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Bio-Weapons That Eat Ammunition and Fuel
1gor writes: "This article in The Observer mentions Pentagon's plans to use genetically modified bugs that 'eat' the enemy's fuel and ammunition supplies without harming humans (they also want to to pacify the enemy by spraying Valium). Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!"
Nuclear power is an environmentalist's dream. they're just too busy protesting about the word nuclear they don't see it.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Once again Timothy couldn't let something by without stupid editorializing.
Very few environmentalists want us to drop off a petroleum-based economy precipitously. It will take a few years for the excess 5 billion people to die off as the population returns to what's supportable in a pre-mechanical society, and they won't go quietly. You'll find few trees and few wild animals outside of the remote Canada and Siberia.
What we want is wise use, not no use. E.g., it's better to have 30% of the car fleet using hybrid gas/electric motors with 80 MPG, not 30% of the fleet monster SUVs with <15 MPG while the idealistic zero emissions cars are <1% of the fleet because few people are willing to buy cars that can never go more than a few hundred miles.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This has already been going on for years now. Several companies now do this for toxic waste/Superfund/oil spill sites. There are LOTS of strains of bacteria and fungi that are 'customized' for different wastes; usually engineered from strains already surviving on the existing waste. Has not seemed to get out of hand though this was an initial concern (and could conceivably happen).
And you can get yours here!
PHase III PDM-7 Microbial Cultures. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Call for pricing.
"PDM-7 Microbial Cultures contain a blend of live, synergetic, all natural ATCC (American Type Culture Collection) Class I Bacteria. These bacteria were specifically chosen for their accelerated ability to metabolize Petroleum Based Products, Greases, Fats, Food Particles, Hair, Cellulose, and Detergents, converting them into carbon dioxide and water."
Don't rub them on your head.
Or here!
Or here!
Or here!
Sounds like me someone doesn't really know a virus from a bacteria. A virus does not have a metabolism, hence it can not 'break up' an oil spill.
I like science fiction, but not if the authors leave the science part out of it, and replace it with 'words that sound cool'.
Nuclear radiation or spent rods? The prior isn't an relative issue since coal plants release exponential magnitudes more radioactive material than nuclear power plants. The latter is a strange issue; the "spent" rods are actually have more potential energy than the new, or pure uranium rods.
;)
There are many atomic derivatives of uranium fission, not the least of which is plutonium. It is very possible, indeed much easier, to reach critical mass with spent rods than pure uranium rods. (technically, all you have to do is smash them together). You can put a pure uranium rod into a pool, and nothing happens, but if you put spent rods in the pool it glows blue/green (ala Cocoon, the movie) for a day or so. (YMMV)
The point would be that there is a harvestable energy source in "spent" rods, that can be remanufactured. Thermodynamics of course comes into play, and there are stil residuals, but nevertheless, the waste from one nuclear chamber is potential fuel for another. There are marginal returns in many cases, nevertheless the eventual breakdown leads to non-radioactive materials.
I only know this because I worked at a nuclear power plant; this is what I soaked up.
Cheers
They are part of the italicized text, and so, part of the original submitter's comments.
Allow me to repair your ignorance. It is actually NOT possible.
A nuclear explosion requires a certain (high) concentration of fuel, as well as a certain ratio of volume to surface area - or it doesn't happen. This is why making a nuclear bomb is actually very difficult. In a fission reactor, the material isn't concentrated enough, and it isn't unstable enough. Further, the material isn't in one large chunk - it's separated into rods. And further, there's no mechanism for imploding the reaction material to reach critical mass. So no, actually, despite what you read in old sci-fi, it's not physically possible for a fission reactor to explode. Take the rods out, overheat the thing, whatever. The ABSOLUTE worst is that it gets really hot and melts - which is very bad, but very rare, much rarer than a coal or gas explosion (so the overall risk is lower).
The only major nuclear disaster in history is Chernobyl, which was not a nuclear reaction but a chemical reaction; the graphite coolant caught fire. The graphite reactor was a bad design, and all reactors today are water-cooled. Further, Chernobyl had no containment building to speak of, and was run by idiots.
People speak of Three Mile Island as if it was some kind of disaster, but it didn't hurt anybody or anything. The worst that happened from TMI was the destruction of the reactor itself (which is a bit of a disaster alone, since those things cost billions).
A complete meltdown is a disaster, but not the end of the world. It would be nothing like the destruction wreaked by even a small nuclear weapon.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Each year, more petroleum seeps up from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico into the world's oceans than in every human-caused oil spill in history combined.
There are entire ecosystems near these oil seeps whose primary source of energy is not solar photosynthesis, but breaking down petroleum and natural gas.
Yes, petroleum spills by people cause temporary and localized deaths of organisms and disruption of ecosystems, but they just aren't that big a deal in the overall scheme of things.
I mean something called bio-diesel. Apparently, Mr Diesel (Rudolph?) who invented yon diesel engine originally planned for it to be used on vegetable oil, and it got sidetracked for petroleum. And bio-diesel is far less polluting, easy to produce (about as difficult as home brewing beer), and, depending on your country's excise etc, can be cheaper than petro-diesel.
But for me the truly funky thing is that it can be made from *used* cooking oil: how's that, just empty out the chip pan and brew a bit 'o' diesel. And it makes your car smell like chips instead of icky hydrocarbons. Any vegetable oil will do, so a variety of crops can do the trick on a large scale, which makes it renewable as well.
Oh, yeah, and most diesel engines can run it *without* modification, or with only very minor mods. I know of someone who's gone to bio-diesel on his farm: he goes to the local fish and chip shop and relieves them of their old oil (and they used to pay someone to take it away, so they're happy) and makes enough bio-diesel to keep all his farm equipment running. No engine mods, bugger all pollution, and that there oil kept out of the ocean. Truly funky.