Why the Panama Canal is Dying
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
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“The war in the Middle East will eventually end.” That’s what I love about this channel: it’s boundless optimism.
Which one
I says to myself "that would be the day" lmfao ya think Isriel is gonna stop dropping bombs all over the middle east??? Paid for by the USA of course but that's beside the point.
Saying it will end isn't boundless optimism. Saying how it will end is though. In this context he's indirectly saying that the war is not that important and it will end eventually. (millions of lives are important but there is 8 billion people and the conflict that is happening now is nothing compared to what has happened between world war 2 and now, planet had much bigger conflicts that threatened whole population)
It WILL end, we just dont know when
I certainly hope it does, but it's far from mathematically certain. It's like a predator/prey differential equation. Birth and death will find an equilibrium, whether the death is natural or violent. As long as neither side is strong enough or willing enough to completely wipe out the other, it could plausibly go on forever. Or until the sun burns up or something.
As a Panamanian, the government is planning to dam other rivers to supply water to the canal. We have a lot of water, it's just not distributed efficiently.
I wonder what ecological ramifications are in store for that decision
we don't care bout no stinking facts.....we have our alarmism
Because the PRD Sucks
@@connerschupp4543 Definitely some impact, loss of natural habitat, deforestation, etc. per usual.
@@tnekkc that is talked about in the video,
Interesting that the Mexican canal proposal also includes industrial parks along the route. Instantly sounds like "set up your new vehicle assembly plant here" to me, which is a pretty genius position to take, especially compared to the other alternatives proposed.
I think turning the rio grand into a new canal would solve the border issue create jobs n secure easy travel for the U.S. navy n prolly take the same amount of time to sail down to Panama n then cross
It is exactly as you imagine it, it's the ace in the hole to attract investment in the area, along with tax breaks and part ownership of the land after a set amount of time in use. It's meant to increase development in the area as well as solidify the project by injection of capital from mega corps. They're also building oil, and gas pipes along the corridor.
The rio grande isnt wide or shallow enough to allow maritime traffic, you can literally swim across it in seconds
Noy a canal, but a railroad
@@jassidom.. MEXICO is also building a canal .
I’m Panamanian and I got to tell you, they did teach me about the canal when I was in middle school, matter of facts I went on a school trip to the canal and I got to tell you first 9 min of this video I learn more about the canal than I did all 14 years I lived there, all I knew about it was how the boats pass through it.
that mightve been the education before, I'm currently in HS and i knew all this already. Apart from being taught in school you see it on the news.
Porque el sistema educativo enseña a tener un fuerte sentido nacionalista, más no la habilidad de pensar de manera crítica respecto a obras de estado
If you didn’t know how significant the canal by now, that would be your fault.
@fazmarsffect7108 public school? ... just acheck what was the Monroe doctrine? and what was the purpose of the Marshall plan ?
I never connected the idea that raising those water gates would have a fresh water cost. Crazy that theyre just dumping drinking water by the millions of gallons for every single ship that goes through.
the system like this wouldn't necessarily need to dump the water into the ocean, just make side-reservoirs in both entrances to keep a closed loop of water through the canal. regardless, american engineering is know for one thing in particular, making extreme things that waste as much resources as possible with the lowest quality and the highest price tag. so there's why the panama canal is doomed, they didn't account for basic stuff or any mildly extreme scenario. it just works(tm).
Just as a side note, fresh =/= potable. Fresh means it isn't salt water or ocean water. Potable or drinkable water means it's safe for human consumption
That water would still run into the ocean without the panama canal. That's just how the water cycle works. The only difference is that instead of continuously flowing out to the ocean in a river, it gets dammed into reservoirs and released in bursts whenever the locks let ships in and out.
@@toshley6192 thats the whole point, the panama canal disrupts the water cycle by throwing way too much fresh water into the ocean.
@@nyft3352 It's actually really brilliant engineering that doesn't consume any resources at all. Water evaporates from the ocean, falls as rain, forms into rivers that flow back into the ocean. That's just what water does. All the canal builders did essentially was built a few dams and sluice gates they can open and close to control the natural flow of rivers to raise and lower the water levels in small reservoirs (i.e locks).
In order to have a closed loop they would have to pump an entire river back up to the top of the mountain, which would consume quite a lot of electricity. Currently it's actually generating hydroelectricity in addition to the shipping lanes, since the entire system is gravity-fed.
My information is that the original engineers that planned the old Panama Canal, built reservoirs for the full locks to pump their water to when then wanted to lower a ship. The new "SmartAss" Panamax Canal builders neglected to build the reservoirs and chose to flush the receding locks into the ocean. Now they are scrambling to build the additional reservoirs.
That would have been the smarter option to do, trick would have to be that they only pump in fresh water from the sea level locations.
I was wonder why they didn't just reuse the water! Lol ty
Thank you. I was wondering the same thing as to why they didn’t reuse the water. Short- sightedness at its finest
I wouldn't say it's a bad design idea to not pump it back into the reservoir. It's a engineering design issue. Pumps require energy, gravity doesn't.
Of course this design choice didn't account for changes in weather.
So yeah they will need to correct it now.
Climate, not weather.
Not to mention that traveling around Cape Horn takes you through some of the most turbulent ocean on the planet.
It's known as Drakes passage, it's a fun adventure for the whole family 😂
Ships down there travel through the Straits of Magellan in Tierra Del Fuego which is much less turbulent and sheltered
This february in Los Angeles, it was one of the wettest ever recorded. I live in the deserts of Southern California, and we received two and a half times our normal february rainfall. And it's not done raining.
el niño doesnt regularly go through LA tho
@@sarafraga2801 It absolutely has an effect on the LA area.
I wonder if the LA River is actually flowing with water now 😂
@@loislewis5229 good question I don't know
@@loislewis5229no. Not really
Quick correction… As someone who has actually been through the Panama Canal… The water is not pumped. There are not any pumps involved, unless there are pumps in the new section. The original locks use gravity only. I do not know if that is the case for the new locks, but I would imagine so.
The solution to this problem would be to install pumps and feed back the water into the system then?
Kinda. It would "fix" the mechanical problem but I imagine operating costs of pumping so much water around all the time would be big and it would take very long to shift that amount of water around unless you built some gigantic pumps...
Everyone is looking forward to 2027, 2030 as if that is guaranteed for this collapsed and worsening society.😮
@@MatherfuckingKing virtually every hydro-storage dam handles large volumes of water
@@vdozsa77the new locks have reservoirs that can recover some of the water before it’s lost out to sea.
The panama canal could be re-built to double the number of ships passing through using the same amount of water. Currently, the locks can only be run in one direction at a time so when ships are going up, the level of the locks are changed with no ship in the lock when the level is lowered. If the locks were separated by a small lake, big enough for two ships to pass they could run ships in both directions simultaneously so that the locks never changed level without a ship in the lock, doubling the throughput without using any more water.
BTW, the reason they are limiting the cargo on the ships has nothing to do with the amount of water used, the same amount of water is used to change the level of the locks when a fully loaded ship is in the locks, or completely empty. The reason for reducing the cargo is to prevent the ships from running aground. The lower level of the lake means the channel is shallower, and the ships must have a shallower draft.
They have been rebuilding it…mainly so they can lock ships bigger than Panamax.
