Urban Inventor

Chapter 254: Water Transfer to the West

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It can be said that Zhang Wei has no understanding of the global food situation at all, so he can only make up relevant knowledge first, so that he knows how much food production needs to be increased each year to save China from the food crisis.

He gave an order, and the intelligent assistant Xiaolan displayed the information he wanted to know on the virtual stereo screen.

After careful study for a period of time, Zhang Wei finally had a preliminary understanding of the food situation in China and other countries.

The world's annual grain production is less than 2.5 billion tons, 1.4 billion Chinese consume 700 million tons (of which China produces 600 million tons and imports 100 million tons), 300 million Americans consume 300 million tons, and 700 million people in Europe consume 400 million tons tons, and the other 4.5 billion people consume 1.1 billion tons.

From these data, it can be seen that many people in the world are starving, and a report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Program also pointed out that the number of hungry people in the world has reached a record 1 billion, and more than half of them are children. According to statistics, 18,000 children die of hunger and malnutrition every day, most of them in Africa. It has to be said that this is an unimaginable tragedy. This is in the 21st century.

Of course, this has a lot to do with the Africans themselves. They can’t raise too many children, but they like to have children. In the past, many children died due to backward medical technology. Now, with the development of medical technology, the average life expectancy of Africans A substantial extension, which makes Africa is facing a population explosion, 38 of the 40 countries with the highest fertility rate in the world are in Africa! A new UNICEF study points out that at current rates, there will be 4.2 billion people in Africa by 2100, and almost half of the world's children under the age of 18 will be from Africa, up from a quarter of the current figure.

Africa is facing a population explosion, and China is about to enter the space age and needs a large number of scientists. It has decided to fully liberalize the family planning policy. The population will continue to increase in the future, and the food consumed will naturally increase accordingly. Where does the food consumed come from? Is it completely dependent on imports?

You must know that the annual global grain trade volume is 200-300 million tons, even if all these grains are purchased, it can only meet 40% of China's current grain demand. And if China really buys so much grain, the price of grain will definitely skyrocket, and China will have to pay a huge price. Moreover, if we completely rely on imports, it is tantamount to handing over the lifeline of the country to other countries, which is a very dangerous behavior. As long as other countries take a little bit of our food supply, we will immediately soften, why? Food cannot be cut off day and night.

Therefore, we still need to be self-sufficient in food, even if we have to import it, we must have the confidence to face the worst situation: "Even if they don't sell it to us, we can still rely on the food we produce to survive, at most we just eat less meat.

"In fact, the country has been doing this for so many years, and has been adhering to the red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land.

After understanding the current situation of the food problem, Zhang Wei also felt a little shocking. At the same time, he also felt that this problem really needs to be solved urgently. The whole country is about to enter the space age. In the future, a large number of scientists will be needed, and scientists must not be left hungry. Moreover, if interstellar colonization is to be carried out in the future, a large population will inevitably be required, and these populations will also need to consume a large amount of food. Without enough food, everything is empty talk.

So, how to increase the yield of crops? How to develop more arable land?

Regarding the first question, it is natural to cultivate high-yielding crops. In fact, the space plants that future technology companies are actively researching belong to this kind of research. Genetically modified crops are actually a way, but it will take a long time to verify whether it is It will cause harm to the human body, and the resistance of the domestic people is also very high.

Regarding the second question, there are actually two ways. The first is to cultivate crops that can adapt to harsh environments, such as rice that can fully adapt to saline-alkaline land. The total area of ​​saline-alkali land in my country is about 1.5 billion mu. If rice can be planted, based on the yield of 300 catties per mu, 450 billion catties of grain can be harvested every year, which is equivalent to about 37% of the national grain output in 2013. In fact, my country has already made some progress in this regard.

The second way is to transform land that is not suitable for growing crops into land suitable for growing crops.

