There Were Dolphins Or Porpoises Off The Esplanade In Greenock Last Night - Or Maybe Nessie On Holiday

Boxing Day Swim 🏊 - High tide, Force 7 High Winds Near Gale - David, Ernie and I didn't go far. We went up The Esplanade for around 100m the went towards the MOD slip and then back. We were in for around 12 minutes. The squalls and spray when you in the water are exciting. Water temperature 8.2degC (at The Royal West of Scotland Boat Club)

Lovely day - very calm 2 hours before high tide. I did a non wetsuit swim on my own. 675m in 18:24 water temperature 8.6 degC #inverclyde #rwsabc #openwaterswimming #greenock #scotland #theesplanade #clouds (at The Royal West of Scotland Boat Club)

These are the Group Photos from the New Year’s Day Swim at RWSABC in Greenock.  24 of use went into the water to get wet.  The majority went for a 5 to 10 minute swim.  Gerry Malone, Ernie Currie and Colin Campbell went for the “normal” 2 km swim.  Conditions were rough with a north wind making it bouncy. 

Swam with Stacey from Rosneath Slip (1st slip) bang on high tide. There was a south east breeze creating a reasonable swell. Swam to the yellow pole and then back towards the beach. Stacey exited the water at Rosneath Slip (1200m 42m) and I continued to the Boat Club (1675m 53:33) Water Temperature 13.5 degC #esplanade #inverclyde #greenock #rwsabc #openwaterswimming (at Royal West of Scotland Amateur Boat Club)

Geo-engineering with Nuclear Power - Biorock

Geo-engineering to me means man as a species doing something to change the whole world.  It is of interest because it has been suggested that perhaps we could use geo-engineering to either mitigate or delay the impacts of climate change caused by our proliferate use of fossil fuels.  Proposals range from the simple such as painting all roofs white to reduce the earth's albedo. To the grandiose of deploying large mirrors in space to reduce the the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth.  

In this blog I wish to suggest nuclear power be used to undertake geo-engineering.  I would like to think the proposal contained in this blog is at the simpler end of the geo-engineering scale.  The proposal is to use a nuclear reactor to produce electricity that in turn would power Biorock coral reef growth and restoration.  From Wikipedia - "Biorock, also known as Seacrete or Seament, is a trademark name used by Biorock, Inc. to refer to the substance formed by electro-accumulation of minerals dissolved in seawater."  The nuclear power plant (NPP) would be the source of the electricity in this process.

In this proposal, a NPP would be located near the coast and provide electricity for the electro-accumulation.  The wikipedia article suggests "that one kilowatt hour of electricity will result in the accretion of about 0.4 to 1.5 kg (0.9 to 3.3 lb) of biorock, depending on various parameters such as depth, electrical current, salinity and water temperature."  The main components of biorock are mainly calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide, again as provided by the Wikipedia article.

The chemical formula for limestone, a major component of biorock is Calcium Carbonate (CaC03).  Therefore one mole of CaCO3 weights (40g + 12g + 3*16g) = 100g.  I don't know the typical ratio of calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide in biorock but let me guess it is 50% calcium carbonate and 50% magnesium hydroxide.  Assume that  1 kw-hr of electricity will produce 0.4 kg of biorock which converts to 0.2 kg Calcium Carbonate.  Therefore each 0.2 kg of Calcium Carbonate contains 24g of Carbon (Chemical symbol "C").

Now assume we build a NuScale SMR which has a nominal output of 45Mw electric with 90% availabilty and  typical carbon lifecycle output of 16g CO2 per kw-hr which converts to 4.4g Carbon per kw-hr (4.4g = 16g *12/44).  Therefore each kw-hr of electricity can remove 19.6g (24g - 4.4g = 19.6g) of Carbon from seawater.  The NuScale reactor produces 45,000 * 0.9 = 40,500 kw electric over the life of the reactor.  Therefore each year a NuScale reactor would remove (40,500 * 24 * 365)kw-hr * 19.6 g per kw-hr = around 7,000,000,000 grams or 7 million kg or 7000 tonnes of carbon per year.  It is also expected that the new or repaired reefs will sequester further Calcium Carbonate by biologic means as corals reestablish 

Is this worth doing?  It turns out that according to Tesco the average British person has a carbon footprint of 15 tonnes of CO2 (around 4 tonnes carbon per year).  Therefore, 1 NuScale plant will offset the carbon emissions of 1750 people.  On this basis this doesn't seem a very sensible idea.  That seems to me to be a large effort to offset the emission of 1750 Brits or 0.003% of the population.  This shows just how hard it is to remove carbon from the world once we have dumped it by burning fossil fuels.