I think rebuilding the locks that way would only save half the water since you're just equalizing the water level between the up and down locks before raising the up lock to the reservoir level. The 3 basins on the new locks save more water (3/4 instead of 1/2). I think the only way to save more water in the locks is to either use more basins, which has diminishing returns or using some combination of low head turbines with pumps to pump water into the lock from downstream using the energy in the water coming in from upstream. both have pretty serious diminishing returns, so it's hard to do much better than 3 basins like the new locks have.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 No, it would double the throughput using the same amount of water. For example, if you put the intermediate lake at the same level as the water when the gate between the existing locks is open, you could pipe the water around the lake from the upper lock to the lower lock and have the locks behave exactly as they are, and it would work without any water flowing into or out of the intermediate lake. But the pipe is unnecessary, you could just use the intermediate lake as the pipe.
@@douglaspeale9727 duh. you're right. I was thinking two separate lanes. admitadely, your probably also right with separate lanes as long as there's enough space to cross over. I think you could design it on the Atlantic side, but the pacific side is too steep.
actually, now that I think about it, it should work that way as long as each lock never goes up or down without a ship in it, so as long as you alternate transit directions it should work, so I would assume the Panama Canal already does that.
It's interesting that you have overlooked the Panama Railway which has been operational for decades carrying containers between the two ports of the canal. Expansion and upgrade could also increase the carrying capacity of the "fifth" alternative.
Yeah, that's true. In fact, part of the cargo of the crossing ship is actually moved with the Railway as the ship is passing through the Canal.
So, improving this Railway can actually open another Railway Route and even allow the transfer of cargo in the same way that would be done with both the Paraguayan-led Transoceánico Highway, Colombian Railway and Mexican Railway Alternatives
Of course this should also come with other measures in respect of Oceanic Trade such as an standardization of Cargo Ship Sizes (which is also important to consider after what happened a few days ago in Baltimore or when the Mega Cargo Ship got stuck in the Suez Canal a few years ago) as well as preparation for dealing with trouble makers (such as the Somali Pirates (which they do still exist) and the Houthis) without heavily relying on having Military Ships escorting them all the time
Everything on this channel keep blowing my mind.
Fun fact, Costa Rica had a trans-oceanic railway network connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic via trains, but it was discontinued in the 90´s for "financial" reasons and now the train only runs in the central valley area where 60% of Costa Rica´s population lives, leaving the rest of the line in disrepair.
To be honest, its shocking that the government is not seriously proposing fixing the rail line as a possible proyect, specially with the current events :(
A similar problem here in the USA, we have the rail infrastructure in order the move these huge containers between the East Coast and West Coast. Sure, it requires some upgrading, but I don't understand why these companies don't consider using trains more. Takes about 3-5 days to get across country. Creates jobs, takes less time now with the 18+ day loop around South America and is also much greener than using large container ships and probably costs a whole lot less.
Panama does have one and it is used as well, so does Mexico and the USA but regardless of where the train is, a canal is more efficient than a train regardless of where it is
@@mathgamer8787I don't think you understand just how many containers a container ship holds...it's immense, and it would take dozens of trains to even carry a single load of such a ship; then you count the fact that there's many hundreds of these ships just for North America alone and the equivalent in trains to replace them would be in the THOUSANDS. There's absolutely no way to build enough rail to accommodate that type of traffic even considering that a train could do about 2 trips AND UNLOAD/OFFLOAD in the time it would take a cargo ship to just get to its location; the US certainly does need more rail, but it's never going to replace container ships. The only thing that will eventually replace container ships in the future (and even then it probably won't do so entirely) are massive jumbo jets and huge, modernised cargo blimps.
Note: the latter above is indeed in serious development by many companies, while blimps have been plagued with issues...modern technology is solving most of them, and we'll likely see massive cargo blimps in the skies in the next several decades at minimum
@@mathgamer8787Because it does not cost a whole lot less. Trains are much less efficient than cargo ships.
@@mathgamer8787cargo ships are both less carbon-intensive and cheaper than trains
Not to mention Cape Horn is one of the most dangerous passages that exists
"I want to spend a year going to and fro around The Horn" said no seafarer ever.
Is it? The straight of Magellan avoids those imaginary dangers.
The narrowest part is two miles, visit Punta Arenas, right on El Estrecho de Magallanes 🇦🇷
@@relwalretep "Do you take the Panama Canal like a Democrat, or do you go around the Horn?"
"Uhh, the canal?"
"No damn it! You take the Horn like God intended!"
You don't necessarily need to sail through Drake's Passage. The Beagle Channel and Strait of Magellan lie just north of it and have much calmer waters. It's what ships used to do before the Panama Canal was opened.
@@zddxddyddw thank you, eso yo no sabía.
Pasando por Ushuaia.
Thanks for these very high quality video you make for us!
Great video. This has has always been one of the flagship CZcams channels in my opinion. I heard about this Panama Canal problem, and I was aware that there was an environmental factor, and this video does a good job of explaining it.
As commented above, no water is pumped in the Panama Canal, it's all gravity fed.
The new set of locks are hugely larger that the original set, to take much larger ships, but they use 7% less water. 60% of the water in the new locks is reutilized and never leaves the system.
When talking about all of the different projects in other countries, what you didn't mention in the video is that Panama has two Canals; one wet and one dry. The Dry Canal is a very efficient container cargo train that joins the ports on the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea (there is no Atlantic in Central America).
The Dry Canal train transports goods across the 80 km isthmus much faster than any of the options in other countries, and has been running for many years, so all the logistics and other issues are well-proven.
To increase the water capacity of the lakes, Panama is looking at options for more reservoirs.
As mentioned in the video, the vast majority of the population of Panama is near the Canal, and the sites of proposed dams and lakes are in low population density areas.
I was exactly wondering why not repump lots of the same water back up to fill up intermediate locks. thanks
Mexico is beginning to develop port facilities that will handle some of this traffic.
I also thought this same thing, the thinness of the country means that any form of land transport would be worth it maybe just to avoid the extra 18 days
@@mxandrew For powers that can have multiple ships on either side that's a possibility. For groups that rely on the ship itself making the entire journey, a land porterage isn't exactly possible. If the US Navy to Taiwan example occurs, they're kind of sending the ships full of guns, men, supplies, ammunition, medical, equipment, etc., which means the whole ship goes or naught at all.
You know most people don't read all the information just the thumbnail header
In my opinion the easiest thing to do is just to build reservoirs along the locks. This is what the (admittedly smaller) locks on the Rhein-Main-Donau Kanal in Germany do. Since they don't have much water entering the canal at its highest point when a ship wants to go down through a lock they simply pump all the water into a concrete tank. When a ship wants to go back up they pump the water back up into the lock. It uses basically zero water and solves the problem.
They can’t do that because they can’t pollute the freshwater in Lake Gatun.
Nobody said pump the water back into the lake. Pump it into a reservoir and then back to the top lock
Thats what I was thinking, just build additional reservoirs along the locks to minimize freshwater loss. The water from the last lock is currently just being pumped into the ocean, so why not save and reuse it?
