Salt is a good absorber of radiation, and the salt domes themselves will move the waste dead into the abyss. So yes, for all practical purposes it's gone forever.Originally Posted by Eric the Green
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
The area around Chernobyl, the worst of the bad disasters, is now a wildlife refuge. Nuclear contamination is not the same as the fear mongering makes it out to be. Let's agree it's not good, but it's far less bad than assumed.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
I still remember an election here in the 1990s where, judging by the negative ads on TV, the one and only issue that mattered was determining which candidate was more supportive/opposing to getting nuclear waste out of Idaho.
Agreed.
Another fun story: Hans Blix once spoke here in Boise, and he planned to open up the crowd to questions at the end. The first person that was able to take the mic was a representative from the Snake River Alliance, a notorious anti-nuclear group here. She said something along the lines of "Since your experience shows the worldwide dangers of nuclear isn't it about time that we get rid of nuclear power for good?" Blix very calmly said that he in fact supports nuclear power--and used global warming as a reason why. They cut off the questions after that--and I fist-pumped on my way out the door.
Entire states??
Again, I challenge. How many cubic meters of nuclear waste are created in the lifetime of one nuclear power plant?
Emotional statements about something that is clearly manageable with rational thought is what leads to this politicized cul-de-sac.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
It is possible that melting ace will result in increased volcanic activity.
Melting ice spells volcanic trouble
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...c-trouble.html
… "Melting ice is causing the land to rise up in Iceland – and perhaps elsewhere. The result, judging by new findings on the floor of the Southern Ocean, could be a dramatic surge in volcanic eruptions.
Last week, researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson showed that a recent dramatic uplift of the Earth's crust in parts of Iceland coincided with the rapid melting of nearby glaciers.
Kathleen Compton's team used data from GPS receivers that have been attached to rocks since 1995 to show that some parts of south-central Iceland, where five of the country's largest glaciers are melting fast, have been rising by around 3.5 centimetres a year. Away from the glaciers, the rates of land rise were much lower.”…
If you don't think so, then move to the province around Fukushima.
Just because someone disagrees with you, does not mean the other person is making emotional statements without "rational" or otherwise-sensible and considered thought. There is no consensus that nuclear power is safe. Many disagree.Again, I challenge. How many cubic meters of nuclear waste are created in the lifetime of one nuclear power plant?
Emotional statements about something that is clearly manageable with rational thought is what leads to this politicized cul-de-sac.
Here's one paragraph from the wikipedia site:
Due to historic activities typically related to radium industry, uranium mining, and military programs, there are numerous sites that contain or are contaminated with radioactivity. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water."[18] Despite copious quantities of waste, the DOE has stated a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025.[18] The Fernald, Ohio site for example had "31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards."[18] The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres.[18][19] DOE wishes to clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, using the recently developed method of geomelting,[citation needed] however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some may never be completely remediated. In just one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there were for example at least "167 known contaminant release sites" in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km2) site.[18] Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, cleanup issues were simpler to address, and DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
There are also concerns about tailings from uranium mining, especially in some Native American reservations. So, there's waste cleanup and recycling issues, land contamination due to melt-downs (especially from the plants built near earthquake faults and oceans), contamination from mining, concerns over possible thefts by terrorists of nuclear material, the great expense and construction time of a plant as compared to solar, wind and other clean renewables, etc.
The "cul de sac" is the unconscienable delays in switching to solar and wind power perpetrated by the Republicans over the last 35 years. We could have had it all up and running by now. Global warming deniers and greedy fuel barons have stopped it, and they continue to try to do so. Sometimes emotion is warranted, if it revs us up to take action and defeat the clearly-evident forces of obstruction, whose policies result in the deaths of many living beings.
The future belongs to solar, but I really think that you underestimate the effects of technology development and overestimate the effects of politics. The thing that politics stopped was nuclear power.
Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...o-solar-cells/
The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.
10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favorable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.
We need to look at the total power grid system.
