ephesian Elders and when they arrived he exhorted them, said farewell and told them he would never see them again.
2 Chronicles 27. Jotham, king of Judah followed God, became mighty, reigned sixteen years and died.
2 Chronicles 28. Ahaz, king of Judah did not follow God, was defeated by Syria and Israel. Israel returned the captives taken. After Ahaz committed apostasy, he shut down the temple and died.
2 Chronicles 29. Hezekiah became king of Judah, cleansed the Temple and restored temple worship.
Yesterday the word was “the heavenly realms” found 5 times in Ephesians. The King James translation renders this “heavenly places” suggesting it is a physical location. The original Greek does not mention realms or places, it simply calls it “the heavenlies”. For we, created in time and space, have a hard time getting hold of God, after all he exists since creation of both time and space. Just think, without physical matter time and space has no meaning. The apostle Matthew calls the heavenlies the Kingdom of heaven, Mark and Luke calls it the Kingdom of God. Jesus himself says in John 18:36 “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.“
We tend to think that what we do makes a difference. God has given us access to the spiritual dimension, or realm, or even place in the form of the Holy Spirit, and thanks to that He has given us power. No, he has given us access to the heavenlies, not in our selves but it is Christ, in the form of the Holy Spirit that lives in us. Without him we can do nothing.
Something happened to us today that has never happened to us before. After a successful shopping trip we went to a diner that serves excellent crab cakes. After finishing the meal, the server, followed by the manager, came and said, somebody paid for our meal. At first we were dumbfounded, we have heard of acts of random kindness, but why us, we don’t look that destitute, as a matter of fact, we look rather good, considering our age. We humbly thanked the server and manager for the anonymous generosity. Leaving the diner I remembered that we always pray before the meal, holding hands, giving thanks to God for what He has tone today and for the meal, all in the name of Jesus.
There is something going on, i can sense it. We are praying for a revival of Biblical proportions, and a worldwide awakening. After all, God gives more grace.
The word for today is “in the heavenly realms”. What does that mean? the book of Ephesians has 5 references of it. They form quite a promise for us who believe.
Ephesians 1:3. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 1:20. Which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 2:6. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with himin the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. 2:7. In order in the coming ages he might show the in incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus 3:10. His intent was that now , through the church , the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to rulers and authoritiesin the heavenly realms. 6:12. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
The heavenly realms is not a physical location, rather it is spiritual. When we received the Holy Spirit we became partakers of the heavenly realms, Christ in us.There is an intense warfare for our souls, and it is spiritual. We are called to be partakers in this spiritual warfare. In the physical world it may look like we are losing with all the violence, sickness, deceit and falsehood, bur be of good Cheer<Christ has overcome the world, and so shall we.
Colossians 2:13-15 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of you sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ, he forgave all our sins. 2:14, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing to the cross. 2:15, AND HAVING DISARMED THE POWERS AND AUTHORITIES, HE MADE AN OPENSPECTACLE OF THEM, TRIUMPHING OVER THEM by The CROSS.
The key for us Christians is the Cross, the stench of death to those who perish, but victory for us who believe.
Acts 20:1-16. Paul left Ephesus and ministered in Greece for 3 months, left Greece and ministered at Troas, where on the last day there he preached on and on and a young man fell down from a third floor window and died, but was revived by Paul. Undaunted Paul continued preaching until daybreak, then he left and went to Miletus.
2 Chronicles 24. Joash repaired the Temple but then committed apostasy and was finally executed.
2 Chronicles 25. Amaziah reigned in Judah and went to war against Edom. Israel routed Judah and finally Amaziah was killed and buried.
Chronicles 26. Uzziah became the next king of Judah, young and successful and made Judah powerful again, but his pride got the best of him and he became a leper, an outcast. Jotham, his son became de facto regent until Uzziah’s death.
The Hoover dam water is being depleted. We are running out of water in the South-West United States. The water used for irrigation is too salty. The rapidly growing population requires more and more water. Texas needs hydro-electric storage to supplement the power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.
First let us assess the size of the problem. The rainfall reaching the streams in the Colorado River basin is about 15 million acre feet per year, and is not increasing. See figure:
Now let us look at water allocations:
The total allocations come to 16.5 Million Acre Feet per year. This is clearly unsustainable, Lake Mead will be drained by 2 MAF per year and is now at 34% of full pool of 32.3 MAF. If nothing is done it will be drained in 5.5 years. Draining Lake Powell will give us another 4 years, so something must be done in the next 9.5 years.