Panamanian here we need actual politicians running the government instead of the corrupt monkeys that are inside of it. They don’t care shit about deforestation around the canal or doing something about it they just want the dividends of it to fund their stupidity and corruption
@@MamboGimbobilithat was exactly what I was thinking aswell I wonder why this isn't being done, maybe the amount of water is too grand for our modern tech or it requires really expensive pumps
Very educational. Great watch
excellent presentation.
Worth mentioning that the canal is useful and can save millions of $ (and many, many lives of crew members) because Cape Horn is the most dangerous and vioent stretch of ocean on the planet. Many ships that go through there face unreal waves (sometimes surpassing 15-20 meters of height) that travel very fast and are incredibly steep that badly damage the ships and their cargo if they are container carriers, without mentioning the enormous weight that the ice adds to them, as water is sprayed by the waves and immediately frozen all throughout the ships, making them very unstable and prone to sinking.
The clash of the currents from the Southern Ocean with the South Atlantic combined with the immensely powerful winds create some of the most unique and destructive waves on the planet.
Once you go in, you can't turn around, you simply have to proceed. The weather can go from extremely bad and dangerous to straight up deadly in a matter of minutes with no warnings.
The horrific stories that many seafarers have to tell about that passage are heart wrenching to say the least, many of them thought they wouldn't make it out alive because the conditions were just SO bad.
So yeah, it is a very dangerous place to go through, you really do NOT want to go through that passage unless you absolutely have to.
During the age of sail a ship sailing around cape horn could count on losing about 10% of their rigging crew.
That's why they used Magellan strait
Agulhas current?
@@gmikecstein that's... insane, I didn't know that. Thanks for the information, it's always good to learn something new.
@@gmikecstein yeesh how awful. I wouldn't sail that route in a modern ship today. No thanks. Waves. Big waves.
Was just reading recently that the El Niño is actually in the process of already transitioning back to a La Niña, which is definitely much quicker than people were expecting for how strong this El Niño seemed to be
How many of us are old enough to remember back when weather was attributed to El Nino and La Nina?
It already has. Australia and New Zealand experience the opposite system to the Americas, and it’s definitely a El Niño summer.
Just more climate alarmism from NOAA.
Ain’t Mother Nature a great comedian!!! 😂
Panama canal pack 🚬
Love LOVE ypur stuff man. I stumbled across your channel about a month ago And it's quickly become my number one source for non-bias geopolitical facts and other tidbits of fascinating info. A video a day at least. Im only halfway thru this vid so forgive me if the answer shows up later but why can't they use salt water as opposed to fresh water in the locks?
If the goal is to get shipping containers from coast to coast, why would you build roads for trucks instead of rails for trains? Each truck can only move 1 or two containers where the trains can move hundreds.
Trucks are for distribution from arteries not the arteries of travel themselves.
Plus, since there would be very few stops for the train, it would be one of the best candidates for high speed rail.
Auto and oil industry ruins everything they touch
Interesting Fact about the Panama Canal. During WW2 when Countries like Japan were building the largest Battleship of all time (Yamato) the United States largest Battleship designs were limited by the width of the Panama Canal. So the United States largest battleship was the (Iowa Class Battleship) instead of building wider was built longer. The Iowa Class Battleship was a full 24 feet longer than the Yamato. This extra length made the Iowa Class much faster than the Yamoto. Iowa's could travel up to 37 MPH meanwhile the Yamoto top speed was 31 MPH.
Another key difference is that the USS Iowa and her class are still in commissioned service, albeit not active duty; meanwhile the Yamato is a coral reef.
@@Lusa_Iceheart minor nitpick, the Iowa's ahve been fully struck from the naval register, they are not ever expected to return to service. And Yamato is too deep underwater to be a reef.
Necessity is the mother of badass!
Yeah but the longer Hull also meant it was less manuverable. The iowa class has a turning diamter of 760m, the yamoto has only 585m (175m smaller diameter), this is extremely important in the age of torpedos.
As it means for a given speed the yamato can turn better meaning it can maintain higher speeds in combat without risking it's ability to turn out of the path of torpedos.
Going through the Drake Passage is not only longer, its way, way more likely to sink your ship. There's a reason it was feared by mariners of past.
That is also why the Pacific ocean is called like that, due to the ships leaving the tumultuous Drake Passage and suddenly encountering a way more peaceful stretch of sea... Hence, Pacific ocean
Perhaps in the days of sailing ships. Modern ships don't sink.
What about the Strait of Magellan?
@@happilyham6769 Yeah they basically redefine physics and hydrodynamic laws.
@@happilyham6769 Between 2013-2022 807 ships sunk and around 300 were (generally) modern cargo ships, Yknow' back in April of 1912 some other people thought their modern (for the time) ship was unsinkable.
I can "fix" the Panama Canal.
Proposal 1
One of the earliest plans for the canal was a sea level crossing. The expense of that plan got it rejected, and the existing canal was the winning proposal.
The costs of digging out the sea level crossing have fallen, and that plan could be revisited.
Proposal 2
Each crossing "costs" 52,000,000 gallons of water.
Stop it.
No seriously, stop it.
Two options for ending the use of water:
1 don't let gravity do the work. Use pumps to pump the 52,000,000 gallons up from the lower level to the upper level (except maybe the top level, to reduce the salt contamination in the lake).
2 have a pool next to the lock. Don't drain the water from above, or pump from below, but use a water pool per lock for the water source, and the pumping "costs" are reduced and the water source is maintained local to the lock. This eliminates contamination, and reduces water use for minimal extra power.
Proposal 2 option 2 is the most practical, as it uses 100% of the existing canal, but with enhancements to limit water loss.
Proposal 1 is the most sustainable, with zero additional power use, and, all being sea level makes the maintenance easier, but would take the equivalent work of making an all new canal, just within the space of the current one.
I would do #2(2) to stabilize it now, and begin work on #1 for a more permanent solution. But nobody asked me.
Unfortunately, I expect Panama will run the existing canal without improvements until dead, then wait for some other country to swoop in with trillions of dollars to fix it for them. For doing nothing is always the easiest option. It just usually results in failure.
As an engineer, I would propose that the water from the final lock be pumped back up to the lake, rather than dumped into the ocean. Can pumps be built with that capacity? Can Panama afford the cost of it?
I work in logistics and we pretty much never ship through the Panama Canal…. All products from Asia heading to the east coast just disembark at LA or Sea/Tac and rail across the US to the east coast. Doesn’t make sense to use the canal these days since most of the ships coming out of Asia can’t even fit through the canal…
But isn't rail transport like 100x more expensive?
@@rcl5555 not really. A few large carriers have rail as apart of their transport portfolio and intermodal transport is quite common in the industry. It’s very common to have something shipped to a port, loaded onto rail to a distribution center and then trucked to an end consumer. V
@@leewald733 Interesting! I'd think that for a long distance transportation (e.g. across the continent) a single container ship taking 5000 TEU would be more economical than ~20 trains that would carry the same load, especially taking into account not just fuel but also loading/unloading...
@@rcl5555 the problem is the canal’s width hasn’t been updated to accommodate those size vessels. Hence why 40% of the US imports come through LA. It can still accommodate Naval size vessels and small container ships but the massive vessels that are used in most mega ports these days are just way too wide.
Instead the traffic in the pacific usually takes a circular approach where they just go from port to port around the pacific dropping and picking up loads. That’s vastly more efficient for the fuel costs. With rail there is SO many trains coming out of LA it’s insane, you can usually get a pretty solid rate for overland transit of the same TEU or FEU (i usually work in FEU’s).