Stanford scientists calculate the carbon footprint of grid-scale battery technologies
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/m...id-030513.html
… "To provide more flexibility in managing the grid, researchers have begun developing new batteries and other large-scale storage devices. But the fossil fuel required to build these technologies could negate some of the environmental benefits of installing new solar and wind farms,”…
… "The total storage capacity of the U.S. grid is less than 1 percent, according to Barnhart. What little capacity there is comes from pumped hydroelectric storage, a clean, renewable technology. ... When demand is low, surplus electricity is used to pump water to a reservoir behind a dam. When demand is high, the water is released through turbines that generate electricity.”…
… "To determine the amount of energy required to build each of the five battery technologies, Barnhart relied on data collected by Argonne National Laboratory and other sources. The data revealed that all five batteries have high embodied-energy costs compared with pumped hydroelectric storage.”…
… “When Barnhart crunched the numbers, the results were clear. “ e determined that a pumped hydro facility has an ESOI value of 210,” he said. “ hat means it can store 210 times more energy over its lifetime than the amount of energy that was required to build it.”"...
… "Pumped hydro storage faces another set of challenges. "Pumped hydro is energetically quite cheap, but the number of geologic locations conducive to pumped hydro is dwindling, and those that remain have environmental sensitivities," Barnhart said.
The study also assessed a promising technology called CAES, or compressed air energy storage. CAES works by pumping air at very high pressure into a massive cavern or aquifer, then releasing the compressed air through a turbine to generate electricity on demand. The Stanford team discovered that CAES has the fewest material constraints of all the technologies studied, as well as the highest ESOI value: 240. Two CAES facilities are operating today in Alabama and Germany.”…
… "A primary goal of the study was to encourage the development of practical technologies that lower greenhouse emissions and curb global warming, Barnhart said. Coal- and natural gas-fired power plants are responsible for at least a third of those emissions, and replacing them with emissions-free technologies could have a dramatic impact,”…
Solar technology in process of improving.
Solar Energy Isn’t Always as Green as You Think
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/...n-as-you-think
… "When the photovoltaics industry was smaller, the solar-cell manufacturers got their silicon from chipmakers, which rejected wafers that did not meet the computer industry’s purity requirements. But the boom in photovoltaics demanded more than semiconductor-industry leftovers, and many new polysilicon refineries were built in China. Few countries at the time had stringent rules covering the storage and disposal of silicon tetrachloride waste, and China was no exception,”…
…” This threat to the environment needn’t continue. Researchers at Rohm & Haas Electronic Materials, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, have identified substitutes for the hydrofluoric acid used in solar-cell manufacture. One good candidate is sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Although NaOH is itself a caustic chemical, it is easier to treat and dispose of than hydrofluoric acid and is less risky for workers. It is also easier to treat wastewater containing NaOH.
Although more than 90 percent of photovoltaic panels made today start with polysilicon, there is a newer approach: thin-film solar-cell technology. The thin-film varieties will likely grow in market share over the next decade, because they can be just as efficient as silicon-based solar cells and yet cheaper to manufacture, as they use less energy and material.”…
… "Making solar cells requires a lot of energy. Fortunately, because these cells generate electricity, they pay back the original investment of energy; most do so after just two years of operation, and some companies report payback times as short as six months. This “energy payback” time is not the same as the time needed to recoup a consumers financial investment in solar panels; it measures investments and payback times in terms of kilowatt-hours, not in terms of money.”…
I am baffled by this article. It contradicts almost everything else that I have read.
Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/plane...ar-power-frank
… "Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces. Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH. Gas combined cycle is the least expensive. It does not cost more than the cost of power from the coal or less efficient gas plants that it displaces. Indeed, it costs about 3 cents less per KWH..