Texas has a problem, all too well displayed in the big freeze of last winter. The wind farms froze, the sun didn’t shine and the coal fired plants had been shut down for environmental reasons. The only thing that saved the grid from total collapse was Nuclear Power. Even the Natural Gas powered plants ran out of supplies since some pipelines had lost power. And Texas has virtually no hydroelectric storage capacity.
This is my proposal: Build an aqueduct from the Mississippi river to Yuma California, about 1650 miles long, capable of carrying 15 MAF/year of water It will start and end near sea level, and pump water in Texas and New Mexico to more than 4000 feet elevation until it reaches the Gila river near Duncan, NM, then follow the Gila river all the way down to Yuma, AZ. On the way down the Gila River it will generate hydroelectric power, and recover much of the power spent pumping the water upstream in Texas and NM. You may wonder, what would a canal like that look like? Some of the way it would look like this, but be 30% larger, here is the All American canal under construction:
It will have many pumping stations. The size will be about 10 times the capacity of the ones used in the Colorado River aqueduct, shown here. (This aqueduct made it possible for Los Angeles to grow to a megalopolis.)
To pump all this water 4500 feet up will require twenty-two 500 MW electric power generators. The ideal power source for this is Liquid Fluor Thorium Reactors that provide power at all times, most of the time they pump water, but about 6 hours a day they stop pumping and provide peak power, thus functioning as a virtual hydroelectric battery. As all nuclear generators they generate no CO2, and LFTRs are so safe they do not require evacuation zones. If the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, or it is excessively cold or hot, they can even stop pumping water altogether and provide all the power to the grid. With the water on the downhill leg the opposite is true. It releases most of its water during times of high demand, acting as a normal peak water storage generator facility. Since both start and end points of this aqueduct is near sea level, about 90% of the power is recovered in this way except for the water that is diverted at high altitudes.
Who is going to get all this extra water? Check the current allotment and the new proposed allotment.
There will be no changes to the allotments for the states in the upper Colorado River basin in this proposal.
California will get its allotment increased from 4.4 MAF to 6.4 MAF, all water coming from the new aqueduct.
Arizona will get its allotment increased from 2.8 MAF to 4.3 MAF, all from the new aqueduct.
Nevada will get its allotment increased from 0.3 MAF to 1.3 MAF, the increase will be taken from Lake Mead.
Mexico will get its allotment doubled, to 3.0 MAF. The Colorado river should again be reaching Baja California with a flow of 0.5 MAF. This may restore a modest fishery.
New Mexico will be allotted 1.0 MAF for high elevation irrigation from this new aquifer.
The aqueduct will supply California, Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico with water from the Mississippi river, much better suited for irrigation than the present water which is high in salinity.
This will reduce the outflow from the Hoover dam by 6.9 MAF, and the new aqueduct will supply 10.4 MAF downstream from Lake Mead.. With this reduction in outflow Lake Mead will recover quite well.
When the Hoover dam is near full pool, we should start using it as a peak power supplier by pumping water back from Lake Mohave to Lake Mead during off peak demand.
If there ever was a project worthy of consideration in the Infrastructure bill, this is it. Look what it does:
Saves Lake Mead from being emptied and secures its refilling over time.
The 22 LFTR plants in Texas and New Mexico will provide up to 8 GW of peak power for 5 hours a day, and all 11 GW of power can be commandeered for emergency use for a week.
The downstream dams in Arizona will provide up to 6 GW of peak power.
Once the project is finished, the Hoover dam is converted to a peak power storage with 2 GW peak power available.
the addition of 10.4 MAF water will add 40% to the water supply for over 40 million people.
The Mississippi water is better suited for irrigation than Colorado River water due to much less salinity.
By increasing irrigation by at least 3.5 MAF it will provide a 40% increase in food production from the greater imperial valley and a 40% increase in food production from Mexico.
The electric energy generated by the Nuclear power plants is all carbon free, and because of the peak power generated on the downhill leg, we can build another 19 GW peak power of renewable wind and solar generators. This will allow us to retire 19 GW of Coal fired power plants once the aqueduct is completed
The new name for this canal would be the Transcontinental Aqueduct.
Acts 19:23-41. The tradesmen of Ephesus, who made souvenirs in the form of shrines and idols of silver considered Paul and the many believers bad for business. After all,Ephesus was the idol worship center of Artemis (Diana). This led to the riot at Ephesus.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 