The other nice aspect to this model is if you have to throw some air into the mix it doesn’t completely change the distribution strategy. You just fly it into the same entry port city instead of ship it.
😂😂😂 los barcos que no pueden pasar por el canal de Panamá es una mínima parte de la flota mundial.. Y es así porque no tiene sentido construirlos más grandes y que no puedan pasar por el canal NO SERÍA RENTABLE.. Hablas sin saber y sin tener algo de lógica por lo menos..
Un contenedor sólo paga de 30 a 40 dólares por atravesar el canal..
Es tan importante el canal.. que cuando lo amplíen se construirán barcos más grandes.. En pocas palabras los tamaños de los barcos dependen del canal de Panamá..
Is it just me or does the audio sound slightly off this video?
No the gain or something is turned up too high
And he talks too fast.
No but he talks way too fast. I generally like quick talkers and when people don't beat around the bush but I'm having a difficult time with this
No but sometimes that happens to me on my phone and when I restart the app it fixed it
It sounds like this was recorded on his phone or something
Fascinating content with information I have always wanted to know more about. It's a great thing to learn about new things with such global impact.
Just one word: Zeppelins.
Now THAT would be COOL! 😎
Sage
4:30 You should have mentioned that Panama would not even exist as a country if it wasn't for the canal. It used to be part of Colombia. When separatists declared the isthmus independent, Teddy Roosevelt immediately officially recognized them as an independent state because of his interest in building a US canal through that land.
Edit: Roosevelt also sent US warships to blockade both Panamanian coasts so that Colombia couldn't send in their troops to restore control; and southern Panama's impassable Darien Gap prevented the Colombian army from driving up there, too. The new Panamanian government was naturally grateful to the US and granted the US a perpetual lease for control of what would become the Canal Zone.
Colombia should take it back.
As a seasoned Civilization 6 player, whenever I play the Earth map as one of the American Civs, I always try and build a city where Panama is because your ships can just easily slip through the city. It's absolutely vital for controlling the seas around that part of the world!
That's exactly what the US did, Panama was a Colombian province, the Americans pushed for their independence to cut Colombia out of the canal deal.
I never really seem to use ships in civilization
One more turn
@@trevortimmreckSadly you don't need to. Land combat is all you really need even on Deity.
@@NONO-hz4vo That depends. If you're playing as Australia on the True Start Earth map, ships is all you need. As long as you can control the seas around you, no-one will ever land on your island.
Obviously though, that's good if you want to play defensively. If you're going for a domination victory, you do need land combat units, although ships can still take most coastal cities.
Fresh water instead of draining into the sea, it must be reused in a circular motion just as we use water in a fountain This ensures use of minimal use of Fresh water for the canal.
I completely agree with you.
You didn't mention that Panama recently completed the Panamax locks which are much larger than the old locks, big enough to accommodate the larger container ships and supertankers. Larger locks mean greater water consumption. The dams and reservoirs built for the old Panama Canal didn't have the volume to run the new locks. The Panama government will have to build some new dams to supply enough water to overcome a drought.
Those larger ones are actually more efficient. They use quite a bit less water for significantly more cargo being let through.
Panamax is a size of ship referencing the maximum size the old locks. The new size is Neopanamax. And these new locks are more efficient, ad mentioned.
@@vanityplates_sewhat about the post-Panamax size, where does that fall in the scale
@@juaneer They really need to stop naming and start numbering at this point.
@@sirkanabut Panamax works so well tho as a word
When you are describing how the locks work there are no pumps, only valves. The valves are opened from the higher lock and water flows due to gravity to the lower chamber and stops itself when they reach equilibrium.
But that wouldn't be enough, right? It'll work for the bulk, but the weight of the ship with cargo will leave too much height difference between the two locks, I'd assume.
@@erik2602 only gravity. I lived there from 66-81. My dad was a canal pilot. I've actually operated the controls for the valves once.
@@erik2602 No, the water level simply becomes the same and the sluice doors can be opened.
@@erik2602Bulk doesn't matter - all that matters for these calculations is the ship's displacement.
Can pumps be installed to move the water back into the Lake?
17:48 I have been to That place. IT IS only a few Kilometerstand away from my Home. I usually Go there by the Underground Train, Like a Lot of people in Hamburg.
El niño is associated with warm water which drives HIGHER than average rainfall. La niña leads to lower than average rainfall for Eastern Pacific
it actually depends on what part of the world you're in, El Niño for central america is always associated with LESS rainfall since the warm waters stay close to us, and La Niña with heavy rainfalls as the temperature on the waters around us is colder, on other side of the planet is actually the opposite as in El Niño the cold water stay around Asia(if I'm not mistaken it is Asia) it causes heavy rainfall for them.
I remember in 2013 I lived in Colombia for a while, one of my favorite conversations was about how Colombia has been planning to connect some of those rivers to create a second inter-oceanic path, one that would be less convenient than the Panama canal, but with a much higher capacity for ships.
2024 and nowhere to be seen. Something like that is not chicha de piña or as simple as making pineapple juice
No way in hell man, I live pretty near one of the country's most prominent rivers and that would require absurd ammounts of engineering to work, let alone connecting ALL the rivers, and the time ships would have to spend is ludicrous compared to Panama's Canal, and not to mention the incredible ammounts of corruption and malpractices common in the government of this beautiful cesspool of a country
In 1901, the United States government's Isthmian Canal Commission determined that the Atrato River was not suitable for a canal, due to the length of the route (over 100 miles) and the large amount of silt carried by the river, and recommended Nicaragua and Panama as preferable sites.
Both Nicaragua and Mexico have seriously proposed a second canal in the past, as well as Colombia. The Chinese-funded Nicaraguan one even got as far as some digging started - which was a major motivation for the widening of the Panama canal (ie the wider Panama canal able to take bigger ships made the Nicaraguan one uneconomic). But the cheapest and easiest way to give much needed redundancy for trade is a railway and a couple of large container ports. Then of course there is also the Northwest passage which is now becoming open most summers ...
@@kenoliver8913 That timeline is not quite right. In Panama we had a national referendum in 2006 that approved the expansion of the canal. The project began the same year. It was inaugurated in 2016.
The Nicaragua canal started doing their façade digging in 2014. The reason was that Panama was having a major economic boom (10-15% YoY) due to all the money invested and the Chinese and Nicaraguans wanted a slice of that
25:00 to add up to the Colombian alternative:
- In the past, Colombia had overcomed the geographical difficulties of the mountains and had a respectable railroad system. Due to various issues, like lobbying by the trucker guilds, most of the lines have been abandoned. The current government is pushing to revive them, and popular opinion wants the trains back.
- The US had also proposed a canal through the Darien Gap in the Colombian part, but it was discarded for environmental concerns.
I say that Mexico is the only one right now that can get profit out of the situation, as it already has a transoceanic train.
As a Oaxacan, the Transistmus is set to make big moves starting this year thanks to the current government taking very good advantage of the area to set up the trains, however the biggest problems are currently the rampant corruption that will inevitably bog down this project like it has done to the Toluca High Speed Rail Network and also that the Transistmus is servicing both freight and passenger trains as a concession to the villages which were affected by the construction or whose homes were expropriated illegally by the government without compensation.