Projection for winter 2100 if greenhouse emissions do not change:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...m_hp_ref=green
"Cereal City" (Battle Creek, Michigan) will go from having 166 sub-freezing nights per year to having 79 sub-freezing nights per year, much like Jackson, Tennessee. Maybe Kellogg's will find a way to turn cotton into breakfast cereal. Maybe not. New York City goes from having 79 sub-freezing nights to 29, like Killeen, (deep in the heart of) Texas. Dallas practically loses its winter as it goes from having 29 sub-freezing nights to having 7 (as in a suburb of New Orleans). No, that is not a Dallas Cowboys football score. Duluth, Minnesota goes from having 179 sub-freezing nights (nearly half the year) to having 109 as does Amarillo, Texas. Amarillo goes from 109 to 43. Amarillo goes from being grain country to cotton country. Dallas gets palm trees and no longer looks as if it is in the middle latitudes. Indeed, Seattle, which goes from having 25 sub-freezing nights per year to 3 -- and has palm trees.
Like to ski? Unfortunately the map does not suggest what happens in Aspen. I can only give Denver... whose winters lose about half their sub-freezing nights (151 to 75). I doubt that there would be much of a snow mass at Snowmass. Carson City goes from having 133 to having 59 sub-freezing nights -- like El Paso, Texas. That is as close as I could get to some of the prime Sierra ski areas.
Disney might want to put some resorts elsewhere -- like Duluth. Disneyland (Anaheim, California) in the summer will be like a day at the beach -- around Miami. Walt Disney World (Kissimmee, and I can only show Orlando)? It will be about as hot as far south Texas. But Seattle will remind people of what Southern California used to be.
Summer gives some surprises, few of them good.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/s...1-cities-16583
Average July highs for Lansing, Michigan (80F) go to about 91F, as in Fort Myers, Florida. That's the closest that I can get for "Cereal City". New York City does much the same from a similar start. For near-coastal places in California, Oregon, and Washington -- they get much like Greater Los Angeles. But inland, things aren't so great. Sacramento becomes about as hot as Tucson. Medford, Oregon becomes like Delano, California.
If you live in Oklahoma City, then fear not -- your summers will be like in some places that you need cross only one state line to get to. Of course, the new analogue would be Laredo, Texas.
You do not go to South Florida, Arizona, or even the Central Valley of California for the summer.
The Southeast? Start with Philadelphia, which is borderline-subtropical; its summers begin to resemble those of the lower Rio Grande Valley (specifically Harlingen, Texas). Atlanta (you would be surprised how close the July high temperatures in Philadelphia are to those of Atlanta) also suggest the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Dallas becomes about as hot as Phoenix. San Antonio? Likewise. The Twin Cities, where I-35 splits into I-35E and I-35W, begin to resemble the other pair of large cities that split I-35 into I-35E and I-35W. Dallas and Fort Worth. Duluth becomes more like Chicago suburbs... which is still hot. Breezes off Lake Michigan keep the temperatures of Chicago 'only' about as hot as Dallas... but probably very humid as well. Joliet, which doesn't quite get the lake breezes, gets about as hot as a place half way between Austin and San Antonio
If you think that places in the desert Southwest couldn't get hotter -- places around Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas -- even St. George, Utah -- have some exotic analogues. Like Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh.
Have fun -- and remember that if your grandchildren or great-grandchildren turn up the air conditioning to adjust to the heat, they are also adding to the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Bonus: Waterloo, Iowa gets a derogatory review from Places rated Almanac (the worst for an American site not in Alaska, a hot desert, or cold high mountains) for its climatic extremes of hot and steamy summers, harsh winters, severe thunderstorms and blizzards, TORNADOES, and infamous extremes (its record low in April is -4F and its record high in April is 100F... one could get frostbite and heatstroke in the same month there) gets average summer highs as high as those of Bryan, Texas (roughly the middle of the triangle with Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio) around 2100. It does go from having 143 sub-freezing nights to having only 83 (like Lubbock, Texas).
I could not get any data outside the United States or for Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 02-09-2015 at 09:38 AM. Reason: undo typo
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Without necessarily agreeing on all points completely, I think this is a pretty cogent statement on science and politics:
...something like climate skepticism is a Republican problem—distinct from other anti-science beliefs—because of its huge currency in actual Republican politics. Sure, both parties have members with anti-science beliefs. But it’s the GOP that’s elevated a few of those beliefs to the party platform.
