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Microbes for Bioremediation
The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece discussing current efforts to clean up nuclear waste sites with microbes. Current treatment procedures generally involve pumping out the contaminated groundwater, filtering it, and pumping it back, which is rather expensive.
is anybody else reminded of Zodiac? This may turn out to be that bad of a fiasco if rushed. I can only hope for the best.
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
Nanotechnology will practicaly do the same thing in a much more efficient way. Imagine, the little robots could built a small city with nuclear waste. Take a few carbon atoms lying around and built some houses. Then build a nuclear plant. Use the depleated uranium to make rods. Use thoses rods in the nuclear plant to provide power to the freshly assembled houses. Tada! City in a Box (Tm)
YAFIRL (Yet another Free iPods referral link)
Nuclear energy IS clean. The cost (both in dollars and human years lost) of operating a coal-fired plant is less than that of a nuclear plant. Your fallacy is in seeing the mistakes committed decades ago by an inexperienced (by today's standards) industrial and scientific community. Applying the same sort logic that you use to the space program would suggest that 90% of all rockets never reach even reach an an altitude of one mile, since your logic includes failures encountered early in the history of the technology. Applying your logic to the computer industry suggests that there's a global market for maybe 5 computers (at one point in history, there WAS a market for only five computers).
Technology progresses; I'd think a slashdot geek would realize this. Nuclear energy technology is no different.
I'd also point out that if you exclude insanely stupid events like the detonation of nuclear bombs, more people in the USA die in a year from car accidents than have ever died world-wide from radiation exposure. Americans (or perhaps humans in general) do a really lousy job in assessing risk. And don't get me started on the tragedy of SUVs (sure, you're more safe in your SUV...it's because of conservation of momentum. Never mind the poor sod you run into, because youre life is obviously more valuable than his). Anyway...never let good science get in the way of politics and mob manipulation. We fear radiation and throw ourselves under the juggernaut of the oil industry.
The dispersal rate of airborne pollutants is much higher than the rate at which nuclear waste is dispersed. This means that after a short time the waste which is released from a fossil fuel power plant is reduced to neglible levels when considering pollutant ppm. Nuclear waste degrades much more slowly and cannot be effectively dispersed in the atmosphere.
You can bet that I am not in favor of the prolonged use of fossil fuels as a primary power source. However, this does not mean that I must automatically subscribe to nuclear power as a sustainable and safe method of power generation.
Slow down a piece there cowboy. As its clearly stated in the article to which you refer, Oak Ridge was making military weapons. Also the waste was dumped into pits. This particular issue has *nothing* to do with waste planning at all. The ignorance about the material at the time and, probably, expediency led to such haphazard disposal. Not to mention the nitric acid.
As for your non-sequitur to 'anti-environmentalists', which by your tone i assume means anyone who would advocate nuclear power, All energy conversion technologies that use consumables have an output of something. I have seen a lot of knee jerking on nuclear, some valid, and a lot that isn't. You have to pick your poison if you want the juice for your internet.
Current treatment procedures generally involve pumping out the contaminated groundwater, filtering it, and pumping it back, which is rather expensive.
I want these guys to use whatever works the best. Microbes, filtering, shooting it off into the sun...
Really...this is one of the places where is has to be done right. Screw the expense.
Unfortunately, profits and stockholders will get in the way of doing it right.
According to Mining bacteria's appetite for toxic waste
The article does not say what is uraninite. Uraninite is the primary ore of uranium. Uraninite is a reduced form of uranium which appears in places where there is few oxygen. So what the bacteria do, is consuming the oxygen and altering the environment of uranium so it changes the environment so uranium alters into uraninite faster which is only stable when uranium cannot associate itself with oxygen.
