An interesting link for you about
The Environmental Disaster Of China
Here it is almost summer, and no rain! With changes in the weather, drought may be continual before it stops!
As you see on the above site, flooding and silt are a major problem in china and the rest of the world. A plan in the US to create underground reservoirs by use of atomic blasts was tried in the 1960's. It was found to be unfeasible because of radiation on the rocks of the large spherical rooms created by the blast. In the picture of the room you see a brave science volunteer standing on the level rock inside the room where the rock fell after the blast from the roof. The problem that made this unviable was about the radioactivity in the rocks after the blast, so the plan was discontinued. How to solve the radioactivity? This may have been solved recently by way of the motif of reverse beta decay familiar to physics students. Beta decay is when a radioactive neutron emits an electron and expanding outward, becomes a proton. The solution to radioactivity may be by reversing this process. First the radioactive atomic nuclei inside the atoms would be spin aligned by a strong external magnetic field like MRI so the nuclei are polarized. Next an electron would be injected into the nucleus by way of the polarized field, which overcomes the otherwise repulsive external field. The electrons would combine with the protons of the nuclei converting them to neutrons in reverse beta decay. With two neutrons (which don't attract by the strong force) where there was a proton and a neutron before (which do) the bond of the strong force would be cut and the extra neutron would move outward from the otherwise radioactive nucleus, and this would decay in just a few minutes compared to millions of years for some radioactive metabolites. Complete Explanation.
This short term radioactivity would be used as a power source with collection plates to collect the thermal motion and it would be source of hydrogen for more power (protons and electrons from the external radioactivity).
Thus the idea of reservoirs by atomic blasts may be feasible. After the blast a machine with robots would be sent down to clean up the rock and convert it to hydrogen and power.
Beyond this large pipes could be laid to large rivers for water from the rivers especially when there was a flood. The flood water would be pumped into inter modal freight containers where the silt would settle, then the water would be siphoned off the top into the conduit to the reservoir, blasted down somewhat deep so when the water would fall it would also power hydroelectric generators. Ideally the reservoirs would be at lower elevation for power but not too deep compared to the land just above so the clean water would be pumped to the surface without high cost.
The silt in the inter modal containers would fill perhaps half of each for optimal shipping, or what would be optimal, this would be shipped either in barges upstream to the farmers or by road or rail, and sold to the farmers to reclaim the land. To make this economic, power from the fast radiation of the rocks in the reservoir (atomic power, like having a big atomic power plant) would be used to pay for much of the the filtering, pumping and transport cost if the power is stored in capacitors or other storage.
The siphoning off of the flood water to the reservoirs may thus be a way to save large areas from drought, save the land from the problem of silt and reduce flooding, and a source of electric power, in other words, all the advantages of hydroelectric power and more, without the darnation.
Hydroelectric power has the disadvantage of risk of dam failure as on the link about china, where 700,000 died when a dam broke in china, loss of silt to the land by erosion and more damage to the ecology than this plan.
The site says the chinese government covered up the disaster. I don't know if this would be so without the rest of the world finding out by satellite, but perhaps there weren't so many satellites then.
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