19
votes
Accepted
Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity?
Probably not Roman or post-Roman overshot, breast, or undershot (i.e. classic) water wheels, but what about reasonably modern hydro power installations?
First, you would need to define the energy ...
- 45.3k
13
votes
Accepted
Frozen Stars - Alternate sources of electricity
Trying to harvest deuterium from frozen-over oceans is like trying to ask an ant to lift the Burj Khalifa
Oceans are deep, they freeze from the top, ice is not a particularly great conductor of heat ...
- 69.3k
7
votes
Frozen Stars - Alternate sources of electricity
The Villagers are dead, and it's all your fault...
Only a few hundred survivors are able to delay their death in subterranean bunkers, and up to a few thousand more aboard nuclear submarines.
...
- 4,168
5
votes
Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity?
This is a Frame Challenge
The water source isn't the problem, it's channeling that source to a useful location.
Whether your source is an underground river or an aquifer, it doesn't matter. Frankly, ...
- 110k
3
votes
Energy consumption of magnetic levitation train compared with ordinary train
Maglev is an inefficient technology. It's great if you want to move a small amount of something super fast (high speed passenger rail) but for commercial operations the energy required to levitate ...
- 21.3k
2
votes
Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity?
Aquifer has no usable potential energy. Underground river unlikely to have much of a flow but if you have it, water has the way out without filling up your big cave, so you can just drop any water on ...
- 1,936
1
vote
Energy consumption of magnetic levitation train compared with ordinary train
Depends on the kind of magnets you use
When most people think maglev trains, they think electro magnetic levitation that can be turned on and off. These consume much more power than a traditional ...
- 80.8k
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