The World's First Osmotic Power Plant 262
ElectricSteve writes "Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway officially opened the world's first osmotic power plant prototype on November 24. The prototype has a limited production capacity and will be used primarily for testing and data validation, leading to the construction of a commercial power plant in a few years time. Statkraft claims that the technology has the global potential to generate clean, renewable energy equivalent to China's total electricity consumption in 2002 or half of the EU's total power production" What's osmotic power? Wikipedia to the rescue!
Desalination (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Desalination (Score:5, Funny)
I would advise against that kind of project. You'd get arrested for breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:5, Funny)
The power plant is at the ocean next to a river.
The river's fresh water runs into the ocean as it is. That's just how nature works. All this is doing is diverting some of the water into the power plant and mixing the water there. What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:3, Funny)
Don't worry, we'll use the power produced to run desalination plants.
What? thermody-whati-namics?
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:5, Funny)
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
Typical short-sightedness. We're going to use up all our gravity, and then we'll float off into space! We've got to shut down this plant fast!
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:4, Funny)
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
What ever will we do if we deplete the world's supply of gravity. Sure, this scheme might solve problems now, but in thirty years our children will have to deal with global floating.
Oh man, Starcraft?! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh wait, Statkraft? Gosh, I thought they were talking about something important for a moment there.
Re:Oh man, Starcraft?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Some numbers... I think it might work! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score:2, Funny)
If it weren't for the U.S. authorities clever detective work we'd a had another 9/11 [wikipedia.org] on our hands.
Slartibartfast was a genius (Score:3, Funny)
This is all being built next to Oslo's Fjords....
No wonder Slartibartfast won an award for them!
Re:Impact (Score:5, Funny)
except where boats need to enter/exit riverways, and for that matter fish.
... you _should_ think of the fish ... they have children, too
Or the bees (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, I'd rather think of the bees, but then there are already too many sons of a bee ;)