Episode 349: The Glutton
“Deuterium accounts for approximately 0.015% of the hydrogen present on a planet. And according to current observations, it exists on this planet at roughly that ratio as well.”
“I’ve heard something about that. Deuterium disappears when used, right?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Deuterium is only naturally produced in extreme environments, such as the core of stars. It is almost never produced on planets or in normal space.”
As ＜Ringo＞ explained, deuterium is a very stable substance, a resource that almost never increases on its own. If used in nuclear fusion, it literally disappears.
However, it is said that 90% of the matter in the universe is hydrogen, and observations suggest that 0.002% of that is deuterium. In other words, there is a vast amount of it as a resource.
“Hmm… So, we don’t have to worry about using the deuterium in seawater, I suppose?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Even if we use it all up, the energy furnace should be based on something else by then. Besides, there is a large amount of deuterium outside of this planet, so there is no problem.”
“Okay, assuming it’s okay to keep using it…”
As she said that, Eve pulled up a display showing the impact of the deuterium refining plant on the surrounding area.
“Even if we process 100 tons of water, we can only recover about 15 kg of deuterium at most, right?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
To be precise, it’s even less due to recovery rate issues.
What Eve wanted to say was that a large amount of water is sucked up, processed, and a large amount of wastewater is generated.
“The more we expand production, the more we can’t ignore the environmental impact.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Seawater is drawn up, impurities are extracted, and then electrolytes are re-added for electrolysis. All of the seawater that is drawn up will be processed in some way, so the organisms contained within will die, and biological organic matter will be decomposed and concentrated.”
“Will the area around the seawater treatment plant become an environment where it is difficult for living things to inhabit?”
“It’s hard to say definitively, but it’s likely that native organisms will be driven out. We can return the organic matter that serves as nutrients for plankton as is, but it will be after chemical treatment. Presumably, species that can adapt to the environment around the treatment facility will thrive.”
In other words, because the seawater will have a different nutritional state than before, it is predicted that this will be a major environmental disaster.
Of course, with the current scale of the seawater treatment facility, there will not be a significant impact.
However, as the seawater treatment facility is expanded, it is thought that a significant impact will occur on the surrounding area.
To avoid this, it will be necessary to keep the distance between facilities far enough apart, and to determine the amount of processing taking into account the effects of ocean currents.
“Hmm… If only there weren’t Threat Creatures… If only there weren’t Threat Creatures…”
If things go wrong, local eutrophication may occur, leading to the emergence of unexpected ecosystems and attracting Threat Creatures from outside.
And it would be extremely difficult to protect the expanded facilities from Threat Creatures.
“It will be difficult to convert all energy supply to nuclear fusion reactors due to these problems. Therefore, we plan to add more conventional nuclear reactors.”
“Nuclear reactors, huh? The fuel is… uranium?”
“Yes, Ma’am. We have already discovered natural uranium lodes, so there will be no problem with fuel supply for the time being. Conversion to plutonium is also possible.”
“Hmm. Well, either way, it’s better to have a nuclear reactor for tritium production. For the time being, will the energy furnace be a two-pronged approach?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Both nuclear reactors and nuclear fusion reactors can produce tritium, but it is desirable to have more production facilities themselves. By distributing them, we can also diversify the risk.”
Even if energy can be supplied remotely, distributed deployment should be considered.
There is transmission loss in remote sharing, but the main purpose is to improve fault tolerance by gridding the supply network.
Even if a catastrophic event occurs in some areas, it will not spread to the whole.
Of course, efficiency can be improved by increasing the scale of energy production, but it is judged that fault tolerance should be prioritized over that.
“If that’s the case, we’ll need to occupy maritime areas as well… Even if we don’t consider human civilization, Threat Creatures are still a problem.”
And there’s nothing we can do about this.
In this planet where human civilization is underdeveloped, there was almost no information sharing about Threat Creatures.
Therefore, we cannot obtain the information we want, such as what kind of Threat Creatures exist and how dangerous they are.
“We can’t get that much information from satellite observations. Of course, we’ll increase the number of satellites, but…”
“Underwater exploration is almost impossible, and we can’t explore forests or underground either. If we could do a global scan using powerful Electromagnetic Waves, the situation would be much better.”
“That would be very stimulating, wouldn’t it?”
For some reason, Threat Creatures are attracted when Electromagnetic Waves are used.
This is just a guess, but there is a sense that Threat Creatures themselves are actively using the Electromagnetic Waves domain. Therefore, if we do something that stands out in that domain, nearby Threat Creatures will come out immediately.
This is the latest Electromagnetic Waves situation that Asahi proposed and Eve agreed to.
If such dangerous Electromagnetic Waves were released globally from satellite orbit…
A terrifying future, such as the explosive activation of Threat Creatures, can be foreseen.
And of course, that also applies to secondary Electromagnetic Waves generation.
This means that we cannot do anything careless in space without shielding.
“Stellar flares have been observed in the past, so it seems that they don’t react to this…”
Stellar flares are natural phenomena that scatter a large amount of powerful Electromagnetic Waves, but if you look at them from the perspective of Electromagnetic Waves, you can tell that the source is a star.
But if such an Electromagnetic Waves burst occurs in a place other than a star…
We don’t know what kind of impact it will have on Threat Creatures.
“When operating large-scale equipment in space, we need to carefully implement Electromagnetic Waves shielding.”
Well, I have no choice but to leave that to them.
If we could move the living space from the current planet to interstellar space, perhaps…
However, to achieve that, we need to properly develop planetary systems for resource mining.
We are not yet able to reach that area.
“If the marine survey that Asahi is working on is completed, will we be able to see a little further ahead?”
“If we can at least confirm the ecosystem at the top of the Threat Creatures that rule the area, we can think about an approach.”
The ocean on this planet is very vast.
And there is a possibility that large marine Threat Creatures such as ＜Rain Croin＞ are swimming around.
Even if there are no problems for the first few years, there is no guarantee that we will not be suddenly attacked by migratory Threat Creatures.
We may build a large facility on the sea, but it may be destroyed in a few years.
Of course, that also applies to ＜The Tree＞ itself.
At least ＜Ringo＞ is preparing excessive defense equipment, including a large Multi-Stage Electromagnetic Cannon (Coil Cannon).
However, we cannot build the same defense equipment for the facilities that we will build in the future.
Simply put, the resource consumption would be too enormous.
“It’s not impossible to expand our power while maintaining a wartime posture, but…?”
“Maintaining a large amount of military power, maintaining and operating production lines. Also, when military power is reduced when encountering Threat Creatures, it is assumed that the same battle will occur in other areas. In that case, the safety margin needs to be set extremely high.”
“It’s a doubling game. Moreover, the more the area of control increases, the more the required military power increases exponentially. It may not be just doubling…”
Currently, ＜The Tree＞ has an incredibly large amount of resources compared to when it started.
However, the more we make plans for the future, the more a large wall of resource shortages stands in front of us.
“…However. First of all, we need to have multiple production facilities. I want to create a base on another continent…”
I’m talking with Ringo-chan about future prospects.
Eve-chan is a normal human (?), so she needs to periodically check what needs to be solved now, or she’ll go astray.
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