Science, Scarcity, and The Future We Choose
The Modern Era
Rianne de Klerk tugged mightily as the large membrane filter released from its housing. The filter, as tall as she, had that faint salt tang of the sea, and the once white exterior of the filter was now marbled with a patina of minerals and biofilm. She unpackaged the new filter and replaced a few O-Rings before shoving the fresh assembly back into the housing. When looked at the banks of reverse membrane filters before her, and marvelled at the technology – filter membranes so intricate that it could separate pure water from dissolved salts. She activated the microphone of her radio, clicked securely on the collar of her coveralls, and radioed to her coworker Jon, and let him know he could reactivate the system. She listened as energy from the solar panels installed outside the complex activated pumps, which pushed sea water at high pressure against the filters. Inside each, seawater was made pure, and from there it would go to the town nearby, to slake the thirst of the surge of tourists expected again, as clockwork, this time of year.
Beneath the curved steel vault of the Bruce Power CANDU nuclear reactor, technician Blake Hennin watched the readouts from the heavy water moderating pool. The characteristic sound of the process taking place in that chamber, one so radioactive nobody could survive proximity to, was unmistakable. Energetic neutrons from the nuclear fuel had to be carefully controlled. Too much and the energy would fizzle, and too much….well, he shuddered to think much about that. This ‘heavy water’, so called because of the peculiar nature of these particular water molecules, acted as both a coolant for the nuclear fuel, and also as referee, one that had to keep the unbridled power of nuclear fission safely in check. He made a few adjustments to flow, and decidedly took his mind off the worst case scenario. To tame the violently primordial nature of the atom with this water – deuterium – always both awed and unsettled him. He glanced at the clock – half an hour before he could take his lunch, check his phone to see if the Leafs won, or whether the Bruins ended their playoff run and sent them gofing. And he knew he’d first text his wife a sweet goodnight.Like the clockwork of an atom, they always shared late night goodnights. In the backround, the hum of water-tamed radioactivity hummed.
“I just don’t know what to do…”. The old farmer choked back a sob, as his weather scarred face was streaked with a single tear running down to his chin, only to drop on the frosted tips of grass of the cold October morning. Eli McTavish poured out a bucket of feed and listened to the slow cough of one of his heifers. The vet had no more words for it — tumors, internal lesions, liver spots that shouldn’t exist in animals this young. He watched the young cow cough again, blood-tinged froth staining its bib. The lab report had mentioned PFOS contamination from runoff near the abandoned industrial park upstream. Now it was killing quietly, molecule by molecule. Eli ran the pump to fill the troughs, watching the water shimmer faintly in the pale rising sun. It looked so damned clean! Now he feared it. He’d sold half his herd already and; the rest wouldn’t last the year. And the damned bank kept calling! He knelt by the fence and pressed his palm into the cold, autumn soil. He looked at the pump that drew water through the soil and clay, from the aquifer beneath. He looked at the creek, so full of life when he lived here as a boy, full of crawdads, minnows, and even some beautiful rainbow trout. Now, just water flowed, with long filamentous strands of algae – nothing else lived in it anymore. The dread he felt deep in his gut was visceral. He and his wife of almost fifty years drank from the same well. He choked back an ugly sob. “I just don’t know what to do…”.
Our ability to discern the properties of water, using the tools of science, have allowed us to use water in miraculous ways. In the 1400’s our friend Hendrik van der Meer desperately raced against time to repair the windmill that pumped brackish seawater from a field so it could be used for livestock to graze. Now we have the technology to use solar panels to power pumps that can draw seawater, normally undrinkable, and force it through a membrane filter to crate almost pure water. This type of filtration is called reverse osmosis. In Witland South Africa, the use of both RO technology, powered by solar power,h as allowed a town normally subject to wells that are dry much of the year, to thrive to such an extent that it is a now tourist hub. Similar desalination projects exists in California, the Middle East, and Singapore.
Our ability also to understand the physical and atomic properties of water have also allowed use to use a very special form of it – heavy water – as a critical component of nuclear reactors. This type of water, called deuterium, is an important part of controlling the nuclear reaction that takes place in a CANDU nuclear reactor. The hydrogen atoms that make up the water molecule, have an extra neutron, enabling the heavy water to slow, but not stop, the reaction necessary to keep the reactor running, thus continue keeping the lights on and the factories powered in the province of Ontario, and in other countries where CANDU reactors have been installed.
However, human ingenuity is not infallible, and can sometimes even be abused. The physical and chemical properties of water make it an invaluable resource in industry, as a carrier and solvent for chemicals, or for applications such as cooling or quenching. All through that process, it can come in contact with chemicals with toxic or environmentally harmful traits. For much of the Industrial Revolution and beyond, those traits were not known, or if they were, ignored. While the regulatory landscape today in most countries is quite regulated as it pertains to water contamination, it often lags behind the pace of industrialization, and legacy contamination from times long before environmental legislation still exist. In some counties, there is no, or pitifully nonexistent protections for water. The human and environmental cost from this gap is real, to both people and the living world we intimately depend upon.
