from the where's-my-solar-freakin'-cirruswaterfontuseer? dept.
The Dirty Truth about Turning Seawater into Drinking Water:
As countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere struggle to find enough freshwater to meet demand, they're increasingly turned to the ocean. Desalination plants, located in 177 countries, can help turn seawater into freshwater. Unfortunately, these plants also produce a lot of waste—more waste, in fact, than water for people to drink.
A paper published Monday by United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment, and Health in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that desalination plants globally produce enough brine—a salty, chemical-laden byproduct—in a year to cover all of Florida in nearly a foot of it. That's a lot of brine.
In fact, the study concluded that for every liter of freshwater a plant produces, 0.4 gallons (1.5 liters) of brine are produced on average. For all the 15,906 plants around the world, that means 37.5 billion gallons (142 billion liters) of this salty-ass junk every day. Brine production in just four Middle Eastern countries—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—accounts for more than half of this.
[...] "Brine underflows deplete dissolved oxygen in the receiving waters," said lead author Edward Jones, who worked at the institute and is now at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, in a press release. "High salinity and reduced dissolved oxygen levels can have profound impacts on benthic organisms, which can translate into ecological effects observable throughout the food chain."
Whatever happened to the idea of towing icebergs to where water was needed?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:36PM (4 children)
You Say That Like It's A Bad Thing.
Perhaps I shouldn't have cranked "She's So Heavy" all the way up to eleven just now, seeing as how it's six-thirty in the morning.
What's yer take?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:46PM (1 child)
Do you like breathing?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:12PM
He likes pole smoking and salty sauces.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:47PM (1 child)
I thought that "duh" was the appropriate response. When you desalinate seawater, of course you're going to make fresh water and saltier water. If you store the brine in a lake you'll eventually make a "Sea Salt" factory (complete with microplastic particles...) If you concentrate the brine and eject it slowly into the sea, it will sink like the brine lakes found (just recently) at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and doubtless many other places yet to be discovered. Very few creatures are "brine adapted," though a few are.
I think the real problem is when a highly populous country (like Saudi Arabia) desalinates a massive amount of seawater in a relatively small body of water (like the Red Sea and/or Persian Gulf). In the larger oceans the brine could be effectively diluted, say mixed 1:50 with normal seawater, before discharge.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Thursday January 17 2019, @12:38AM
Don't you just love the unscientific bait in the lede?
So here is my brilliant plan: "only" produce one litre of fresh water for every fifty litres of seawater. That means you end up with 49 litres of brine (oooh... scary!) Pump that 49 litres of slightly salter water back into the ocean. Considering that sea water has an average salinity of 3.5% [wikipedia.org], your outflowing brine now has a salinity of 3.57%.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:40PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:43PM
"So long and thanks for all the fish", just took a more sinister turn.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:18PM (3 children)
everybody knows that aliens are stealing our water and that world governement is in collusion because they're trying to protect us from a alien invasion.
furthermore, water that rains from the sky is "biologically" charged, because it has fallen thru the magnetosphere and thus cannot be teleported to the vessel waiting to transport it off-world.
thus the requirement to create water from the oceans and the problem mentioned in the article is that the de-salinated water NEVER FINDS ITS WAY BACK in the ocean from whence it came from, leading to the over-salination of the oceans ...
^_^
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:50PM (2 children)
funny thing is, most sheepple will 100% believe crap like this before even considering it's globalized capitalism the culprit of contamination, of sea and air, global warming, insect and mammal die off...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:28PM
crap indeed, but i hope it was funny crap. sheeples dont seem to get to smile alot anymore nowadays ...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 17 2019, @02:53AM
(Score: 2) by tizan on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:30PM (6 children)
Let it evaporate and crystallize (that is how islanders make salt..they don't mine it) and use it to make molten salt energy storage by solar power plants.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:38PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_water_battery [wikipedia.org]
https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/212621/millennial-lithium-boosted-as-tests-show-battery-grade-lithium-carbonate-can-be-made-from-pastos-grandes-brine-212621.html [proactiveinvestors.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:40PM (3 children)
Exactly. If you use it's no longer waste.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:32PM (2 children)
There's nowhere near the demand for salt in the world that there is for water. Not within 2 orders of magnitude, even if we incentivize every industrial, commercial, and individual use of salt you can think of to maximize demand.
