science – Page 19 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

The Transcontinental Aqueduct. Leg 5: East of Sweetwater dam (to be constructed) to Grassland Canyon Lake (to be made), a distance of 50 miles.

The fourth stage was from North of Baird dams (to be constructed) to East of Sweetwater dam (to be constructed

The elevation at the East of Sweetwater dam is 2450 feet. From the East of Sweetwater dam to the Grasslands Canyon Lake the distance is 50 miles . The Grasslands Canyon lake will top out at 2800 feet with maximum water level at 2790 feet. The total lift of the water in stage 5 is (2790 – 2450 + 50×2.2) feet = 450 ft. To lift 26,000 cubic feet per second 450 feet requires ten 100 MW LFTR nuclear reactors. The EGrasslands Canyon Lake will contain about 110,000 Acre-ft when full, more than two days worth of storage. For 5 hours per day these ten reactors can provide 1.0 GW of peak power to the grid.

The Transcontinental Aqueduct. Leg 4: North of Baird dams (to be built) to East of Sweetwater dam (to be built), a distance of 60 miles.

The third stage was from Brad lake to North of Baird dams (to be constructed).

The elevation at the upper North of Baird dam is 1830 feet. From 19.5 miles ENE of Abilene to the East of Sweetwater dam the distance is 60 miles . The East of Sweetwater dam will top out at 2460 feet with maximum water level at 2450 feet. The total lift of the water in stage 4 is (2450 – 1860 + 60×2.2) feet = 702 ft. To lift 26,000 cubic feet per second 700 feet requires fifteen 100 MW LFTR nuclear reactors The East of Sweetwater dam will contain about 100,000 Acre-ft when full, about two days worth of storage. For 5 hours per day these 15 reactors can provide 1.5 GW of peak power to the grid.

The Transcontinental Aqueduct. Leg 3: Brad reservoir (to be built) to North of Baird dams. (to be constructed), a distance of 60 miles.

The second stage of the aqueduct went from Aquilla Lake to Brad Lake.

The elevation at Brad reservoir is 1370 feet. From 25 miles East of Breckenridge the aqueduct goes W to 19.5 miles ENE of Abilene, a distance of 60 miles . The dam yet to be built will top out at 1840 feet with maximum water level at 1830 feet. The total lift of the water in stage 3 is (1830 – 1370 + 60×2.2) feet = 592 ft. To lift 26,000 cubic feet per second 592 feet requires twelve 100 MW LFTR nuclear reactors The upper Baird reservoir will contain about 90,000 Acre-ft when full, about two days worth of storage. For 5 hours per day these twelve 100 MW reactors can provide 1 GW of peak power to the grid. There will be a lower dam to provide hydroelectric power storage of 4 GWh, of 800 MW for 5 hours, after which the lower dam will be re-emptied by pumping back the water to the upper dam, hopefully using surplus wind-power.

And this is what a hydroelectric power storage unit looks like:

The Transcontinental Aqueduct, Leg 2: Aquilla lake to Brad reservoir (to be built), a distance of 100 miles.

The first stage of the aqueduct was from the Mississippi river diversion to Lake Aquilla:

The elevation at this lake is 548 feet. From here the aqueduct goes NW to 25 miles East of Breckenridge. It crosses the Brazos river and then goes through the Squaw Creek reservoir. This reservoir is built to provide cooling water for a nuclear power plant. The aqueduct will provide extra water in case of extreme drought. The end of Stage 2 is a dam, located just south of the Brad Cemetery on U.S. route 180, 25 miles East of Breckenridge. The dam, yet to be built will top out at 1380 feet with maximum water level at 1370 feet. The total lift of the water in stage 2 is (1370 – 548 + 100×2.2) feet = 1062 ft. To lift 26,500 cubic feet per second 1062 feet requires twenty-three 100 MW LFTR nuclear reactors. Lake Brad will contain about 90,000 Acre-ft when full, about two day’s worth of storage. For 5 hours per day these 23 reactors can provide 2.3 GW of peak power to the grid. (The power can also be provided by wind power, during which time the LFTR’s can make hydrogen for extra peak power storage).

