[HN Gopher] Panama Canal Draught Restrictions Spark Liner Surcha... ___________________________________________________________________ Panama Canal Draught Restrictions Spark Liner Surcharges Author : Stratoscope Score : 25 points Date : 2023-08-08 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (gcaptain.com) (TXT) w3m dump (gcaptain.com) | version_five wrote: | Wikipedia says this about the northwest passage: | Therefore, the Canadian commercial marine transport industry does | not anticipate the route as a viable alternative to the Panama | Canal within the next 10 to 20 years (as of 2004). | | Curious if there is an update. Seems a no brainier for Canadian | sovereignty to invest in this, so I expect we won't. | icegreentea2 wrote: | What type of investment did you have to mind? Investments to | boost commercial viability? Or improvements to boost Canadian | sovereignty claims? | grecy wrote: | A friend is sailing it right now. There is still a good deal of | ice. It's almost a certainty to open every year now, but only | for 1-8 weeks, then it's blocked by ice again. | | 20 years ago there was no guarantee it would open at all during | the summer. | sp332 wrote: | There are some extremely sensitive habitats up north. A spill | could be a disaster for some endangered species. | version_five wrote: | That's really a throw away answer. Is there something | concrete you want to share? As written it just sounds like a | lazy excuse for not engaging with something, which could have | been done by not commenting. I don't understand what the | point of even writing it was. | stickfigure wrote: | For anyone interested in how the new (bigger) locks use less | water than the old locks (reclaiming 60% of the water - without | pumps!), this old Practical Engineering video explains with | diagrams: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBvclVcesEE | | They store the water in a series of basins at different levels, | and use those basins to fill the portion of the lock below. It's | more obvious with diagrams. | daveslash wrote: | Glad I read the article. At first I ( _naively_ ) thought _" why? | just pump more seawater?"_ But according to the article " _it | takes around 50 million gallons of fresh water to move a ship | through a lock. The panamax locks lose more fresh water than the | neo-panamax locks, which have a recovery system that can reclaim | 60% of the water_ " -- A spot check on the maps shows Gatun Lake | (freshwater) in the center of the isthmus. Wikipedia says it is | fresh, but human made. | | Is anyone aware of the reason for creating the interior of the | canal as a freshwater passage, as opposed to just mixing ocean | water willy-nilly? Such mixing of water would probably not pass | current environmental concerns (with good reason), but curious | what the reasoning was from a 1913 perspective? | dragonwriter wrote: | FTA: "...the canal and the lakes and rivers that make up its | watershed, which also provides fresh water to three cities, | including the capital." | | Presumably, "people actually need to live in the area, and | cannot drink salt water" was a factor. | iancmceachern wrote: | It's because the Panama canal was constructed by connecting | several previously naturally existing (fresh) waterways and a | big lake, to the ocean on both side. The whole point of the | locks is to raise and lower the ships to the higher elevation | at which the lake sits. Water runs downhill, it starts as | rain, then to rivers and lakes, then the ocean. So in this | case rain and natural watershed basins drain into the lake | and then the locks release it slowly down to progressively | fill each lock, until the water is at the ocean, at which | point it can't efficiently be separated from the seawater, so | it just becomes part of the ocean. | | The people there drink the fresh water and chose to settle in | that area originally because ot was there. We then built a | canal after. It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a | water source for the local folks. | dragonwriter wrote: | > It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a water | source for the local folks. | | Right, I am saying that the effect it would have on the | existing water source is a probably a factor in why "allow | more free mixing of saltwater / pump more seawater to deal | with drought conditions impacts on the canal" is not done. | | Not that the Canal was built as a water supply. | michael1999 wrote: | From the article: "This was to reduce salination of the | freshwater in the canal and the lakes and rivers that make up | its watershed, which also provides fresh water to three cities, | including the capital." | | Panama City is pretty thirsty. | jrvarela56 wrote: | This is how they made the lake: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatun_Dam | | I'm assuming flooding the other way around was more expensive | than creating a fresh water reservoir by building a dam. | pseingatl wrote: | One of the reasons was to control the Chagres River. The | creation of Gatun Lake created a freshwater reservoir higher | than sea level. Vessels enter the Canal, climb up to the level | of the Lake and are dropped back down to sea level. I have to | wonder if the third set of locks (what I think they're calling | Neo-Panamax locks) uses more water than the original 110 x 1000 | locks. There must be a way to recycle water for use in Panama | City and Colon. It's not practicable to re-use the water for | canal operations because the water would have to be raised back | up to the level of Gatun Lake and it would take an enormous | amount of energy to do so. As I recall, spillage from canal | operations was never used to generate electricity, but that | might no longer be the case. | kgermino wrote: | Salinity issues aside, in my understanding locks generally | don't pump water at all: they work entirely on gravity. In | effect this means that a burst of water flows downstream every | time the lock is cycled. | pseingatl wrote: | Correct. | iancmceachern wrote: | Exactly, they basically harness the natural water cycle (rain | to watersheds to waterways to ocean). | | The one exception is with these new locks, I bet they pump a | bunch of the water back now instead of releasing it, that's | how I expect they get the 60%. | Animats wrote: | Nope, it's not pumped. It's a clever system where there are | several storage basins at different levels.[1] | | In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a nuclear reactor mounted | on a ship to provide power for the Panama Canal. This | reduced water loss via the hydroelectric plant at Gatun | Dam, leaving more water for the locks.[2] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_pr | oject... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A | iancmceachern wrote: | Truly incredible, thank you! | lokar wrote: | Much of the route is pre-existing river and lake, the whole | thing is an extension of a watershed. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-08 23:00 UTC)