Re-Purposing the Netherlands' Dike System For Power Generation

vikingpower writes "Built in reaction to a major flood that killed 1,800 in the '50s, the Dutch system of dikes, sluices, surge barriers, and dams has been dubbed 'one of the seven wonders of the modern world' by the American Society of Engineers. Now there are proposals to use the system differently, e.g. as tidal power plants, by punching holes in them. Any civil engineer's mouth will probably be watering when thinking of the mega-projects this could give rise to."

Comments

Re:Great idea

[Bigjeff5]

And those windmills they historically used to keep the land (polders) dry... oh man, that really must have dealt some blows to the environment...

Windmills have always bothered me as a potentially horrific source of damage to the environment, and I really wonder if the mad dash to throw them up everywhere hasn't been a mistake.

Think about it for a second, windmills literally suck energy out of the wind - wind that goes places and does things and is absolutely critical for most ecosystems on the planet to survive. Now, there may be absolutely nothing wrong with them at all, but it seems like we've just been rushing to use them without looking into the potential consequences. Isn't that the exact same mistake we made with oil?

And now the hot thing is to fuck with the tides. In the Netherlands they've already destroyed their coastal environment, so I can't see how putting in tidal generators would hurt anything, but these same groups of people are talking about tapping the Gulf Stream. That thing drives oceanic weather all around the globe and is literally the life blood of the Atlantic Ocean; weakening it too much just seems like a really really bad idea. The first few may be just fine, but there is going to be a point where you do damage with this stuff, and in our rush to be "Green" we could very well do things that are far more destructive than fossil fuels ever could be.