The Transcontinental Aqueduct. Leg 1: Atchafalaya river (Mississippi river bypass) to Aquilla lake, a distance of 360 miles.

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 canal. The elevation at the starting point is 7 feet, and the dam and 32 desilting basins of size 300 x 600 feet with a depth of 20 feet will be located in the upper part of the never used West Atchafalaya Floodway. From there the water will be collected and the aqueduct will start going westward.

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 the river.

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 at least 30 feet. The river runs by gravity until it has sunk about 15 feet which is about 6.2 miles downstream. Since endpoint is at 548 feet elevation this requires lifting the water about 1300 feet. During the course of the path the aqueduct crosses the Sabine River south of the Toledo Bend Reservoir, going through Richland-Chambers reservoir and Navarro Mills lake; following the best climb it crosses the Neches River and the Trinity River following the geologically best way until it reaches Aquilla Lake. The aqueduct is quite substantial, it will carry about 80% more water than the All American Canal, seen below under construction. This canal has a drop of about 2.2 feet per mile to accommodate maximum flow.

Pumping 26,500 cfs water through the aqueduct requires 3 Gigawatts of power when rounding up for turbine losses. This can be accomplished by thirty 100 MW LFTR reactors, also being able to provide up to 3 GW of peak power for 5 hours/day on demand.

The end point for stage 1 of the channel is Aquilla lake, elevation 548 feet. It has a storage capacity of 100,000 acre-ft, about a day’s worth of storage.

Lake Oroville going dry, but why?

Once full was the Oroville Lake.

Now empty. How much does it take?

No pumped power galore

for the windmills to store.

Blame Climate change, not your mistake.

In 2016 then Governor Jerry Brown declared that California was in a permanent state of drought, so they might as well atart to prepare for water rationing.

The Lake Oroville Dam had a large crack in its spillway, and it was part of the regular maintenance to fix it, but since they were in a permanent drought the lake would never again be full, so there was no need, and certainly no hurry to fix it. Then in 1917 it started to rain again, the lake started to overflow, and instead of a less than 20 million maintenance task it became an over 1 Billion dollar rescue effort with helicopters trying to dump stones in the eroded parts of the dam

That was in early 2017. then in early 2019 it was full again, and with proper conservation measures there was enough water for 5 to 7 years with normal rainfalls from then on, so not to worry. Look where the lake levels are now:

Lake Oroville water level 8 8 639.67 feet

power. But that is not allSince today’s level is below the intake for hydro-power there will be no power from Oroville dam until spring melting season, thus depraving California about 440 MW of power. But that is not all, it also eliminates Oroville Dam of 117 MW power as a Hydro-power storage “battery” for excess wind power, so more wind turbines will have to be shut off when the wind is blowing since there are no customers for excess power. On the other hand, when the wind is not blowing it will have to be replaced by coal or natural gas, which are in insufficient supply. The future is full of brownouts, and rotating blackouts.

This is how the Oroville Lake looks now:

What is most galling is that of the water released in March of this year, before farmers really started to use water, 91% of the released water went into the San Francisco Bay to save the Delta Smelt, a totally useless fish, but protected. For the moment I can not think of a more inept way to run a water and energy business.

The Delta variant of the Covid-19 pandemic is much less deadly. Time to go back to normal life.

U.S. COVID-19 deaths 2020-21 by age (year)

– 30% of all deaths occurred over the age of 85

– 80% of all deaths occurred over the age of 65

– Only 15% of the U.S. population is over the age of 65

0.02% of all deaths occurred under the age of 2, too young to get vaccine

0.05% of all deaths occurred between the ages of 2 and 18, school age

0.15% of all deaths occurred between the ages of 19 and 25, college age

3.6% of all deaths occurred between the ages of 26 and 45

(Source: CDC – just updated: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/AH-Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Age-in-Yea/3apk-4u4f )

From this CDC data I can safely conclude that it makes no sense to vaccinate school children or even college students unless they are in a high risk category and still able to take the vaccine. Even people 26 to 45 year olds should only take the vaccine if in a high risk group. For people 46 to 65 year olds the odds are that vaccine helps, and for people over 65 it should be given to all that can still take the vaccine.