Are Democrats in a similar situation? Not quite. While some conservatives describe abortion rights as anti-science—citing the truth that a human life is created at the moment of fertilization—that confuses a biological question with a metaphysical one. The question for most abortion rights advocates isn’t whether the fetus is human, it’s whether it stands as a person with the rights and protections of an infant or a child. That’s a question for religion, philosophy, and law, not science.
And this is true of a whole host of political and politicized beliefs. In the quest for partisan advantage, everyone scrambles to clothe his or her beliefs in the guise of objectivity. The reality, however, is that our beliefs are nothing of the sort. We construct them outside the scope of scientific observation, with ideas that come to us through custom, experience, and education, and for which science gives little confirmation or support. “We see what we want to see,” writes John Dewey in Human Nature and Conduct, “We dwell upon favoring circumstances till they become weighted with reinforcing considerations.” In that environment, honest deliberation, he says, “needs every possible help it can get against the twisting, exaggerating, and slighting tendency of passion and habit.”
Instead of trying to attack each other for our fealty to science—or lack thereof—let’s acknowledge the deep subjectivity of our views but try to use the tools and methods of science to help us inform and strengthen them; to challenge them, to sharpen them, and to try to root them in our shared reality.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...ipartisan.html
Science has authority -- so much that every quack tries to latch onto its authority. Science is useful; scientists are generally trustworthy. Science forces integrity and objectivity, and offers those who do science the sorts of rewards that keep people doing science but not enough to attract greedy people who could make far more in sales, televangelism, advertising, bureaucratic toadying, public relations, or crooked politics. Poseurs fail quickly in science because they get caught quickly. Even medicine has become a money-driven hustle, at least in America.
Some stretch the authority of science to inappropriate places -- as with "Christian Science" (which is utterly devoid of science -- I found Science and Health one of the easiest religious texts to abandon), "scientific socialism" (Marxism), and such an overt oxymoron as "Creation Science". At the extreme, an organization calling itself Scientology... I shall say no more because I have no desire to defend myself from a legal action.
To say that something is science if one likes it and is 'junk science' or pseudoscience if one hates it is clear bias. One test of genuine science is that it recognizes its limitations. If you wonder about the projection of global warming... I checked it out, and it seemed to make allowances for places being inland or by a water body, so adding 11F to every summer temperature (a cheap means of getting results) was not in use. San Diego was not going to become a furnace, but Phoenix (and Yuma, Tucson, and Las Vegas would). Duluth (which would get lake breezes) was not going to warm up as much as would Minneapolis, and Chicago (lake breezes) was not going to warm as severely as Rockford or even Joliet. Besides, there was a contingency -- "if greenhouse emissions go unabated".
Real scientists know, recognize, and admit the limitations of their knowledge -- boundary conditions, limits of precision of measurement, and contrary interpretations.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Interesting research
“Bionic Leaf” Makes Fuel from Sunlight
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar..._id=SA_Twitter
… " new way to make fuel from sunlight: starve a microbe nearly to death, then feed it carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced with the help of voltage from a solar panel. A newly developed bioreactor feeds microbes with hydrogen from water split by special catalysts connected in a circuit with photovoltaics. Such a batterylike system may beat either purely biological or purely technological systems at turning sunlight into fuels and other useful molecules, the researchers now claim.
“We think we can do better than plants,” says Joseph Torella of Boston Consulting Group, who helped lead the work published February 9 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”…
Last edited by radind; 02-10-2015 at 12:10 AM.
Radium and Megadroughts
Sorta true. It wasn't always true and still isn't entirely true. I recently watched a PBS "American Experience" episode, "The Poisoner's Handbook." It centered on a pair of forensic scientists who worked in New York City at a time when lawyers sneering at forensic scientists could make a jury disregard scientific testimony.
