Wave-Powered Desalination

dptalia writes, "Scientists think they've found a way to harness the energy of waves to desalinate salt water. Currently desalination is an energy-intensive process, but this new design harnesses the renewable energy of waves to produce fresh water. Many countries depend on desalinated water to support their populations, and this invention could lower the cost of water generation." Production versions of the "desalination ducks" would be about 10 meters in diameter and 20 meters long. Each would supply water for more than 20,000 people.

Stick one of these near the British Royal Family

[Timesprout]

And Australias salination problems are solved.

Oh the Irony

[MarsBar]

The inventor's name is Stephen Salter. Heh.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they always have to find some nay-sayer -- this Nidal dude, for instance -- who has an obvious axe to grind and is therefore completely blind to the possibilities?

I couldn't agree with you more. They keep telling me that my perpetual motion machine will never work, but I know that I have the calculations correct! And after I patent my time travel machine and my warp engine designs I'll definitely win a Nobel prize!

I hate those people with such small minds thinking only about facts and the truth. I know how things really work, I feel it in my gut.

Hmmm

[LizardKing]

As an added bonus, this could all be funded by selling the extracted salt to crisp companies.

Re: Vitally Important

[ajs318]

The problem is that you can't build anything anywhere in the UK without someone protesting. Ten years ago when they were trying to build the Newbury Bypass, the protestors (very, very few of whom actually came from Newbury, BTW) were chanting "Homes not roads". Today, the protestors are active whenever someone tries to build houses. When they tried to build factories in the past, at least the locals would generally support the effort on the basis that a new factory would bring jobs to the area. Now if you tried to build a factory, you'd get rent-a-mob outsiders protesting against it and the locals would also most probably be protesting that the factory would bring immigrants to the area.

Building a reservoir essentially involves digging a very large hole and filling it with water, incidentally drowning any cute fluffy bunnies et anal. that can't be bothered to learn to swim. (Actually, you have to do more than that; for a start, you have to undercut the hole to avoid evaporation, but we'll simplify things a little here.) So you'll get various groups of protestors turning up with their own agendas. Maybe they will be too preoccupied with in-fighting amongst the various factions ("you aren't a True Believer, you're only concerned about the value of your house and you eat m**t!" "Well you aren't even local, you've nothing to be worried about, you can just sod off back to where you came from and live off my taxes" "Yeah? Well how many diggers have you sabotaged?") to do any serious protesting.

But it's not just the protestors you have to worry about, it's the workers and working conditions. You can't dig big holes in the winter, because it rains and they just fill up with water. And you can't dig holes in the summer, because it's dusty, thirsty work; the workers need showers and drinks, but there's a water shortage on .....

Re:Its actually only 305 real gallons per minute

[Anonymous Coward]

You imperialists are always so big on gallons.

desalination ducks

[The evil doctor Matt]

desalination ducks... Wonder if they'll use the salt to make saltine quackers...

Re:of course his full name is

[Iron Chef Unix]

I think you have bad information, his name is Stephen D. Salter.