Anyone ever thought about generating power by allowing seawater to flood Death Valley via pipes?

There is far more energy available in Tidal flows than the proposed project.
The generating capacity is limitless, and the costs not prohibitive compared to the constant free energy return.........

Would it not end up something like the dead sea?
Isn't that to do with large amounts of salt?

any one who did have such thoughts should have considered :

1 - the destruction of a national park

2 - the fact that water would have to be pumped over the rocky mountains - or a very expensive tunnel bored

the " carbon footprint " of the scheme would be huge - and it would take decades to recoop the energy expenditure

I thought Death Valley did not have much life in it with temperatures exceeding 120 to 130 or higher I thought.

As far as other concerns, I threw the idea out here in the chit chat section just wondering about it.

Obviously there are other less expensive methods of generating power. The only other benefits to costs to explore were mining benefits or maybe ecosystem benefits.

A new large inland sea full of life providing fishing and other benefits could be of much more use than an extremely hot lifeless desert. However as discussed many ideas are not necessarily very practical. Maybe it's not practical in Death Valley but elsewhere, I'm not sure. Mining the ocean if the costs were low enough could be practical. Maybe you could even create a large fresh water runoff if you collected some of the evaporated water by having it collect and run off on an overhead plastic plate. I do not know if there is a roll out system of collecting or directing water condensed from large areas of evaporated water. I was just thinking if an overhead layer of plastic could both heat the water underneath while also serving as a condensation platform to direct fresh water away, you could speed up the process and collect fresh water at the same time. This might be another big impractical idea.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

I have considered the national park. Here's my question for you. What kinds of animal that is so important to the whole ecosystem, that if removed, it would cause the death of everything? More or less. If it's so important, please provide a list so I may use it to think around the problem. Thank you.

So making a man-made canal is a bad thing? Perhaps. How expensive is it to dig a river sized canal anyway? Perhaps we should be asking what's the least expensive way to put water into death valley. I'll get back to you on that.

Besides, we have decades. Humanity has decades.

I have an idea. How about a canal or pipeline that's connected to death valley, but with an added dam? This dam can be the gateway that opens or closes the water gate. That way if the valley floods, we can just close it and wait until it evaporates. The vapors can easily be turned into rain later. That leave us with the salt. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you with a solution. We will have to build a container or layer of something that contains the sea water. Once the sea water are all gone, we will have salt. A mountain perhaps. We can move that salt away. But leaves us with a bigger question. What do we do with all the salt? Easy, building materials. With a huge amount of salt, we can create salt bricks. Salt traps heat, so building a house made out of salt would be great for real estate. And it's probably cheaper too. I know, we can get salt anywhere. But it's an option. The other option would be spice. What do you think?

originally posted by: Aliensun
reply to post by orionthehunter

 

Then, when the water rose the 282 that is currently below sea level to be at sea level...what?

Water seeks its own level. (Then it stops seeking.)

You forget evaporation and the microclimate the clouds that form from said evaporation would create. Basically, the idea could work and actually contribute rainfall to the surrounding area.

The downside would be an increasingly saline lake.

a reply to: OverseerOfBrokeworks

i appologies - i am not sure i understand the question - i view the value of a national park as a whole - the geology , geography , biosphere etc etc etc - a national park does not revolve around one animal or plant species

man made canals can be both a boon and curse - the problem is that building one from any ocean to death valley is a monumental undertaking - loook at a topo map to appreciate this