And the Molten Salt reactors the GP suggested use florine salt, not chlorine salt.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:56PM
Could make bricks out of it for construction, the f you don't mind them dissolving when it rains.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:30PM
out the brine into a series of lakes.
Evaporation removes the water.
Truck it to a desert or other place on land.
Help yourself by making fresh water from a vast natural resource.
Help the environment by removing salt and chemicals.
Win win!
Accept this to be a cost for fresh water.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:06PM
That's pretty good as far as it goes; puts the remaining water back into the atmosphere (generally a good thing), and leaves the salts behind.
Then brick those, seal them from the atmosphere (or otherwise process them, I'm no chemist) so they don't revert to a brine, and stack them... somewhere.
Another thing:
When that freshwater is made, and (for instance) goes down human and animal throats, it eventually should return to the atmosphere and/or sea / freshwater bodies. Water isn't "used up" by our systems in the sense that it's consumed. It's more of a wash and transport mechanism.
The wash bit adds different things to it than it originally had, and I suspect that might pose a similar problem, or perhaps even more of a problem should it reach the sea or freshwater bodies. But again, it can be evaporated, the solids stored as sealed or otherwise non-soluble bricks, and the water returned to the atmosphere.
There are a couple simple (if large) problems here, but it doesn't seem like they should be insurmountable.
--
Jst Sy N to Lssy Cmprssn.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:43PM (21 children)
Seriously, why can't the brine be oxygenated?
(Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:06PM (16 children)
As the concentration of salt increases the ability to dissolve oxygen decreases. i.e. there is only so much "room" in solution. Adding more of a highly soluble substance (Salt) can cause lower solubility substances to come out of solution.
In chemistry this is known as "Salting Out".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:15PM (1 child)
And, the reverse doesn't apply then? You can't aerate the water to remove some portion of the salt.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:30PM
Difficult because the salt is more soluble than oxygen. Much simpler to just evaporate the water and then think about what to do with the solid salt instead.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:15PM (13 children)
I have a Democratic solution... Add fresh water to the brine.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:22PM
Not so simple - you have to raise taxes first!
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:25PM (10 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:16PM (7 children)
It will never dilute to "pretty much the same as seawater". Eventually the worlds oceans will be a (dead) Salton Sea. It's a chemistry lesson.
(Score: 4, Informative) by slinches on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:37PM
Do you know how much water is in the oceans? It's effectively infinite. To desalinate all of it to the point that you increased the average salt content by 1% you'd have ~1.5 billion liters of fresh water for each person on the planet.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:53PM (4 children)
You should Google "Water Cycle" or "Hydrologic Cycle"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @12:16AM (3 children)
You should take a chemistry class. The water cycle isn't going to remove salt/brine that's already laying stuck on the lower levels of the oceans. The level will gradually rise as more shit is added. It may take a long long time, but it'll happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @02:52AM (1 child)
Example... The Salton Sea was once a freshwater lake. Now it's toxic.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday January 18 2019, @04:05PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @02:55AM
I suspect what is being said here is that water extracted from the ocean will return to the ocean.
Perhaps after being blended,brewed,filted by kidneys,bleached,chlorinated.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday January 17 2019, @08:48AM
Dumb California Dems made so many crazy crazy environmental laws which aren't allowing the massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. While they pump other parts of ocean dry for their drinking water. And horrific Fire spreads through the Forests. Must Water forest, Rake & Tree Clear!!!
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:59PM (1 child)
Idea:
Build a brine-desalination plant!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @03:27AM
They can just use the water from the desal plant!
