New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

Post by 0xFF0123 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 8:31 AM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #136

ashdksnndck wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use fat pipes that go a decent distance from shore, diluting your brine with ocean water, you’ll have a negligible impact on the ocean. The problem is if you dump lots of brine in shallow waters. Old designs did have that flaw, but it’s not that difficult to design around this constraint now that we know about it. IMO this is an issue where NIMBYs are using environmental concerns as a smokescreen to block new…

Yeah. Worrying about salt in the sea is like worrying about oxygen in the air. Can too much oxygen in the air sometimes be a problem? Yeah, in some corner cases. Is it a major problem that we can't solve? Not at all.

Post by yorwba » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 8:46 AM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #159

redsocksfan45 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Japan does do their own enrichment, 150k SWUs at Rokkasho with plans to bring that up to 500k SWUs a year soon. If they chose to make.bombs instead of fuel, they could make dozens a year.

That's the dormant plant. Rokkasho-mura plant is officially incomplete for decades, doing tests and upgrades without actual production. If you think otherwise and you're not wrong, and I think you ARE not mistaken since this isn't the first time someone other than myself mentioned it here, that means they're making bombs because we in Japanese public aren't told about it. There has only been just some routine comment…

Post by kijin » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:05 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #144

kijin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, just package it up and eat it instead of digging underground and creating more pollution. It's not every day that industrial waste happens to be not only edible but also tasty. Too tasty, in fact. Salt is addictive.

It’s not going to be pure NaCl though; making Morton salt with it would make sense only if it wouldn’t cost more to process it (net of its resale value) than just disposing of it somewhere not particularly sensitive. I’d propose the Utah salt flats or indeed, kinda love the idea of just sticking them in a salt mine that is all tapped out. If it used to be chock full of salt it seems pretty environmentally fair to mak…

Post by Laurel1234 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:27 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #165

I believe the most efficient method to turn "ocean water into drinking water" is called "rain". We just need to better collect and transport the output of what is effectively the world's biggest solar-powered desalinator.

Post by rplnt » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

bilsbie wrote: post #42

kaonwarb wrote: post #3

This reads like hyperbole: > The brine byproduct wreaks havoc on sea life when it’s deposited back into the ocean by raising the salt level and lowering oxygen in the water. Managing return of concentrated brine should be entirely tractable in the literal ocean.

The brine thing is just a way to shut down conversation and let people feel superior for claiming there are no solutions to our problems except to reduce our standard of living. It’s obvious you can safely put salt back into the ocean with enough dilution. I bet a middle schooler could design a system to do it.