On the other hand some low lying topical islands might consider this a reasonable idea if it were to make their communities less vulnerable to storm surges or rising sea levels.  The NuScale reactor would allow the production of around, 40,500 * 24 * 365 * 0.4 / 1000 = 141,912 tonnes of biorock per year.  The typical density of limestone is around 2.5 tonnes per cubic metre.  I will assume that biorock has the same density. Therefore, the NuScale reactor would allow around 56,000 cubic metres of biorock to be produced in a year. If the biorock were grown in a strip 100m wide and 1m thick each year around 560m of coastline could be protected.  

The above is a very simple calculation with simple assumptions.  I recognise that the above has not considered the carbon input required for the metal used to make the initial structure.  It is my understanding that the biorock process can continue for many years as the biorock accumulates.  There are probably other carbon inputs that I have missed. On the other hand some of the assumptions above are conservative.  Two conservative assumptions are the production of biorock per kw-hr and the availability factor of 0.9 for the NuScale reactor.  Both numbers could well be larger. 

The next time I write about geo-engineering with nuclear power I will look at biochar.

Have a nice day.

It looks like there was lido in Dunoon at one point. This is an old poster, part of a display in Gourock Station. #lido #Gourock #swimming #dunoon (at Gourock railway station)

Dome City Blog 1 - An idea for higher density cities

I have been thinking a lot about what we need for new housing and cities. I have been thinking about this for a number of reasons. One reason is that the UK is critically short of housing.  The government and others are keen to see a large number of new homes built.  Personally I support this idea. Another reason was my recent visit to Changchun, China.  This is a very large city by UK standards.  The greater metro area has a population of 7.6 million while the city itself has a population of 3.9 million based on 2010 data.  That was the 5th tiime I’ve been to Changchun and I always enjoy my time there.  However, I think this is a city ruined by the car. I like to walk or cycle whenever I can.  Modern cities, for the most part, make this difficult and unpleasant.  It is difficult because of the distances involved and it is unpleasant because cars and pedestrians/cyclists don’t mix so well. In brief here is the questions I am thinking about and some of the answers that I am arriving at. What if we built a city that was housed in a geodesic dome with a diameter of 1km at the base?  A geodesic dome has the shape of a half-sphere.  It was popopularizedy R. Buckminster Fuller.  I have chosen this structural form because I understand that it is very efficient from a structural engineering point of view. I have some simple back of the envelope type calculations to see how many people this city in a dome could house.  Assume that we made the thickness of the floors separating levels as 1.5m (5 feet) and that we had clear space of 9m (29.5 feet) between levels.  This would provide 48 levels for constructing our city.   The land area at the base of this dome is 0.785 square kilometers (194 acres, 78.5 hectares).  With the 48 levels as described above the land area available within the dome is 25.3 square kilometers (6250 acres, 2530 hectares).   The population density of the the dome were the same as New York City at 27,778 people per square mile (10,716 people per square km) then it could house 271,000 people.  With a lower density of say, 10,000 people per square mile  (3860 people per square km) then it could house 97,700 people.  This lower population density figure of 10000 people per square mile is the almost the same value as for population densities of Miami,Florida and Birmingham, England.   I would suggest that there should be a significant green belt around this dome city.  I would like to suggest at least 500m of park and wild lands around the base (excepting transport links). I will continue these ideas in my next blog. Dome City - Blog 1 5 October 2014 Joe Heffernan

A boring photo of the beach before today's swim. However, it was a great swim. Lowish tide coming in. Stacey Hearl, Campbell McCall and I swam 1 mile. It took us 18 minutes to the turn around and then 33 minutes coming back. Aren't tides wonderful? Water temperature 13.6 degC #scotland #inverclyde #rwsabc #openwaterswimming #greenock #theesplanade (at The Royal West of Scotland Boat Club)

Tonight was the first night of Open Water Swimming at RWSABC. A beautiful evening with sun, clear sky and no wind. We swam in the direction of the Battery Park. The tide was coming in so it was a hard swim out (35 min) but fast (15 min) coming back.😊

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

The place I would most like to visit is Patagonia.