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 almost never occurs on planets or in normal space.”
As ＜Ringo＞ explained, deuterium is an extremely stable substance, a resource that almost never increases on its own. When used in nuclear fusion, it literally vanishes.
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 deuterium from seawater, I guess?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Even if we were to 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 there’s no problem continuing to use 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, huh?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
To be precise, it’s even less due to recovery rate issues.
What Eve wants to say is 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, huh?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Seawater is sucked up, impurities are extracted, electrolytes are re-added, and electrolysis is performed. All of the sucked-up seawater 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 organisms have difficulty living?”
“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. Perhaps, biological species that can adapt to the environment around the treatment facility will proliferate.”
In other words, the seawater will have a different nutritional state than before, which is a dire prospect from an environmental destruction perspective.
Of course, with the current scale of the seawater treatment facility, there won’t be a significant impact.
However, as the seawater treatment facility is expanded, it is expected that a significant impact will occur on the surrounding area.
To avoid this, it will be necessary to keep the distance between facilities sufficiently far apart and determine the processing volume by calculating the effects of ocean currents.
“Hmm… If only there weren’t any Threatening Creatures… If only…”
If things go wrong, localized eutrophication may occur, leading to the emergence of unexpected ecosystems and potentially attracting Threatening Creatures from outside.
And it would be extremely difficult to protect the expanded facilities from Threatening 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. Natural uranium veins have already been discovered, 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-pillar system?”
“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 the deployment, it is possible to disperse 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 entire system.
Of course, efficiency can be improved by scaling up 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, Threatening 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 Threatening Creatures.
Therefore, we can’t get the information we want, such as what kind of Threatening Creatures exist and how dangerous they are.
“We can’t get that much information from satellite observations, either. Of course, we’ll increase the number of satellites, but…”
“Underwater exploration is almost impossible, and we can’t explore forests or underground either. The situation would be much better if we could do a global scan using powerful electromagnetic waves.”
“That sounds like it would be very stimulating.”
For some reason, Threatening Creatures are attracted when electromagnetic waves are used.
It’s just a guess, but Threatening Creatures seem to be actively using the electromagnetic wave domain in the first place. Therefore, if we do something conspicuous in that area, nearby creatures will immediately come out.
This is the latest electromagnetic wave situation proposed by Asahi and agreed to by Eve.
If such dangerous electromagnetic waves were released globally from satellite orbit…
A terrifying future, such as the explosive activation of Threatening Creatures, can be foreseen.
And of course, that also applies to secondary electromagnetic wave generation.
We can’t do anything careless in outer 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 it from the perspective of electromagnetic waves, you can tell that the source is a star.
But if such an electromagnetic wave burst occurs in a place other than a star…
We don’t know what kind of impact it will have on Threatening Creatures.
“When operating large-scale equipment in outer space, we need to implement thorough electromagnetic 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 develop a planetary system for resource mining.
We can’t reach that area yet.
“If the marine survey that Asahi is promoting is completed, will we be able to see a little further ahead?”
“At least, if we can confirm an ecosystem like the apex of the Threatening 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 Threatening Creatures like ＜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 Threatening Creatures.
We may have built 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 large multi-stage electromagnetic catapults (coil cannons).
However, we cannot build the same defense equipment for the facilities that we will build in the future.
Simply put, the resource consumption becomes 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 Threatening Creatures, it is assumed that the same battle will occur in other areas. In that case, the safety margin needs to be set quite high.”
“It’s a doubling game. Moreover, the more the area of domination 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 the beginning.
However, the more we make future plans, the more a large wall of resource shortage stands in front of us.
“…However. First of all, we need to have multiple production facilities. I want to build a base on another continent…”
I’m talking about future prospects with Ringo-chan.
Eve-chan is a normal human (?), so she needs to periodically check what she needs to solve now, or she’ll get lost.
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