As it takes 3.8 kw to freeze a metric ton (1000 kg) of water ( heat of fusion ~ 333 kJ/kg) a day, an ordinary 60 megawatt nuclear submarine reactor could at best create about 16,000 cubic meters of new sea ice .
So if all ~ 150 of the world's nuclear submarines were deployed to the Arctic, they might freeze ~ 2.4 square kilometers a day, or 876 square kilometeres a year. Since summer sea ice extent has declined roughly 3 million km2 since 1980, it would take the existing nuclear submarine fleet more than 3,000 years to restore polar albedo to its state in 1980 Or twice that if you throw in Antarctic sea ice loss More nuclear subs could of course do the job in a single generation, but that would entail commissioning a fleet of 30,000 SSN's .Our latest design ,the Columbia class are expected to cost 12 billion a pop, or 5 billion each by the dozen or but China's yard capable of building 4 more modest nuclear attack subs at a time, which in mass production might cost a mere few billion each, cutting the cost of Kotahatuhaha & Co.'s modest proposal to a scant $100 trillion., plus a the discount cost of an order of magnitude uptick in proliferation risks- SSN's run on highly enriched uranium. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/12059e87-6eb2-4468-9396-46cd8fd564ac%40googlegroups.com.
