Defuse a volcano? (27)

25 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2021-01-15 23:16 ID:tMhU7Lg7

Some additional thoughts:

The nearest town is Antofagasta, which already has a big port due to the mining companies. Also, about half of the distance to the mountain is already covered by Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia. We would likely have to lay ~200 km of new rail from Calama to the mountain.

Additionally, the current railway only handles about 2 million tons of freight per year, so it would need to be significantly expanded. The Daqin railway in China can transport 440 million metric tons per year, so three lines similar to that would be sufficient.

The port will need to be expanded, as well. Ningbo-Zhoushan port, also in China, supposedly the largest port in the world by tonnage, would almost be able to handle the load. I couldn't find how many berths are in Antofagasta, but we will likely need about 200.

Finally, I think that producing the uranium for the nukes will probably require the most effort. Refining an entire planet's worth of uranium is a non-trivial task. According to Wikipedia, it takes 62 SWU to produce 10 kg of low-enriched uranium. If current world enrichment capacity is 66700 SWU/yr, we will need at least 100,000 times more enrichment capacity to hit our 12 year schedule. (Someone should double check this calculation.)

Also, I just realized I screwed up my calculation for the Tsar Bomba. One detonation actually produces 2*10^17 J, so we would only need 200,000 bombs.

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