Like they care about the environment LMFAO 😂. The USA at that!! even more hilarious LMFAO 🤣
@@dmbfannh well... the US said they need to use nuclear explotions to dig the cannal there...
And it's also necesary to disrupt the flow of a major river in he region
@@caballeroarepa9223 hey that's what the soviet union did back in the day!
A very interesting and well put together vid, but unless i missed it, the problem with the Panama Canal, is more to do with the mix of sea water that is an endless tap, and freshwater that is not, perhaps all the lower locks on both sides should be pumped from the sea to fill?
Need to re-discover the North West Passage ladies and gentlemen! It provides the same benefit as the Panama Canal, but without the size restriction. It only has seasonal restriction between April or May, till October or November. That's for starters. Also, there has been talk a good 25 -30 years to provide a second, or alternative Panama Canal through Nicaragua. I heard that they started to dig for it, but then I never heard about it again. It needs to be re -started pronto.
For the love of god fix your audio levels! Love this channel keep it up!
Adjust your volume.😩
It sounds super blown out
@@jackb1997 probably over compressed or improper use of normalization or limiting. Usually the audio is better than this but it's very noticeable here.
@@rachelredden6682sorry try to ask why he’s posting that before you come up with some silly response
This comment needs more attention.
Waiting 18 days is still significantly cheaper than traveling 18 days,
though at some point it might be cheaper to unload it onto land transport over land and load onto another ship - that is though requires a lot of infrastructure change to streamline something like this
You have to consider that the Drake Passage is free. So the alternatives are:
1) Cost of waiting 18 days + Panama Canal fare
2) Cost of sailing 18 days (additional fuel cost)
If the situation becomes critical enough, going around Cape Horn could become an alternative for some ships.
That's what they used to do for centuries prior to the US building the Panama Canal.
Also have to take into account how punishing sailing around the southern tip of South America is. That is one hostile stretch of water
I have watched a few documentary videos about building the Panama Canal. I remember that rain was a hindrance for creating landslides
12:50 is wrong. The load restrictions (actually draft/depth restrictions) are due to the water levels in the lake. In fact, the amount of water required to raise the level of the ship is fixed at the loch surface area multiplied by the total elevation difference and entirely independent of the ships size and weight. It's not intuitive but if you have a measuring cup that holds 2 cups and you want to raise it from the 1 cup line to the 2 cup line you have to add 1 cup of water, it doesn't matter if you have rubber duck in it or if you fill the bottom half with sand first, you still have to add 1 cup of water to move the water level up.
I'm glad you point this out. I sat here thinking about it for 15 min. "Lighter ships displace less water and thus require less water to move through the locks" intuitively sounds so correct and yet is so wrong.
Correction: most ships will use the Magellian channel and not Drake’s passage. It doesn’t makes much difference in distance but less hazardous.
“Work’s completely differently to how other canals work” then explains how a normal canal works…
As far as I understand, the difference between the Panama Canal and others is that it has a canal between two lock systems. And this canal is not connected to other water systems, so it can dry out.
@BestHakase it's just geographical
It's a lock system , nothing technical.
what do you expect from CZcams? Too many people with keyboards posting their thoughts without much knowledge.
@@BenLapke, it's free speech,
Up to you what you make of it.
The best solution I see is storing the water, like the new locksets do. Finding a nearby place to hold it might be an issue and they might need to augment gravity with actual pumps. Beats bringing commerce to a halt and perhaps giving a competing system a leg up, which Panama could be hard pressed to recover from once its operational.
Why not just pump the water back from the first lock into a seperate water reservoire or directly into the lake? This is also done with waterbridges and works perfectly fine. No water needs to be wasted.
This seems like the easiest solution by far
Great content but the audio is rough
Glad I wasn't the only one to notice the drop of audio
Audio scratchy
I'm guessing it's because it just went live, that or they recorded this on a 2005 Motorola razr
Sounds like he accidentally recorded through a laptop microphone
Sounds like AI
The sound was a bit tinny for this video compared to usual videos.
I wonder if Panama could potentially build a high-capacity freight railway along the route of the canal to offload some of the pressure on the canal (ships could either deload, cross the canal, and reload their cargo on the other side, or they could simply offload and another ship handle the rest of the route). The land and environmental demand would be significantly less than making new lakes, and it would reduce the water demand of the canal itself, which would keep it's viability for longer.
But there's probably some major geography reason why this is unfeasible
Some ideas that came to mind that could help the Panama canal was maybe if it could be done making the canal all one level that way those other water sources wouldn't be involved or another idea that comes to mind is if you make a mod to the current system where water is stored for each of the raisings to not lose the water at the final gate and have that water have a pipe or tube bring that water back to the 1st gate. Then that boat is let out.
The draft restrictions aren’t to reduce water usage per transit. It actually increases water consumption per transit. The deeper a ships draft, the less water needed to be added to each lock. The draft restrictions were added (really reduced from what they are normally) because ships would otherwise potentially run aground given the lower lake levels
That makes more sense! I wondered why they'd limit the load on ships given that carrying as many containers as possible is the whole purpose of the ships' existence.
Thank you. That one was doing my head in! Also, I know they can't pump sea water into the locks because you don't want that in the lake right... But why does the fresh water they use not get reused? Surely it could be pumped into holding tanks or something. Why does it all just get flushed?
Actually you're both incorrect, it uses the same amount of water regardless of the ships displacement therefore if you wanted to maximise tonnage transferred per litre of water used you'd only allow the biggest ships possible (fully loaded) through. But as you rightly say the draft limit is due lower lake levels.
The best way to think about it is that say the ship rises by 6m when the water equalizes in locks 1 & 2 then you effectively take 6m of water out of lock 2 and put it in lock 1 but that's undisplaced water from 'under' the ship as the ship is still displacing the same amount of water before and after the lock equalizes.
@@SteepSixif you pump the lock dry to stop the fresh water from escaping into the sea you would essentially leave the ship scraping the bottom, damaging the ships keel. I would love to be a fly on that rooms wall when the Panamanian reps try to explain to shipping companies that their multi million dollar cargo carriers are going to be consumables unce they go through the locks. Because those things are definitely not designed to sit on their own keel while fully laden with cargo and fuel.
@@Hileeeee Displacement, by definition is the volume of water a ship takes up. A larger ship has a larger displacement than a smaller ship or the same ship but with more cargo onboard vs less cargo on board. The lock needs to be filled or lowered to the same level no matter what for ships to pass to the next lock. If your ship is displacing more water, less water is required to be added or removed from the lock to bring it to the correct height.
Lets say the locks require 4 million gallons of volume to be raised / lowered to the next lock's level. If your ship displaces a million gallons of water, you only need to add / remove 3 million gallons of water. By raising the draft restrictions, and given the locks only allow a set width and length ship through, ships have to displace a lower volume. So if your ship can now only displace 800,000 gallons. You need an extra 200,000 gallons of water added or removed.
quick google search each lock uses about 48 mil gal of water. qatar build a tank that hold 115 mil gal of water. assuming all the water of fist lock needs to be pumped back to the last, which is an over estimation, it can be moved to a 48 mil gal tank and then pumped to the last lock. i worked somewhere that has pumps with 6000 hp motors and had over 1000 ft of head easily. none of this would be cheap or fast but it can be done and used in drought situations. in use times the pumps can be can to recover some of water and to keep things from sitting unused for a long time.
