Ecological impact wouldn't necessarily be that large - my understanding is that the sort of vent in question is fairly common, and even if it's not then drilling new ones wouldn't be terribly complicated. Also, my mental image had been of a 'once through' system that'd vent nigh-unaltered hot smog water out of its top rather than a highly-developed type.
There are existing uninterrupted power lines longer than the ones I'm thinking of, tho admittedly the longest submerged one is only a quarter as long as needed to reach the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from anywhere save Iceland.
Besides, I'm conceiving these things out of the Gundam 00 setting, in which they're giving non-Solar states an equivalent resource - most of the world's nations are already plugged into the solar power ring, this concept is just supplying the overflow.
Re: Maintenance. I have given quite a bit of thought to that, actually. My understanding is that modern power turbine technologies have some shockingly long maintenance cycles, on the order of years or decades. I suspect that alloys with the needed properties to handle raw sulfurous seawater at the intended temperatures already exist but haven't been applied to this field yet; if I'm wrong then I doubt that they're outside the realm of the feasible. The outer bits of the generator station - control computers, anchor lines, on-site maintenance remotes, etc - would be designed to be plug-and-play modular. If one of the (multiply redundant) things breaks, then the support ship swings by, sends its big rover down with a spare, swaps them out on site, then brings them back up for maintenance cycle.
If the core turbine starts showing problems, then the entire station can be shut down, unplugged from the network, and replaced in exactly the same way. Remember, these things are designed for neutral bouyancy a relatively small robot can manhandle them all the way to and from the surface with perfect ease.
Solar power does scale better, I agree, but the energy and other costs of setting up this system are far lower.
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"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
There are existing uninterrupted power lines longer than the ones I'm thinking of, tho admittedly the longest submerged one is only a quarter as long as needed to reach the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from anywhere save Iceland.
Quote:Government is like kudzu, or the common cold. You're never getting rid of it, the goal is to control the problem. So are crazies, for that matter. Failing to provide a particular excuse will do fuck-all to reduce the overall population.
or we are back to that massive government of the seas thing.
Besides, I'm conceiving these things out of the Gundam 00 setting, in which they're giving non-Solar states an equivalent resource - most of the world's nations are already plugged into the solar power ring, this concept is just supplying the overflow.
Re: Maintenance. I have given quite a bit of thought to that, actually. My understanding is that modern power turbine technologies have some shockingly long maintenance cycles, on the order of years or decades. I suspect that alloys with the needed properties to handle raw sulfurous seawater at the intended temperatures already exist but haven't been applied to this field yet; if I'm wrong then I doubt that they're outside the realm of the feasible. The outer bits of the generator station - control computers, anchor lines, on-site maintenance remotes, etc - would be designed to be plug-and-play modular. If one of the (multiply redundant) things breaks, then the support ship swings by, sends its big rover down with a spare, swaps them out on site, then brings them back up for maintenance cycle.
If the core turbine starts showing problems, then the entire station can be shut down, unplugged from the network, and replaced in exactly the same way. Remember, these things are designed for neutral bouyancy a relatively small robot can manhandle them all the way to and from the surface with perfect ease.
Solar power does scale better, I agree, but the energy and other costs of setting up this system are far lower.
===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."