Ok now, according to The Mineral URANINITE:
So we have changed a radioactive material into a highly radioactive and interesting mineral ? Wow that's a deal =), now it is not only radioactive but interesting also.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Got that right. As long as the waste stream is managed well, it is much cleaner. Coal pumps enormous amounts of SO4 and NO3 into the air as acid precipitation and also offers plenty mercury and other hazardous metals. Unfortunately, it is also more expensive. Maintaining and disposing of that waste stream is tough, especially under the regulatory system. Even if there were some deregulation, it would not be cheap to manage the by-products. And don't forget: more Americans have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in radiation-related commercial nuclear energy generation accidents. It sounds like the owners of existing nuclear plants are planning to refurbish them rather than decommission. It appears it will be cheaper to upgrade ond operate the assets rather than maintain them as relics for which there is no disposal alternative.
And just what do you think that you're going to do with it once you've dug it up?
Bury it safely?
The whole point of this excercise is to keep the radioactive material from interacting with living creatures: if it is immobile, insoluble and buried, then there are PRECIOUS FEW living things that are in any way affected by it.
After all, the REAL danger in toxic and radioactive heavy metals is not momentary exposure, but the concentration over time into the tissues of long-lived creatures (e.g. humans); just look at all of the trouble with soluble mercury concentrations in large ocean fish (tuna, swordfish, etc.)
This technique renders the uranium insoluble, which makes it impossible to absorb, which makes it impossible to CONCENTRATE, so nobody winds up with a toxic dose (there are NO toxic materials: only toxic DOSAGES. Prolonged breathing of pure oxygen is fatal, after all.)
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
There is a total revolution going on in all food production worldwide through the use of a class of microogranisms known as Purple Non-Sulfur Bacterias (PNSB's). The work was pioneered by a Japanese scientist who did research for 20 years to perfect a synergistic formula of different microogranisms that work together, including the PNSB's, lactic acid bacteria, and yeasts.
Almost all organic farms are now spraying soil with this solution. Additionally, people who raise animals are feeding it to their animals. Not just organic farmers, but even traditional mass production farms in the US because it lets them *totally eliminate anti-biotics and hormones* due the increased nutrition the microbes afford creates who consume them.
Human beings are actually supplementing with these as well. It is very popular in Japan and South Korea, and is becoming popular in America.
The PNSB's act as reducing agents, ie, antioxidants. So, the break things down by creating antioxidants that eliminate the material over time, as opposed to oxidizing bacteria that makes things putrify and rot. The reduction ability of the PNSB's is why the US military uses the same exact solution as the farmers and humans do, to break down toxic waste from weapons and nuclear power plants.
Have a look at:
http://www.rawpaleodiet.org/em/
http://www.antioxbew.com/
My DVD and Game Collection Tracking L
As has already been stated, Oak Ridge was a VERY unique situation.... in Dr. Richard Feynman's The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, he recalls that Oak Ridge didn't even know what they were doing until well into the project, when Los Alamos got authorization to tell them.
Moreover, nuclear energy is clean... and I'm certainly not an anti-environmentalist. As long as it is handled properly, nuclear energy is a very safe and efficient (not to mention cool) method for producing electricity.
[Note: calling nuclear energy 'cool' greatly adds to my credibility]
Maybe if people stopped trying to generate a stigma around nuclear power plants we could spend our efforts making them safer and more efficient, rather than simply fighting for their existence. Unfortunately, the average Joe knows only three things about nuclear energy:
1. It makes bombs go boom
2. It's baaaaad and kills everyone
2. It's just like in the movies
Same deal with antibiotics, or any other organism and the cruel cruel world. That's how life works -- more organisms are born they can survive, the ones with bad mutations don't survive under "normal" conditions, but when conditions change, normal and abnormal swap places, the ones that used to live die, and some of the ones that used to die now live.
Infuriate left and right
Both on the microbes themselves (who may mutate or develop into something quite different) and the containment of the microbes themselves? What happens if they escape into an uncontrolled environment (I'm thinking on the lines of the killer bees)? The problem is alternate _safe_ sources of energy not microbes to cleanup the mess. Why not put this much effort into wind/solar technology and eliminate the need for such stuff to begin with?