The so called delta variant of Covid-19 is much more contagious, but ear loop masks are nearly useless to stop the spread. It is also much less deadly, and the European experience proves it. This is the chart from United Kingdom:

Great Britain data Feb 2020 to July 30 2021

We can see from this chart that the first wave of Covid-19 was eight times as deadly as the second wave. Now the third wave, the Delta virus wave is one tenth as deadly as the second wave. United Kingdom has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe:

How does this compare with new Covid Cases for the least vaccinated countries in Europe?

This is interesting. The countries with the least number people vaccinated shows no third wave in Coronavirus cases. It seems mostly confined to vaccinated people. The good thing is, that the vaccinated people get a very mild case, more like the common cold.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party Military in Wuhan is continuing their gain of function research in the Wuhan Lab, or else they would have welcomed an inspection of the lab to make certain this will never happen again. They have by no means developed the most efficient bio-weapon yet, so it behooves us to work to find alternate cures to what may yet come. So far HydroxyChloroQuine has shown great promise, if taken early in conjunction with Zinc (and Vitamin D) has been proven effective in countries too poor to use patent medicines. Even though they have a much inferior health system, they showed initially a much lower death rate. Now Ivermectin seems to be even more effective both as a prophylactic or as an early treatment. Remdisivir is approved and shoren hospital stays. Israel is trying out many new medicines, trying to stay ahead in this bio-warfare. What is our NIH and CDC doing? By the way, thanks for the data.

The evil of human trafficking. This includes biological warfare.

Today is the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons day.

The evil that is occurring with human trafficking cannot be overstated. Besides sexual exploitation till total destruction and death, yes, the life of a sex-slave can sometimes be as short as four to five years after initial transaction, all the time they are abused, they can be carriers of diseases, some nearly impossible to cure.

Today it struck me; it is even worse than we feared. Let me explain.

God is in the healing business. He does not want anyone to perish, but be saved. This is not only spiritually, but also physically. Through the ages, we have learnt that certain behavior is not good for you, one of which is illicit sexual encounters, it spreads diseases, some of which may be deadly. God’s idea from the beginning was, one man, one woman, one lifetime. Being humans, we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, this includes much more than spreading sexual diseases, this was just one example.

Throughout history there has been medical nurses and doctors that wanted to cure people from disease, finding one cure after another, developing vaccines, making wonderful medical equipment to do better diagnoses, better and safer surgeries and finding more cures. And so, finding out that one has cancer is not an automatic death sentence anymore, many cancers are now completely curable.

And then there are NIH and CDC. Their goal is not primarily to cure you but to create a controllable dependency, thus creating a reliable revenue stream for he medical establishment. This sounds harsh, but watching their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has convinced me this is their ultimate goal, not the overall welfare of the patient.

But it is getting worse, The Covid-19 virus is not a virus that occurs naturally, it is an engineered virus through genetic manipulation to make it transmissible from human to human, also known as gain of function research. U.S. used to do such research, but it was stopped in 2015 because of its inherent danger should the virus escape from the lab. Dr Fauci participated in this research and defended its use for defensive purposes to have a defense against biological warfare. In 2017, ten days before Trump took office, then president Obama lifted the ban and allowed defensive research to resume. Dr Fauci then teamed up with the Wuhan lab and gave them a grant of 3.5 million dollars via a third party. The Wuhan lab was then controlled by the Chinese Communist Military. They did the offensive biological weapons development, and U.S. developed countermeasures. What could go wrong? In 2017 Dr. Fauci even cryptically mentioned that President Trump would encounter a surprise worldwide epidemic during his term in office. Then in 2019 the unthinkable happened, and that is where we are now.