Not all of the cases were murders. At the time safety in the workplace was a major problem, but not a major concern. To a great extent big money owned many coroner's offices. One of the many stories told was of the ladies who painted the dials of watches with glowing radium based paint. At the time, radium was considered healthy, and this myth was pushed by any and all companies who made a profit from radium. For example, a claim was made that a particular company made a practice of hiring the poor and destitute, who had a shortened life span. Then their critics were attacking these companies when such people died... of radiation caused cancers.
Saying "science" has a given amount of clout and reputation might be a bit simplistic. It has been gaining clout on a field by field basis. Still, while values are stubborn in and of themselves, when values and profits combine to push a harmful or deadly behavior, science starts out at a disadvantage. Climate science and evolution are only the modern issues being debated. They are at the end of a long history of conflicts between economics and science.
***
On another note, NASA and CNN are pushing a theory that droughts in the US Southwest are linked to global warming. To put it simply, the more carbon burned the less rain. I don't think this is a brand new claim, but they are trying to make a splash with it.
Risk of American 'megadroughts' for decades, NASA warns
I was shocked when I learned that how little uranium is needed to fuel a nuclear plant, especially compared to the trains full of oil and coal passing through Fargo on the daily.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Exactly, this is the point I made to Eric above, the primary risk from nuclear meltdowns is mainly to human health, namely higher incidence of cancer and birth defects as a result of long-term expose to low levels of radiation. Most wild animals and plants die before cancers become an issue.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Summers in Fargo with be like those of the Dallas area. Oh dear God in heaven no! NOOOOOOOOOO! :-(
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I'd like to see what some Canadian cities do. I'd guess that Vancouver begins to feel like and look like what Los Angeles is.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Greater New York City after a 100-foot rise in the waters of the seas
At 260 feet all that is left is the Palisades.
http://spatialities.com/wp-content/u.../NYSeaRise.gif
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6737068.html
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Tell that to those of us who have suffered through record cold in the Chicago region. I heard this morning that we may break a month of February cold record which has stood for 140 years. Don't you think that all the global warming denialists will have a field day with this?
Perhaps, but there's global weirding. I think it go like this.
1. More moist air makes to Siberia which makes for more snow there.
2. Once the sun either goes down completely or show up just briefly, the snow just reflects whatever heat back.
3. Perhaps there's a heat anomaly in the west Pacific.
4. #3 causes an omega block which sends the Siberian air over the N. pole and it gets real cold in the eastern N America.
That's just 1 example why using just part of the earth to confirm a bias is silly. One can of course add the fact that the gulf stream also has a heat anomaly which fuels some real bomb Nor'easters along the east coast. So, Brian, it's the Russkie's and China's fault.
MBTI step II type : Expressive INTP
There's an annual contest at Bond University, Australia, calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term:
The winning student wrote:
"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end."
There may be surprises in store.
Burst of of warming may end lull in rising temperatures
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...r#.VOvXWUI_aTB
… "Global mean surface temperatures have not risen significantly since about 1998, which could be thanks to the oceans sucking up the extra heat.
If this turns out to be the case, Chris Roberts from the Met Office in the UK and colleagues have found that there is a 60 per cent chance the hiatus will be followed by a five-year period of rapid warming at twice the usual background rate of around 0.2°C per decade.
The models also suggest there is a 15 per cent chance the hiatus will continue for five more years.”…
We are expecting snow again tomorrow. We have no snow/ice in some years and we haven't gotten two winter storms in the same year since 2002. And in terms of temps. we are having the coldest Feb. since 1994....Which is following the coldest Jan. since 1994.
I do remember it being cold for a solid month. And this is close in its intensity. Also I won't be surprised if global weireding is happening.
Awesome map. :Greater New York City after a 100-foot rise in the waters of the seas
At 260 feet all that is left is the Palisades.
http://spatialities.com/wp-content/u.../NYSeaRise.gif
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6737068.html
