Re: Irish Electricity II


Michael O'Neill wrote:
kevinmccabe@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Well, that was a shedload and no mistake!

I ran into a guy nic of Nuki mouse in another group and he calmed down my
anti-war hysterics about Depleted Uranium and its effects on adults.

Put basically, we are all radioactive naturally, since radioactivity
occurs in our environment [look for glow-in-the-dark people living on
granite outcroppings... no, I'm joking].

True, though, as to the natural occurrence of radioactivity in the
environment, with some areas being way higher (naturally) than others.
Though, none that have lethal levels.


Danger occurs because of intense concentrations of materials or the
creation of more of a more dangerous kind of material.

However, dispersal solves many of the problems, since once you get back
down to "natural" levels, humans can deal with it.

The problem is that they're no easy way to disperse nuclear waste and no
foolproof way of disposing of it in concentrated form, short of dropping
it into an active volcano and then you'd be worried about it spewing
forth again in the near future, without much dilution at all.

Agreed, but there is a way of using a fuel cycle to get rid of a lot of
it - sort of recycling using reactors that don't require the same level
of enrichment that a lot of them use. The Canadians use these types of
reactors. And, the medium-term storage containers have improved a lot.
There good for, like, five hundred years. Beats the hell out of burying
the stuff in metal garbage cans like they did back in the bad old days
at Hanford. At the end of the day, though, after all the recycling,
after all the medium-term storage, you're still left with burying the
concentrate in a blasted rock vault forever. I guess I just think its
better to have that, and all of it in some God-Forsaken mountain in
Nevada where its already messed up from below ground weapons tests,
than to burn coal. The "gassification" technology looks like bull***
of the first order to me.


As regards bio fuel, while sunny countries can benefit from solar powered
trucks and public transport, countries with long winters cannot do as
well.

Sweden IIRC has decided to work towards and oil-free economy by 2020 or
somesuch. They already have E85 engines on the road where up to 85%
Ethanol can be mixed with the petrol giving up to 20% more power with
slightly higher fuel consumption overall.

The downside to biofuels is the downside of food production. Crops are
prone to disease, insect attack and bad weather. A cash crop for fuel
production could be very costly if the weather was bad that year.

The key here would be varied management of crops. Let each farm not
specialise in just one crop but cater for several markets and have
several different crops for each market if possible.

Suddenly there's a huge use for farms again, at a time where producers
are looking at getting off the land because of lower prices across the
European Union.

FWIW

M,

Yes, well that was a big part of the impetus in my state. See, Western
Washington and Eastern Washington are very, very different.
Historically, the eastern half has always been agricultural. The
western half was timber, then industrial, now high tech/industrial mix.
Politically, the eastern half has always been conservative and the
western half liberal. So, what we have is a depressed agricultural
economy in the eastern half that is happy to have a new marketable (and
subsidized) crop and a liberal western half that is politically
inclined to favor alternative energy. Now, don't get me wrong, if it
works, then its the cat's meow. But, the materials I've read have been
pretty dubious about the ultimate savings both in terms of price and in
terms of carbon emmissions (on account of the mechanized nature of
American farming = high petrol use and the fertilizers require high
petrol use to produce). This might not be the case in other places
where not as much fertilizer is used or where farming is less
mechanized. Or, maybe advances in the types of crops used just plain
mean less of those two things are necessary to produce. Its tough to
know. You read a book and the tech cited may already be dated. The food
thing is also a good point. Good to hear about Sweden, btw. I've heard
similar stuff about Iceland. But, Iceland is sort of a special case
because they're sitting on a ton of geothermal energy.

McCabe

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