Just thinking through the geometry. You definitely got something wrong regarding shipping weight.
The amount of water needed to change elevation is smaller the more displacement the ships have. Because the larger ship is taking up space on the lock that would have to otherwise be taken up by water to get the elevations from one lock to the next to line up. Each lock is a fixed volume and the elevation change from ocean to lake is a fixed number for any particular ship.
The only way that less ship displacement would correlate with lower water use per ship is if the ships were smaller in plan area and there were a parellel set of locks with a smaller plan area. to use for them.
Its also possible that lower loads are happening but you got the reason for it wrong. For example if the water level in the upper lake is too low to float ships with a deeper draft because the channel is not dredged deeply enough.
Does the audio sound... _off?_ to anyone else, at least in the beginning? It sounds kinda tinny and/or clipped, like the mic was way too sensitive or something.
Even today, shipping by sea is still the most efficient. I can't imagine a land route Rivaling the Panama Canal.
If the Panama Canal can only handle 10-12 ships per day then the land route doesn't have to compete with the canal, it just has to compete with the Drake Passage.
@@billhutchinson6318 the issue I'm picturing is the fact that it's a single giant highway from one end to the other. In most countries, a truck bottleneck is rarely a problem because the trucks go all different ways. In order to stay competitive you'd need essentially a truck leaving the dock every few minutes. Now add millions of people who have access to places they never have before and you could have traffic jams literally dozens of miles long
@skeetsmcgrew3282 I'm not saying that it necessarily will be a solution that makes economic sense. I don't know enough about the situation and all the relevant factors.
The only point I'm making is that the alternative land routes are competing with the economics of going around the Drake pass, not the Panama Canal.
trains are more efficent than 20 ships a day @@billhutchinson6318
At the end of the day, I hope the Mexican railway will succeed. It will change the lives of so many people for the better
The audio quality of this video is sub-par. Did you change your codec or mic?
Another option is to connect the Alaska Railroad to the rest of the North America rail network. Freight could go from Asia to Anchorage and then be shipped by rail faster to the East Coast than coming through the Panama Canal.
If I were Canada I would push this and charge a small fee for each container
Y el precio? Optimizas la logística que a funcionado por más de 50 años de una manera rápida y espectacular..😂
Deja las drogas..
that’s a good idea, i’ve been advocating connecting the Alaska railroad to Canada for a long time. seems like a no brainer. They could also catch about 20% of the fresh water in the streams that flow into the ocean in Alaska, Canada and pipe it south to the southwest. but no! they let it go in the ocean and waste it.
That barely deals with the US supply chain. What about the rest of the world?
Theres no way this would save money
Just a tip, you're making the name Tehuantepec harder than it needs to be: it's only four syllables, te-wan-te-pek. The digraph "hu" before another vowel is always a W sound in Spanish, and languages spelled according to Spanish rules, like Nahuatl ("Na-watl"), which is the source of many Mexican place names.
The "hu" is easy to explain, but good luck getting people to understand that final "tl" 😅The word Nahuatl has two syllables, but I think the average person trying to sound it out would probably pronounce it with four.
As an Australian all Im getting from this is we are far closer to Asian countries were most things are made yet somehow they charge us shitloads more for "Shipping" when there's no ridiculously expensive engineering feats required to get anything here.
Living in Sydney, sometimes shipping for us is 2-3x more than what it costs from China -US.
the drake passage has limited availability. it is very far South, the storms there make it impassable for most ships for the middle of the year - Winter in the southern hemisphere.
I love how even with all the confusing war and politics, mother nature is somehow a harder thing to understand and handle 😭
damn even nature can't handle politics
Mother nature doesn't care about your race, genetics or nationality; it will kill everything that you love and own.
Incidentally, humanity can deal with mother nature like how we literally slowed down the rotation of the Earth by damming.
That's because we can't control it. We are completely powerless against it
Not so much, this year El Niño was pretty weak compared to decades ago.
poison ivy was right
There is also the land bridge in existence between the US Pacific NW & the US East Coast. The Ports of Tacoma & New York have been operating together for years.
Um ... are you referring to the north american continent as a land bridge? Just double checking
And how do you move a ship across a "land bridge"?
@@CanMav You don't, but most of the alternatives mentioned in the video are also land transport. In many cases it's only the cargo that needs to be transported, not the ships.
@@ETophaleshow many days compared to say the 118 mile railway in Mexico???
@@ETophales thing is, a long train, and I mean a really long train can have around 130 train cars (personally, longest I´ve seen was 112 cars long, but I know there are longer ones). They can go nuts and go 200 cars on a single train but rail intersections would become much more dangerous. While a single container ship can carry up to 15,000 containers, each around twice the capacity of a train car. That´s why a water canal is many times more efficient that a train line.
However, given that Panama Canal will not be operating at full capacity, the shortest land route by train becomes the second best aternative. This is because a ship takes 8-10 hours to cross the canal, but a train would take a bit less than 5 hours to cross those 118 mile railway, meaning they can load cargo on the Pacific, unload it in the Gulf, then loading cargo on the Gulf and unload it in the Pacific on its way back and be done about the same time a ship would take to make it just one way. So, by doing this non-stop and adding several parallel railway lines, you can indeed reach numbers similar to the Canal.
Now, while there is a rail line between NY and Tacoma, that takes 3 days on train (at least for passengers, not sure for cargo trains). Sure, it is there, but you can´t compare the time it takes to go between both coasts to what it takes on Mexico or Central America.
This idea of transferring from ship to train and then back to ship added major costs, historically. But the switch to shipping containers changed things. The costs of transferring cargo from ship to rail and back are far lower than they used to be.
I'm telling you!!! Build the Cal/Tex Express Canal from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast through Texas, NM, AZ, CA. Make it 2 huge lanes 1 west & 1 east with enough extra space for several ships; X-Large, Large, a couple Medium & several small vessels, including Emergency & Guard Vessels. Don't lower & raise the water in each lock for only 1 or a couple vessels.
The Bi-oceanic corridor is a terrible idea, you'd need THOUSANDS of trucks just to service one cargo ship. It's crazy that they didn't use rail for that since rail already can support containers and you need significantly less crew and fuel using a railway. Additionally the Northwest Passage also exists as an alternative.
It is a good idea for south America though, if they can build it before anyone else. And once they do, it won't really matter how little time and money it saves compared to sailing around cape Horn as long as it saves at least some.
no it's not, and it's excellent for Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile products.
AFAIK it also includes rail
it already exist. Check google maps.
What this really shows is how accustomed we've become to the luxuries, comforts, and conveniences afforded to us by uninterrupted international trade. Going back is unthinkable.
Imo it rather shows how much short term profit matters. There are alternative projects to both Panama and Suez canal, but it costs money and who needs redundancy when there is already one built? Our global economy has gotten so reliant on the easiest solutions built decades ago that innovation is mostly limited to how to conduct trade itself. Just recall how much we were scared of a global economic crisis when Ever Given got stuck in Suez Canal. One damn ship. And anyone who defends this line of thought with costs and time, just think that both Panama and Suez were built in 10 YEARS, with technology wastly inferior to what we have today.