The medical establishment is run by CDC and NIH and they are in charge of our response to the Covid-19 outbreak. But medical care is a matter for each state, so there will be differences how it is approached. President Trump decided to answer the pandemic with “Operation Warpspeed” and develop a vaccine in less than 8 months. Lucky for him Fr Fauci had the response ready. In conjunction with Moderna they had a proposed vaccine ready to be tested in 2 days, thanks to the defensive research conducted already in the Wuhan lab. So NIH owns one half of the Covid-19 vaccine patent, Moderna owns the other half. Operation warpspeed guaranteed that the U.S would buy millions of doses even if the vaccine didn’t work, so it was off to the races. Pfizer had a similar vaccine under development, and Johnson and Johnson took a couple of months more to develop a more conventional vaccine. This suited the CDC well, a solution to Covid-19 and a solid revenue stream.

But there were poorer countries out there, countries that could not afford to spend billions of dollars to develop vaccines, so they resorted to old, known medications, such as Hydroxychloroquine. The result, when applied early, together with Zinc and Azithromycine had remarkable results. Their death rates were less than half that of the rich countries, even when adjusted for age and other diseases. The Front-line Doctors held a news conference touting the benefits of this treatment, and in less than a day it was seen by over 20 million people. Then it was taken off you-tube and other social media and labeled misinformation. Even Fox News Don Cavuto produced a medical doctor that claimed if you took it YOU WILL DIE! Never mind it has been given for over fifty years against Malaria, and is given for years to people with lupus, even pregnant women and nursing mothers. No, the problem with HCQ is that it is generic, so there in no money in it any more. Another medication that has proven very successful in India is Ivermectin. It can be bought at Tractor Supply as a horse cure against parasitic invasions. It was in India the Delta-variant first occured, and in areas where it has been applied such as in the Delhi area new cases are down 97% already.

It seems to me, not being a medical doctor, that the obvious solution is to approve both HCQ and Ivermectin both for prophylactic use and as an early cure, and not enforce vaccines to anyone under 45 years of age, except the vulnerable population of course. This way we can return to sanity, masks hinder child development and causes all kinds of stress for the rest of us.

What has this to do with human trafficking? This is just the point. The Wuhan lab is in full operation, developing new and more deadly viruses ready to be released when the time is right for them in their long term biological warfare plans. They already provide us with the world supply of fentanol, the smugglers of which provide a perfect delivery vehicle. No, it is not the normal people crossing the border by the millions that are the problem, even though they are often physically and sexually abused even before getting here, it is the smugglers that smuggle both drugs and humans and are not even tracked by the border agents. They are the ideal “soldiers” in the new warfare, no longer governed by conventional weapons or even guerilla warfare, but by the drug cartels in conjunction with China that are the biggest threat.

The Transcontinental Aqueduct; Will it pay for itself?

The goal of the Transcontinental Aqueduct is to save Lake Mead, save the American Southwest from becoming a desert, provide Hydroelectric peak storage for Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, provide sweet Mississippi water for irrigation, provide water to the Colorado river so it again can reach the ocean, revitalize San Carlos lake, provide more and better drinking water to 30 million people, to name just a few benefits.

The cost is substantial. The biggest problem is that the aqueduct must be substantially completed at full capacity before any benefits from the water will materialize. The cost to bring the aqueduct to half capacity is 300.5 billion dollars in construction cost only. This includes the cost of half the pumps or generators needed for full capacity, but not the cost of the power plants. Add to this the cost of filling the aqueduct and the 11 dams. The aqueduct itself will contain 1 million acre-ft of water when filled, the 11 dams will contain about 800,000 acre-ft when half full. To pump 1.8 MAF an average of 5000 feet requires about 10 TWh, when losses are included. Th filling stage water will be pumped, using excess wind and solar power at bargain rates, about 4 c/kwh , the same as the LFTR will produce when fully installed. This is about 320 million dollars in “liquid investment” The electric cost of moving one acre-ft from the Mississippi to the Colorado River is 6 MWh. This power is initially bought from off-peak wind and solar power, but as the aqueduct is completed with true hydropower storage up more and more the power will be generated with 100 MW LFTR power plants, the hydropower storage will be filled with excess wind and solar power.