Epilogue
Together, we’ve looked back in time, to a distant and untamed Earth, where the ancestors of our species, having just the stirrings of the connection between water and survival, walked the earth, following the animals who fed where lush grasses grew. Our journey moved forward, caught in times own current, where we observed early humans make the connection between the presence of water and the deliberate growing of food. We’ve watched as the flow of the ages pulled us through great works of human ingenuity – aqueducts, canals, windmills, the harnessing of steam, and the use of the worlds rivers as the highways of commerce and trade. We’ve also witnessed science erode away the mysteries of the atom, allowing us insights into the fundamental forces of the building blocks of matter, and we’ve used that understanding to use water in ways unimaginable to Gaius Fabius two thousand years ago, as he watched cold, clean water from a spring 16 kilometers from Rome, suddenly appear in an ornately carved fountain in the middle of the city.
We’ve also seen how water was intwined into our faiths and into our artistic expression. Water was not just a thing to be exploited, it has been worshipped as a deity, used as a blessing as we came into this world, and used to clean the dead before their final journey. We’ve used water to mix the pigments that created images that bridged the human sprit and imagination, to canvas.
But we’ve also seen the cost of our ingenuity and often reckless growth. The waters that have for millennia slaked our thirst, kept our crops and livestock alive, and allowed us to thrive and grow into the apex species we have become, now are under siege – industrial and agricultural pollution, microplastics, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation undermine and threaten the very foundations of our civilization and the biosphere at large. Indeed, anthropogenic warming has added enough energy into the planetary system that water, in the form of raw and violent torrential rains and flood, is as much a destroyer of things, as it is a giver of life.
It’s inconceivable to assume we don’t know how important water is for our survival. Early humans understood this, and modern humans have exploited this knowledge to the benefit of so many, from the farmers field, to the chemists flask to the unnaturally ionized blue aura of a CANDU reactor pool. We also are very well aware how much harm we are doing to water, and the systems it interacts with, systems that intimately include … us.
We finish our journey through time with a glimpse into two futures. The one we choose is up to us, through our wallet, though our vote and through our voice and actions. We collectively call the shots. There is so much good information available on how important each drop of water is to us…to life…to the planet. We should all do our part as citizen scientists, to learn, to dwell on what we’ve learned, and then to act. In this river, WE all have the power to steer the direction of the boat. Which fork in the river will we choose?
——————–
The old male lifted his head, and sniffed the air. It was sulfurous, the uncomfortably warm waters of the ocean giving up sulfidic gas as the deeps of the water, quiet and robbed of oxygen, rotted. He looked back at his mate, trudging up the beach. They had looked for food – clams, kelp…anything, but none could be found. He looked inland, as a river slowly emptied its own foul waters into the sea. Patches of plastic and algal film matted the surface. One such patch was disturbed by a gull, no longer able to fly, trying to keep it’s head above water, one wing trapped in a ball of plastic line. Normally he’d have tried to retrieve the bird, but he knew there was no point – they made him sick each time he caught and ate one. He hoped if he followed the water inland, he’d find something better to sustain them. He gestured to his mate with his rifle, its metal barrel reflecting the rising sun, and shouted, “This way!”, pointing up river, away from the beach and ocean. He hoped that he could find something to hunt – anything. He hoped he could ease the pains of hunger he and his wife were accompanied by with each step they took.
————————–
Old Bill looked up at the sun and took a deep breath of clean ocean air. He looked first to the path the river took, as it meandered through the field and emptied into the sea. Then he looked back at his wife, her long grey hair blowing freely in the breeze, and three grandkids, each laughing as they made their way up the estuary. A few miles back, they had parked not far from the new power plant – the one making clean, limitless power from deuterium and tritium – all derived cleanly from the sea. Upriver was the fishing spot he had fished as a wee lad. For a time, as a young man, it looked like the waters were getting bad, but the country got its act together, and teamed with industry, educators, investors and volunteer groups to restore the land to where it could be both good for the wild and good for the economy. Everyone won. They’d follow the path inland to ‘his spot’ – that gentle curve in the river with the steep drop off and the amazing fishing. He gestured to his beloved Zoe with his fishing rod, it’s graphite shaft reflecting the rising sun, and shouted as he pointed upriver, “Hurry, before someone gets their first!”. With a spring in his step, he bound up the path, his loved ones just behind. Soon he rest in a clearing of lush grass and cover by the river, cast out his line, and soon enjoyed the fresh bounty from the clear, clean water. More than that, surrounded by the view of the clean, vibrant and thriving river, its soothing sound relaxing him,he gave thanks for this moment by the river, and that which sustained he and his soul – the presence of his family, and of love.
Resources
1.) Heavy Water Cycle In The CANDU Reactor
2.) Solar Powered Reverse Osmosis Desalination: A Systematic Review
3.) Understanding The Impact Of PFAS Contamination On Agriculture