Management is about always going for low hanging fruit. Ex of a typical grocery chain. They will maintain and "fix" a constantly breaking refrigeration system that keeps malfunctioning, rather than repair it... because "the upfront cost is lower". Thereby proving it's not IQ that makes you smart...it's how you use it.
Sidenote: how is a pattern recognition test an indication of intelligence. Once you learn the pattern it's easily replicated. 😒🙄
Panama thought they were being handed a gold mine, but they failed to understand how much of a loss it was being operated at. The US was subsidizing it the entire time it was operating under their control.
Ive been saying for a while that a country depending on international trade is a very bad idea. Because if something goes wrong, everything falls apart. Trade is fine, but there also needs to be a robust system in place for self sufficiency. Nothing can top being able to take care of yourself, especially when an emergency happens.
@@SvendleBerries
I get what you're saying, but almost every modernized country is now dependent on international trade and business.
Simple f* solution... - pump water back into the sweet water containers (not to the sea) - cause originally you're not really "pumping" water from the higher reservoir to the lower, you're just using a natural pressure (at cheap) for levels to equalise;
Pumping back up with actually mean an expenditure of energy (so money); but hey...
At the 4:44 mark that is me on the far left wearing the grey pineapple shirt! That was taken back when i was working onboard one of the National Geographic ships!
It's crazy both the Suez canal and Panama canal are both suffering rn. It's actually terrifying for the global economy :(
not the suez canal
dont worry with modern ship and technology it only will consume more oil to move things around world and country that have oil will decrease prices for that companies because at end of day they need rich countris to buy things.
@@t.n.h.ptheneohumanpatterna8334 Are you not up to date on the whole "Red Sea" incidents occurring right now? Last time I checked, the Suez canal is there to provide quicker access through the red sea rather than having to navigate the continent of Africa
@@AnEntityBrowsingYT the crisis in middle east mostly impacts asia and oceania not europe or the americans
@@t.n.h.ptheneohumanpatterna8334 I don't think you realize that europe also imports things from asia and relies on the suez for it
None of the water used in the Panama Canal is pumped. The ships are raised by water flowing from an upper lock chamber to a lower chamber. Ships are lowered by lowering the water level in the upper chamber were the ship is to the upper level of the next lower chamber.
Well it wouldn't be that hard to install pumps in the future now would it
@vejet why would you want to install pumps and have to maintain when they work or fix them when they fail when the water has been flowing from the level of the lake down to sea-level for free for over a century?
@@thomasetchberger8678 Because without it the system could cease to function in severe droughts? I mean did you even watch the video, that is exactly what is happening.
Yes I understand adding pumps will result in some significant upfront capital and installation costs as well as ongoing maintenance costs, even if they are not continuously used. But I think it's a just wee bit better than the alternative solution i.e. the "hope and pray method", that the rains come back. I mean how is that even a viable option when your entire economy literally depends on normal canal functionality? It's sheer incomitance that they haven't installed pumps already if only as a contingency to deal with exactly this type of problem.
@@vejet the Panama canal uses 2.6 million megalitres of water each year. That's 2.6 billion tonnes to send 26 metres uphill and several kilometres inland. Pumping just a fraction of that would cost more than the canal is worth. Ships would stop using the canal because it would be cheaper to take the 18 extra days to go all the way around South America, or they'd just stop carrying those routes altogether.
@@vindik8or 1300 GWh is the yearly energy needed in the absolute worst case scenario which equates to about 300 Million EUR per year at the absolute worst price for kWh .. so it can be done, and it can be done economically. Build a nuclear reactor and the problem is solved.
I've came across this video and a video about wirtz pump after. Now, I'm thinking of using the pump design to get water from the ocean to fill canals, instead of from the lakes. The wirtz is perfect for transporting water from low to high levels. IDK am crazy
I believe a shorter alternative route from US East Coast to Asia is via Cape Good Hope instead of Cape Horn
Obviously, it would be expensive, but does anyone know if Panama has considered pumping the water back to the lake when draining the lower locks instead of dumping the fresh water into the ocean?
Polluting the lake with salt water would have huge impacts to people and wildlife that depend on the lake.
Directly it’s a bad idea as the other comentes said it’s pretty much polluted water it could costly but it’s is possible to retrofit the reservoir pools which are used on the new locks
But again we need a real administration not corrupt monkeys
Water from the lower lock mixes with the higher lock every time they're opened, which is why the strategy is to always have the water flow towards the ocean as much as possible so that minimal amounts of salt water can make its way all the way to the top being diluted at each step. (Also means gravity is doing the work so you don't need to be burning fuel so much.) Pulling the water back up to any higher lock counteracts this and gets into the lake, and the more water is reused the more poluted it becomes. It does feel like there should be a way to help reduce how much water it costs but they have designed it to be pretty efficient already (while avoiding poisoning themselves too much), with ships going up and down at the same time to cut the usage in half. (And actually, I just realized that they actually do a bit of this, each of the locks in the newer systen has a reuse basin already that is designed to catch as much as it can while minimizing pollution into the lake)
I also saw some other commenters wondering about a nuclear powered desalination plant to help produce more fresh water from the oceans, but I suspect that can't produce enough to meet demand.
with water treatment and desalination, you could put clean water into the locks without it having to come from the lake.
@@theevermind It's already expensive, most often prohibitive to desalinate water for human consumption. Forget trying to make enough for a billion dollar canal to operate.
If that tech was available, the owners would be trillionaires.
Can’t help but think that shipping by road/rail from Houston to LA would be cheaper than the Bi-Oceanic Corridor through Paraguay and three other countries.
Rail is a way to go for freight.
Oh nonono LA is for modern citizens.
It's not about sending freights, it's about sending the message.
@@goose_clues29% of US container trade comes through the port of LA/Long Beach.
The LA/Long Beach ports could probably absorb additional traffic in a few years, but the main constraint is the freight routes into the ports. Because they’re surrounded by the fully built out LA and Orange County, it’s hard to build additional transport infrastructure (e.g. new rail lines/wider freeways) quickly or cheaply.
Mexico is considering building deep ocean ports on their Pacific Coast to unload container ships onto rail lines running up to the US and their Caribbean Coast ports for loading on shorter draft vessels that can be unloaded at ports along the US Gulf and Atlantic Coasts. UP wants to run an additional rail line or two west along the border to handle more intermodal freight but are being stymied by New Mexico and Arizona.
So simple solution reverse the direction of flow from the pumps have the first lock pull ocean water. It will atleast hold until a better solution can be implemented.
i wonder if it'd be cost efficient for them to use a series of pumps and turbines to reuse the water in the intermediate flood gates. They could use pumps to relocate the water from lower chambers, back to the higher chambers, then use Turbines to regain some of the power while the water flows back to the lower chambers, then open some level stabilization pipes to ensure the water levels are even, while waste minimal amounts of fresh water from salt contamination. some companies use some similar tech in Water Batteries for Solar/Hydro power generation.
This may be a dumb question/impossible solution but why not either:
A. Instead of dumping the last section of water into the ocean, pump it either back into the canal or back into the reservoir using something similar to an oil pipeline. Or
B. Set up desalination plants along the coast to pump sea water (that is converted into freshwater) into the freshwater reservoirs?