In short: assuming a 50 year amortization plan for the aqueduct, and money available at 2%, , it will cost 12.5 billion a year in capital cost to deliver 7.5 MAF water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado river or any point in between, or $1,670 per acre-ft. Add to that $240 for electricity and another $50 per acre-ft in overhead and maintenance, the cost will be $1960 per acre-ft

When the aqueduct is fully built up, it will cost $13.4 billion yearly in capital cost to deliver 14.5 MAF of water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado river or any point in between, or $ 925 per acre-ft. The other costs stay the same, so the total cost of water will be $ 1,215 per acre-ft.

I have not yet mentioned the other major benefit of the Transcontinental Aqueduct. If I wanted the lowest cost of water possible, I would have used the lower route, going through the Texas lowlands to El Paso before routing it through New Mexico and Arizona. I routed it through the high and dry parts of Texas and New Mexico, at extra altitude penalty. The intent is to provide Hydropower storage at select places. These places are ideal for wind and solar power, but they need to store the energy when the sun is not up or doesn’t shine, or the wind doesn’t blow. Right now that is provided by coal and natural gas. Conventional nuclear power is best for use as base power only, so this transcontinental aqueduct will provide up to 23 GW of pure hydropower storage for 5 hours a day, but the LFTR nuclear stations providing the energy pumping the water in the aqueduct will shut off the pumps for five hours a day, or when the need arises, and instead provide another 20 GW of virtual hydropower power.

These 43 GW of hydropower capacity will be as follows: Louisiana, 0.4 GW; Texas, 18,5 GW (right now, Texas has no hydropower storage, but plenty of wind power); New Mexico, 10.5 GW; Arizona 13.6 GW. In Addition, when the Transcontinental Aqueduct is fully built up, the Hoover dam can provide a true 2.2 GW hydrostorage poser by pumping water back from Lake Mojave, a 3 billion dollar existing proposal waiting to be realized once Lake Mead is saved.

The amount of installed hydroelectric power storage is:

U.S. operating hydroelectric pumped storage capacity

Most hydroelectric pumped storage was installed in the 70’s. Now natural gas plants provide most of the peak power. This aqueduct will double, triple the U.S. pumped peak storage if virtual peak storage is included. By being pumped from surplus wind and solar energy as well as nuclear energy it is true “Green power”. Some people like that.

Apocalypse in China. Two dams in inner Mongolia burst! Like catastrophic flooding in Europe, blame climate change first!

Two dams collapsed in the Hulunbuir proince on Sunday, July 18.

6,660 people were affected; 53,800 acres of farmland was flooded; 22 bridges, 124 culverts, and 15.6 kilometres of highway were destroyed….Casualties are unknown.

On July 20 was reported heavy rains in the Henan province caused flooding of the Yellow river and its tributaries. The yellow river normally does not even reach the ocean for 3 months of the year!

In Europe flooding occurred in at least 7 countries. It started with heavy rains in the beginning of July, some areas received 4 inches of rain, over three times the normal rainfall for all of July, then on July 14 fell another 4 inches. The dams were already full to the brim, so many areas were flooded.

Here is a very good summary of the events in Europe, and as you expected, climate change is blamed.

What did he mean by “We are now officially in the era of climate change.”

Europe and China have always had floods. In fact, casualties have gone down substantially in the last hundred and fifty years. Here is a chart from Europe:

Dams has always been important since the beginning of industrialization, first as water wheels to provide power, then with electricity the rivers were really exploited to provide hydroelectric power. Flood control was also important, and there is a trade-off, which is more important, electric power or flood prevention? To maximize electric output you want to have the dams filled to the brim at all times, for flood control you want to have the dams at half full, to always be ready to absorb the next rain. The problem is that in so doing the dams only produce 70% of maximum energy. To complicate matters, the last ten years there has been a large investment in wind and solar energy, and when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the hydro-electric power storage will have to fill in the gaps, if we are to have any clean energy at all times.

This was the case in Europe in July. The early rains had filled up the dams to within a foot of maximum, and there had not been any controlled releases to prepare for the additional rains expected. Bureaucrats hate to do controlled releases, they see billions of Kilowatt hours go to waste. The bureaucracy failed, these decisions must be made with no delay, but if politicians rather than technically competent people are to make the decisions, the time delays inherent in any bureaucracy will make disasters like these happen again and again.