Seriously though, this could work. Most cities process water. Mix the brine in before it goes back into the ocean. It may even help clean the treated waste water further.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:16PM
I have a delicious solution: add French fries and malt vinegar.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:01PM (3 children)
Where would the oxygen come from? Doesn't matter if it's oxygenated originally, things living in it will breathe that away fast enough.
The problem is that you create underwater brine rivers and lakes that don't mix well with the surrounding seawater, and so they don't receive the oxygen being carried down from the surface water where it's introduced by photovores and atmospheric mixing.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:59PM (2 children)
I was thinking along the lines of aerating the brine like you aerate an aquarium - mechanically pumping air into the brine. But, apparently, that won't work worth squat because it won't cause any salts to settle out of solution. So, about the only other thing I can think of has already been mentioned - dry the brine, and haul the salts off where they can be used, or stored.
I was just thinking out loud here, I got nothing more to offer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @03:04AM (1 child)
Near the desal plant find and area with high enough hills, build a dam 3/4 the way around it with concrete, and build a gate system on the 4th side with concrete filling the gaps withsand. The sand will act as a filter. On the sand filter side, do this again. 3 dams in a row. Have a wall in the first dam so half is in use at any given time.
Build a pipe from the desal plant to the first dam. Fill one side. Wait for the water to filter through the sand to the 2nd then 3rd dam.
When the salt buildup in the first dam is enough to mine, start using the other side of the first dam leaving the first side to dry.
When the first side is dry use earth moving equipment to remove the salt.
By the time the water exits the 3rd dam it is still salty but far cleaner. It could probably be piped back into the desal plant.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @03:08AM
A solution to this problem was floated whereby the brine would be piped or trucked into a desert to be power sprayed into sand dunes.
The theory being that the desert environment would quickly evaporate the brine with the water escaping into the air, and hence back into the oceans eventually, or would seep through the desert into the canals under the desert. Either way the water returns with the salt left behind.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:03PM (16 children)
Brine is a technically accurate word, but it's being used here as a fear word.
A more reasonable explanation is: Seawater naturally contains about 35 grams of salt per liter, what would usually be described as 35 parts per thousand (ppt). A desalination plant removes some of the water from seawater. The waste product of that is concentrated seawater with a salt level of 50-60 ppt.
It's not toxiconium poisonide. It's saltier than normal seawater.
This is one of the rare cases where dilution is the solution to pollution. Diluting the wastewater with large amounts of un-concentrated seawater lowers the salt concentration. This greatly reduces the likelihood of stratification and decreases the impact on dissolved oxygen. It's also a fairly easy engineering problem.
TFA's suggestion of using the brine to irrigate seawater tolerant crops is informative about the author's knowledge on this topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:09PM (1 child)
you can also dilute radioactive waste from reactors by flushing the core with seawater!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @12:14AM
party like it's fukushima matafaka
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:04PM (3 children)
Indeed, and the author's description of "desalination plants globally produce enough brine ... in a year to cover all of Florida in nearly a foot of it. That's a lot of brine." is also indicitave of their ability to understand the scales involved.
Florida has a land area of about 170 000 km² so multiply by 1 foot and we get about 50 km³. The oceans are about a billion cubic kilometres; enough to cover all of Florida in an enormous spacescraper of seawater nearly six thousand km high! That's a lot of seawater. More than ten million times more than the paltry amount of brine which doesn't even reach knee height when spread out over Florida.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:30PM (2 children)
6,000 km would be quite high (IMHO), and raises a number of questions.
Would Florida be able to support the weight, or would it sink? Would it take any more land with it?
Would be able to just float stuff up to space? (assuming we could get past any pressure problems at what used to be called ground level).
Would there be a new tourist explosion to climb the highest peak in the world?
How far above Florida would we see goldfish?
Would James Cameron and Elon Musk be in favor of this development?
How long before we can't see anything inside because of toxic bloom?
Would the water at the top slosh?
Would the planet start wobbling?
How far away could you run a hose (with a showerhead on the end) so you could open a valve near the bottom, and simulate rain (perhaps over some country)? How heavy would the hose be, and would every country have to take it in turns to have rainy hours?