I know both would be expensive but I have to imagine that if this is one of the single most important trade routes, it probably generates enough wealth to do so, or maybe multiple countries that depend on this trade route would all contribute to such projects considering the need for quicker shipping and route access.
in response to solution A: (not an engineer, just an internet idiot lol) I would have to assume it has something to do with the unavoidable mixture of salt and fresh water being dumped back into the lake itself. We'd have to remove the salt from the water before dumping it back in the lake and vice versa.
I would suspect a desalination plant would be far less expensive to build at each end, then digging whole new waterways to connect extra reservoirs to the main lake. And require a lot less land as well.
The operational costs long term of a desalination plant would far exceed the short term costs of the resevoir extensions though. Like, once the waterways are built, there's not a whole lot of maintenance or upkeep to them.@@Krahazik
@@PA_Sword Yeah they would have to make somekind of storage separate from the lake. A closed system. The lakes would be there to 'refill' the closed system as it inevitably losses some water with each passage since no closed system that I can imagine would be 100% perfect. Still if it ends up recycling even 2/3 of the water each time that would be huge for them. The problem is. I am not sure how they would pull that off without a complete rebuild and redesign. It was designed in a different era(like some cities) and to fix it is no small project at all. Almost to the level of tear it down and start over.
I think they would need to desalinate something close to 1.872 Billion gallons a day (via the numbers presented in this video) to be fully reliant on them, and that doesn’t sound exactly feasible. Plus you still need to distribute it away from the coasts back to the center of the canal for usage.
2 RealLifeLore videos in 1 week is just comfy man.
We eatin' good.
One of the best and most informative channels on CZcams!
Well duh, he's changed his voice to AI now.
As a Winnipegger, this is great news!
Seems like an opportunity to update infrastructure. Adding a channel through the lake for boat traffic where seawater could be transferred without damage to the freshwater in the lake seems like it would be a good investment.
The bi-oceanic corridor is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Anyone who knows anything about logistics knows that floating goods is 10-15x cheaper than running them via truck, not to mention it would probably barely be any quicker, and miles less fuel-efficient. Also, it would take years to build the infrastructure, probably upwards of a decade.
Side note: anyone who thinks lithium ion batteries are going to power the green revolution is not a serious person. They're fine for local, small-scale projects; but to make that happen at scale, we'll need an entirely new battery tech and associated materials science. There has been a recent breakthrough with solid-state batteries that is potentially quite exciting, though.
It´s already almost finished, and also, it´s not only to move cargo from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It will be useful for moving goods from the countries that are far away from the ports. And don´t forget that it will take less time than going trough the Panama Canal or Cape Horn, and also cheaper. They charge up to a million dollars per ship in Panama.
Yeah if it is actually just for cargo from one side to the other it's just plain stupid. A railway is way better for cargo than trucks anyway. The only places where trucks make sense is for the last bit, since most destinations aren't next to a railway line. If you want to go from port to port, you wouldn't be using a truck. However the highway is not just connecting port to port, it is also connecting everything in between.
Literally all of the roads already exist. These countries are already pretty well connected (Paraguay being the exception, and the Paraguayan roads being the only ones left to be constructed) The bi-oceanic corridor is just a more direct path of getting from one ocean to the other, using the already existing infrastructure. Think about it for a minute. These corridor isn’t supposed to replace the Panama Canal, is just for these specific countries to get better access to both oceans. So instead of shipping from Santiago to Sao Pablo, and going all around the continent and paying a hefty fee in Panama, they can just cross through the Paraguay jungle and use the existing roads. Would a train be ideal? Of course, but that would require multiple countries to agree on a multiple billion dollar investment, and thousands of km of infrastructure being built in a rather uninhabited region (it literally goes through the Chilean dessert and the Paraguayan and Brazilian jungle)
Also, there already are bi-oceanic corridors. You can perfectly drive from Buenos Aires to Santiago-Valparaiso, almost on a straight line. And technically, you could go from Brazil to Chile by car, but it’s not a corridor, you’d have to go through multiple different roads and it wouldn’t be very efficient.
4:46 Panama Canal locks' freshwater supply problem 5:27 canal lock animation 7:11 each ship passage consumes 52 million gallons of increasingly scarce fresh water 10:39 Lake Gatun the main drinking water source for Panama 11:58 dramatic reduction in # of ships allowed through 17:55 23:20 four Panama alternative proposals, none of which will address current predicament 24:21 Colombia transoceanic train network connection through Andes 25:17 potential Nicaragua canal revisited. HKND failure, Ortega oppression, corruption 29:45 Mexico Isthmus of Tehuantepec 30:46 2020 AMLO rail renewal announcement 31:33 could start shipping in 2028, fully open 2033 33:00 potential Panama Canal fixes
Thx
Good time edit bro I was looking for Panama Canal alternative proposals
You’re doing gods work
33:19 reservoir 🤫
Wrong
He never talked about Columbia, he only talked about Colombia
Surprising that no one seems to be considering the Ring of Fire around the Pacific which could easily affect most of the near-coastal areas in the west of the western hemisphere.
Seems like they need to do some redesigning of the water piping system of the Canal to alter where the water in the first lock is dumped. IE, instead of dumping into the ocean, recirculating the water back up to the lake.
Retrofit, at enormous cost, so that the first two chambers on either side of the canal are pumping water from the ocean up and then filtering back down
Might pollute the ground water not a good idea
It would help lot to not flush the freshwater into the last chamber when driving down the locks
One minor detail. You mention that they pump water into the fist lock from the second. Only this is not how it works. It is all operated by gravity. At the beginning of this century I was working for a firm that was building a rail and shipping facility that would take containers by rail from one end to the other to accommodate super max ships. Perhaps they will have to move ahead with this.
Also the panamanians did a huge update and upgrade to the canal that took 9-10 years and it reopened to bigger and larger ships in 2017.
Maybe i'm dumb but isn't there an option to pump the water from the bottom lock back to the top instead of just venting to the ocean? higher energy cost, lower water cost?
After spending 6 weeks in South Africa right now, I can say their ports cannot handle this. Father in law works in Durban Ports and its already a 3 month wait time because 1/4 cranes are even working.
South Africa? What has that country to do with this?
@johnburns4017 right near the start the video mentioned that ships are rerouting around Africa due to the Suez being so dangerous right now. When this was the norm south Africa was a common port that ships would stop at.
@@TripleBarrel06
They only need to bunker, if they have the need of course.
12:50 Restricting load sizes makes no sense and actually makes the situation worse. The locks only hold a fixed volume of water and have to lift/lower the same height regardless. The most water they would consume would be to cycle them with no ship in the lock at all. To minimize water use, they should want the largest, heaviest ship, displacing the most water possible.
My thought aswell lol 😂 like it doesn’t make sense to lighten the ships lol
I noticed that too. I'm guessing the requirement to lighten ships is due to concern that they will run aground crossing Lake Gatun.
It just shows that some people have a talent for speaking confidently even though they completely lack understanding. The theory about ships possibly running aground makes a little more sense to me, but that risk would depend on the draft of the individual ship, not exactly on the tonnage loaded.
Sounds like they need to install pumping stations and work with a captive water supply to progressively fill the above locks instead of just letting it out into the ocean...
What a video. Wow
What happened to your mic it sounds off lately