Experts once had a related idea: "The seawater is pumped from the northwest coast of the Bohai Sea to an altitude of 1,200 meters, to the southeast of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and then along the surface of the trough in the east-west direction of the 42° north latitude line, passing through the north of Yanshan Mountain and Yinshan Mountain, and then out of the sea. Langshan enters Juyan Sea to the west, and enters Xinjiang by bypassing the remaining veins of Mazong Mountain. The terrain of Xinjiang is high in the east and low in the west. After the sea water enters Xinjiang, it can form an artesian flow. After that, it will use the natural channel of the Shule River "flowing from east to west" , flowing into Lop Nur on the eastern edge of the Tarim Basin."

This is the "West Seawater Diversion" project. The idea is to fill dry salt lakes, saltwater lakes and closed structural basins in the desert with a large amount of seawater to form artificial seawater rivers and lakes, thereby suppressing the desert. At the same time, a large amount of seawater relies on the abundant solar energy in the northwest to evaporate naturally, and serves as a water and gas supply source for the humid northern climate to increase rainfall, thereby achieving the goal of controlling deserts and sandstorms in China and completely changing the harsh ecological environment in North China and Northwest China.

When this idea was first proposed, it aroused widespread debate and doubts in public opinion across the country, and it is far from subsidized. Some people even ridiculed this move as a joke similar to "placing tiles on the Great Wall".

In fact, this idea did have many shortcomings at the time, the most important being that the cost of the project was too high, and the cost of transporting seawater was also too high. In addition, there was a risk of large-scale land salinization when seawater entered the inland.

However, with the small nuclear fusion atomic furnace technology provided by Zhang Wei, that is, the success of controllable nuclear fusion, these problems are not a problem at all.

As we all know, the raw material for nuclear fusion is helium 3, and every kilogram of helium 3 burned can produce 19 megawatts of energy. 100 tons of nuclear fuel helium-3 can meet the energy needs of the earth for a whole year, and the country is manufacturing Chang'e The No. 7 spacecraft has a load of more than 500 tons. That is to say, Chang'e No. 7 can meet the energy needs of the earth for 5 years as long as it transports helium 3 to the moon. From these data, it can be seen that as long as the nuclear fusion power station Popularity, the cost of electricity must be reduced to a heinous level.

With such a low cost of electricity, the cost of seawater desalination will also be greatly reduced. After directly desalinating seawater, fresh water can be introduced into North China and Northwest China to control deserts and sandstorms, and completely change the harsh ecological environment in North China and Northwest China. The construction work of the entire project can be completely carried out by intelligent robots. They do not need wages, but only need cheap electric energy, and they can work 24 hours a day without complaint, and their working ability is strong, which can greatly reduce the project cost. As for the cost of transporting water, according to calculations, raising one ton of water to an altitude of 1280 meters (predetermined height) requires 6.4 degrees of electricity consumption. This cost was a bit high in the past, but it is not worth mentioning now.

Therefore, the "West Water Diversion" project can now be fully implemented.

Not only that, this project can also be enlarged. There are eight deserts in northern my country from east to west, they are: Horqin Sandy Land, Hunshandake Sandy Land, Mu Us Desert, Kubuqi Desert, Ulan Buhe Desert, Tengger Desert, Badain Jaran Desert, Taklimakan Desert. We didn’t have much to do with these deserts in the past, but now we can completely break the traditional mindset and make full use of the vast waters of the Bohai Sea to transform all these deserts into cultivated land or residential areas, which is equivalent to adding several new provinces to the country. With so much land, no matter how many billion people there are in the country, they can be completely self-sufficient in food. This is a feat that will benefit thousands of years.

In addition, our country can build a large number of seawater desalination plants to provide cheap fresh water and completely solve the water shortage problem faced by major cities in our country.

It has to be said that with the small-scale nuclear fusion atomic furnace technology provided by Zhang Wei, many ideas that seemed difficult to realize in the near future, or seemed to many people to be wishful thinking, can now be implemented. This is the power of technology. This is the change brought about by Zhang Wei.

In this regard, Zhang Wei expressed his calmness. Compared with the planetary transformation he plans to implement in the future, these projects are just a small case. (To be continued.)

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