At least the whales will be able to stop worrying about those pesky Japanese and Norwegian ''scientists''.
I'm sure there are a number of other questions that might be considered at least equally important, but it would be nice to get some answers, instead of just more questions.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:57PM
Those are all excellent questions A/C, thanks.
I propose we put 6,000 km of water on Florida to answer them. In the name of science, of course.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:22PM
Its Florida. Who cares?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:09PM (6 children)
TFA started with
So we knew they were sloppy from the getgo, pick one, real units, or freedom units. Don't put the end product in real units, but the byproduct in freedom units because readers are more likely to understand it intuitively and only want them to have a intuition of one half.
TFA also kept implying that desalination was adding other contaminants
later in TFA they call out copper and chlorine in particular, both of which are in seawater already. Now perhaps I am not up to date, but the methods of desalination I am aware of (distillation and filtration) don't involve adding anything to the water. Am I missing a step where they throw "toxic" (their word not mine) chemicals into what will be drinking water (presumably just for fun)? Or are they just trying to imply a straight up scaremongering fiction?
Would it not be scary enough to say that desalination increases the relative concentration of all solutes in the byproduct? Seriously it would have been better if they added something like "increases the concentration of existing sulfates and fluorides compared to incoming seawater", which would also be scaremongering bullshit, but at least it wouldn't be implying a comic book villain twirling his mustache while pouring vats of "evil chemicals" into the brine.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:25PM (3 children)
I think the issue is that those materials become a problem when they are concentrated. Dumping that concentrated brine back into the ocean would cause environmental issues.
Maybe they can just sit it out in collections pools, to dry as they do for salt mining? I suppose the plants produce way too much for this to be feasible.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:31PM
Dump it into the dead sea and it will dilute the dead sea.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:36PM
Did you perhaps miss the parent comment talking about diluting the brine with seawater? Any way you cut it, implying that the brine is inherently toxic just plain isn't accurate. Yeah, this could be an engineering problem, but it isn't pouring toxic waste into the waterways like they are trying to imply.
Though I am seriously wondering how long it will take someone to come up with some sort of a "use a giant egg beater it mix the outflow with the source water" solution. That will be a fun one. Hell it might even be more efficient than pumping dilution water around. Hell there is probably a solution possible based on using a static structure that when you pump water through it will cause turbulent mixing.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday January 17 2019, @04:01PM
> I think the issue is that those materials become a problem when they are concentrated.
This is accurate. The core problem is that the difference in saline concentration is enough to encourage the two solutions to stratify. That means the concentrated seawater remains concentrated instead of mixing with unconcentrated seawater. This stratification is how you get brine lakes and deoxygenated zones that damage benthic organisms. If you dilute the wastewater you can greatly reduce this effect.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:15PM
later in TFA they call out copper and chlorine in particular, both of which are in seawater already. Now perhaps I am not up to date, but the methods of desalination I am aware of (distillation and filtration) don't involve adding anything to the water. Am I missing a step where they throw "toxic" (their word not mine) chemicals into what will be drinking water (presumably just for fun)? Or are they just trying to imply a straight up scaremongering fiction?
It's a little bit of both. Copper, for example, is present in seawater but it doesn't really cause any problems. At higher concentrations, though, it starts killing fish eggs (aka exhibits toxicity). "Pollution" is defined by it's consequences.
And, they do use descaling agents and other chemicals in the process itself. Additionally, water coming into contact with parts containing heavy metals will can leach those metals.
And, finally, the high salt concentration itself is toxic.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday January 17 2019, @08:10PM
Gas Passing Animal Assad used Chlorine on his own people!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:59PM
Brine is a technically accurate word, but it's being used here as a fear word.
No, it's being used correctly in the context of waste management. AKA, a term of art.
Seawater naturally contains about 35 grams of salt per liter, what would usually be described as 35 parts per thousand (ppt). A desalination plant removes some of the water from seawater. The waste product of that is concentrated seawater with a salt level of 50-60 ppt.
