Green will cost.

[General Ludd]

If the UK was really going green, their number one priority would be first cutting back on energy consumption. What good are having clean sources of energy when you continue to waste it?

[Mr. Harley]

General Ludd, that is exactly how not to do it. They were not burying it in the shield, which is solid rock. It's not a cheap process. They just buried the waste in the subsoil, which given the fact it's on top of the pre-Cambrian (or is it Cambrian, I'm doing this all from memory) means it's going to stay on top of the rock formation. That's a straw man, using a case of environmental dumping in the area that makes no use of the actual technology under discussion, i.e. VJ's example on the Baltic Shield.

However, if you point is why people don't trust these suggestions, then your point is very germane. Except that the Native Americans involved did understand, and were quite willing to do it. In which case it now becomes Environmental Paternalism, as in you're too dumb to understand this, so let us take care of it for you. Both the Environmental Paternalism (I just coined that term) and the Environmental Racism are wrong, though you cannot correct the consequences of the latter, so that does make it worse.

VJ, the French method causes the vitrified cylinders to go fairly deep into the ooze, I recall a couple of hundred feet, but I posted 75 to be on the safe side. Since it's on a section of ocean plate being subducted into the mantle, and it's a good five miles or so in a biologically dead aea, it's actually not that bad a technique. However, it doesn't quite have the certainty of the pre-Cambrian or Baltic plate disposal methods.

[RGBVideo]

The unused sulphur was simply dumped on the open ground in giant yellow piles. During the supposed "regreening" effort that was done in the region (which was sparked by the crazy histerical greens of the 70s ), they simply dug holes and dumped the sulphur in it, so that it was out of sight. The government made no qualms about their objective and explicitely said they where restoring the aesthetic quality of the land (as opposed to actually restoring the damage done) and now the sulphur mixes into the soil and they still have problems with sluphuric dust burning holes in clothes that are hung to dry, and the soles of their shoes being corroded by the soil.

Well that sucks if it's true ... It's like all these local, low-level politicians in Helsinki, they thought that the solution to garbage dumps (what are they officially called... landfills?) would be just dropping a large layer of sand on it and building new houses on it while the city continued to dump plastic garbage to other dumps farther away from the city.

Morans. The real solution would've been burning the trashes in different facilities or recycling some other way (hugely depending on their type), not just dumping it under sand and pretending it doesn't exist... why, that reminds me of those kids who throw all kinds of plastic and metal garbage around their own home under the snow and are all surprised when it hasn't lost when it melts.

[child of Thor]

well the government has been bringing the whole issue to the publics attention over the last few years. Mainly in the recycling area through school etc. Still it does seem to be too little too late if some of the reports we've had on tv recently are to be believed.

[chequita guevara]

I doubt the ooze is biologically dead, shawn. We find life everywhere we look on this planet. However, I always wondered why no one disposed of radioactive and toxic waste in subduction trenches. The only qualm I have is it may create a problem for the future, when some volcano starts spewing radioactive lava, 10,000 years down the line.

Better to store it until we have a space elevator, then drop it in the sun.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by General Ludd
If the UK was really going green, their number one priority would be first cutting back on energy consumption. What good are having clean sources of energy when you continue to waste it?

That is always the first thing to do.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Starchild
Like our vast coastline? Most wind farms are being planned off shore.

If your coast our like ours then there are people who own houses on the coast. Those people hate it when new construction blocks the views which they've paid top dollar to buy thus they sue the crap out of every costal project. Try building in the truly large scales needed to generate massice wind power and see how far you get.

Wind needs lots of wide open spaces, it can't be placed near bird migration routes because the blades kill birds, it is capital intensive, it is highly seasonal, it is unrealable, and it doesn't produce much electrity compared to the amount of land used. Shall I go own.

Don't get me wrong it is a niche product which works well in mountain passes, deserts, and low population density areas but that doesn't describe much of the UK. You'll never get more then a few percentage points of the total power needs out of it. Nuclear is the way to go. Biomass is also good but produces green house gases which the UK is trying to curb.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oerdin


If your coast our like ours

Let's see... their coast: That of a (relatively) small island. Your coast: Two strips with a vast amount of land in between. No, I fon't think their coastline is much like that of the USA's.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Better to store it until we have a space elevator, then drop it in the sun.

Why not just wait for jesus's second coming so that he can turn it into wine?

[Dinner]

Re: Re: Disposal methods.

Originally posted by VJ
This is much better idea than just dumping it in the Ocean and wishing that mother nature's gonna create dust (or ooze) on it to bury it deep enough (or did I misunderstood the article you described, they just dropped those cylinders to deep waters, right?)

He's talking about disposing of it in a tectonic subduction zone where an oceanic plate is sinking under another plate (either continental or oceanic) that means is should find itself 35 miles underground in a few hundred years. Plus there few living things to bother in the ooze of a 50 mile deep ocean trench as the plate is subducting. In all a fair solution.

Another possible solution is the creation of a breeder reactor. A breader reactor takes large quantities of low level waste and turns it into small quantities of high level waste which can then be refined and put back into the nuclear reactor. Recycling of the nuclear material in this manner is probably the best solution.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Let's see... their coast: That of a (relatively) small island. Your coast: Two strips with a vast amount of land in between. No, I fon't think their coastline is much like that of the USA's.

Then you aren't thinking very hard. The coastal areas are usually the most densely populated, ergo, the most likely to have people who will be upset about having their views obstructed. Sure, some remote areas exist and wind generators can be built there but that will never produce more then a tiny franction of the needed energy.

If you stopped and thought about it then you'd already know this.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Then you aren't thinking very hard. The coastal areas are usually the most densely populated, ergo, the most likely to have people who will be upset about having their views obstructed. Sure, some remote areas exist and wind generators can be built there but that will never produce more then a tiny franction of the needed energy.

If you stopped and thought about it then you'd already know this.

If you stopped and thought about it, then you might realize that on a small island, everyone lives near the coast, so it's not something that is in short commodity and especially coveted like it is in the USA, where coasts are litteraly few and far between.

[Zoid]

As General Ludd said earlier. If the energy isn´t wasted the will be no shortage. Don´t waste energy, dagnammit

And nuclear power is not pure or clean! It´s just corporate bull**** propaganda...

[Dinner]

Nuclear is market viable. Here in San Diego we've been getting about 50% of our electricity from nuclear power since the 1970's which puts us behind France and Japan but ahead of most of the rest of the world including nearly all of the US. we get another 2%-3% from renewable sources mostly wind power in the mountain passes and a geothermal station in the Imperial Valley. That's not bad but another nuclear plant would eliminate most of our green house gases production.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Why not just wait for jesus's second coming so that he can turn it into wine?

now you could be onto something here