Could the Navy power Port-au-Prince from a nuclear submarine?

Foxnews ^ | 01-19-2010 | Foreign Policy

[JeffBoste]

Could the Navy power Port-au-Prince from a nuclear submarine

[upstanding]

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

[Cvengr]

The Coast Guard photos showed their fuel terminal storage tanks to still be intact. I suspect the largest damages to the electrical infrastructure will be in their 34.5 or 12.47kV Electrical distribution system.

Substations probably also experienced numerous faults from crossing lines and numerous safety devices disengaging during the seismic event.

Getting the system back up and running will take a dedicated, concentrated effort by a seasoned group of operating engineers and dispatchers, with a fair amount of corporate knowledge of their system.

I suspect they will first focus on a handful of simple circuits, fully operating, while concurrently inspecting and performing obvious continuity repairs on other circuits.

Getting them all back on line will also require coordination and control of their system to make sure others haven’t back fed the system from localized gensets, which could electrocute linemen working from the source.

Best bet is probably a distribution of smaller gensets to communities for some decentralized logistics to run concurrently with manual labor and distribution of basics, (cleaning up roadways, foods and water and medical and communication via standalone stations, tool recharging, etc).

If that can get rolling, then it will keep the people busy constructively, within their own decentralized availability of resources, until more centralized logistics can be returned to normal cultural flows.

Generally speaking, the most efficient delivery of resources is by re-establishing existing utility networks and traffic patterns. Their operations and utility are already understood by the people, and much less communication and management is required to operate them efficiently.

Unlike floods and hurricanes, the materials are still where they were when the quake hit. Just structural repairs and connections must be re-established, and electrical systems will take longer to re-energize safely to avoid highly dynamic loading on their systems.

[Razzz42]

I’d be more inclined to try and establish a chain of command first by telling the U.N. to go pound sand. You can tell just by the select whining that probably that happened already. Next up, distribution network(s) then protection for the volunteers. About 9 million people suffering but I haven’t heard much reporting on exactly how many are directly affected starting with the numbers that are homeless maybe they don’t know yet.

After recent successful wars, no doubt our volunteer military can handle death and destruction of this magnitude no matter who the commander in chief is. Certainly didn’t waste much time sending some big iron in that direction.

I don’t know if the rule of law ever functioned properly over there but at least an enforceable building code would be a good start for the rebuild.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Sub steam and electric distillation units are too small for that: If you’re running the power plant, and the crew is living aboard (to continuously run the power plant!) you really don’t have any excess fresh water to give away.

To a few dozen people? Sure.

To a hundred? Maybe. For a few days.

For a two hundred? No.
Two thousand? No.
Twenty thousand? No.
....

[SuperLuminal]

Sure they could....light it up....First extract all Americans....

[Cvengr]

If they thought AIDS carrying zombies are a risk, just imagine if they were also radioactively contaminated....(OMG) <8^0

[rottndog]

My boat could provide 7200 Kw, minus the ship’s loads, for external use. Of course my class of boats has been scrapped, so modern boats could provide more....but not much more.

The difficulty would be hooking into the local grid...and there would also be issues running the reactor pier side in port for any length of time (in that environment, the seawater systems would likely get fouled rather quickly).

But yes, it can be done.

[rabidralph]

Nor screen doors.

[Sgt_Schultze]

nice

[az_gila]

The US AID informed that the US Navy will arrive in the coming days with a container vessel carrying the following items: landing crafts and desalination capacity of 25,000 gallons/day (95,000ltrs/day). They are working on loading landing crafts, course ways and motorized barges.

---

A bit less than I remembered, but still quite significant.

This came from a UN report on the Christmas Tsumnani response.

ftp://ftp.fao.org/FI/DOCUMENT/tsunamis_05/OCHA/ReportNo16.pdf

[Colorado Cowgirl]

The US Navy is not chartered to act as a power utility, they are not likely to power the shore except at forward military or disaster locations. In these cases, residential housing is not likely to be the first load supplied. Instead, hospitals and other vital infrastructure are likely to receive priority. This prioritization is important since a single hospital can be a significant load. Maybe 2MW per hospital.