Correct, and a brine waste is a process wastewater that has elevated salinity. That it is more saline than the ocean is actually irrelevant in this context (though desalination brine will obviously be more concentrated)
Brine Effluents: Characteristics, Environmental Impacts, and Their Handling [researchgate.net]
(Score: 5, Funny) by mhajicek on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:00PM
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:41PM
WHAT?!
Pretty sure that salting the fields of your enemies was a well understood form of breaking the land. Why would you even suggest doing it to yourself.
(Score: 4, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)
I see no problems with this plan. Proceed.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:18PM
And, since it's being put to beneficial use, it's no longer defined as a waste!
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday January 18 2019, @04:33PM
Do you want saltwater gators?? Cos that's how you get saltwater gators!!!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Shire on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:25PM
Covering Florida in a foot of brine "sounds" like a lot, but consider that Florida gets an annual average rainfall of over FOUR FEET of FRESH WATER. The amount of brine produced is quickly dilluted by the sea, this is less of an impact than normal sea surface evaporation - which is how Florida gets its rainfall. Consider also that the waste fresh water from these cities is combined with the brine to dillute it even further.
This is a non issue.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:31PM (1 child)
All of those countries have vast, arid regions. Why don't they grade a section of the desert flat and dump it there? They're not growing anything there so you don't care about the ground water. Percolation would be minimal anyway because once you get a salt crust started the ponds are essentially self-lining.
Added bonus: Bonneville style motor sports.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:12PM
Evaporation ponds are a very common method for brine disposal, already. [sciencedirect.com]
Or they can do like we do here and use wastewater injection! That's the one that creates all the earthquakes that fracking gets blamed for. Brine is a common effluent from oil and gas extraction and injection is how they dispose of it.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:49PM
When you see "Get The Truth about..." or "Get The Facts about...", you are about to be fed propaganda whose sole purpose is to try to change or reinforce your opinion about something irrespective of reality. When you see an admonition to get "The Dirty Truth", you already know in which direction your opinion is to be bent.
The inconvenient reality for the "Seawater Dirty Truthers" is that, sure, of course seawater is "dirty" in the sense that if it was already cleaned of salt and debris for drinking, we wouldn't need to be doing all that water treatment. Said treatment takes input of "Seawater" and produces two output streams: Not-so-salty water, for drinking, and water that is a little saltier (=a little dirtier), which is what's left. Concerned about how *much* leftover water there is? The saltier you cook it, the less of it there is. But if you make it "less dirty", you get a larger amount of it. Adjust according to your needs (instead of pitching a shrill fit in article form.) Note: At no time do you have anything other than what you started with, which is the components of plain old ocean water.
Or sending spaceships to do asteroid (or planetary ring) mining to bring back chunks of water ice the size of small moons?
(Score: 2) by BenJeremy on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:57PM
I remember seeing on the news, back when I was a kid, he built a spaceship out of junkyard parts and hauled an iceberg to Saudi Arabia. I think the Saudis paid him by providing free gasoline to Mayberry forever.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:35PM (2 children)
encase it in glass, then concrete, then BUILD A FECKING WALL!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:53PM (1 child)
Huh, I think you just hit on a decent idea for storing nuclear waste! No one will want to even get near the walls.
Sadly this would have pretty much zero impact on illegal immigration, but I think it'd be worth it just to have a Nuclear Wall.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Thursday January 17 2019, @03:15AM
America, the trading card game!
"You have obtained the Nuclear Wall card!
+500 to defence.
Leaking radiation may randomly kill border patrol and border guards.
This item is not indestructible, but can be considered as such because no one is going to try.
Anyone who touches the wall has a 1/20 chance of being irradiated."
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday January 17 2019, @01:30PM
So are the greenies screaming about us dumping non-briny water into the ocean? No.
Here's the solution: Co-locate your desalinization and waste water treatment plants (near the ocean - duh). Desal the seawater, creating brine. Mix the brine with outgoing treated wastewater back to 35 ppt salt. Victory! We're not dumping 'toxic, salt-barren fresh water' into the sea, and we're getting rid of the brine.