New Orleans, LA · $140B (proposal)
MSY-15 · New Orleans Interior Drainage Super-Pump Grid
Forty ultra-high-capacity pumps in hardened bunkers across New Orleans, capable of evacuating 100,000 gallons per second, powered by their own underground small modular reactors so they keep running even when the grid dies in a Category 5.
Pros
- Directly answers Katrina's central lesson: the pumps failed because the power failed.
- Independent SMR power makes the system genuinely storm-proof in a way no grid-tied pump can be.
- 100,000 gallons per second is a serious number — this would actually move the needle on street flooding.
Cons
- Siting 40 nuclear reactors under a major city is a political and regulatory impossibility in the near term.
- Pumps move water from streets to somewhere — and that somewhere is the same overwhelmed waterways.
- $140B for drainage, however good, competes with every other dollar on this list.
Feasibility: The pumps are feasible; the power source is the fantasy. The Army Corps already runs the world's largest drainage pump stations in New Orleans — scaling those up is engineering, not magic. But 40 SMRs under a city faces a regulatory wall that makes the technical challenges look easy. Split the project: build the pumps grid-tied with hardened backup now, add novel power later.
Aerial mock-up: Fortified windowless concrete bunkers scattered across the city grid, each tied to deep subterranean canals, capable of ejecting 100,000 gallons per second.
