nuclear power
Your Questions About Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air
Ken asks…
Where is harder to survive..?
Northern Canada/Russia (with lots of cold and snow) or a desert in Nevada?
Assume that there is no countries or cities around, you are the only human in the world and you have to survive by yourself. I am talking about lifetime sustained survival. Not just survive until you get out kind of thing.
PS: I didn’t use a desert in Africa like sahara because obviously there is absolutely 0 chance of sustainable human life.
admin answers:
The Sahara desert has been home to thousands of people for thousands of years. So has the Namib desert and the Kalahari desert where the bushmen have hunted very skillfully for many generations and they eat well.
The Nevada desert can feed you too if you find the skills to get the food it harbours.
Learn some biology. Then you can eat. Learn geology and you can find water. And oil.
The driest desert in the world is the Atacama. It’s beautiful. I’ve been twice. It’s got places where no rain has fallen for more than four hundred years.
But it hasn’t got the driest air in the world.
That’s in Antarctica where water is frozen out of the air and where scientific instruments, especially for infra red measurements which get ruined by water vapour in the air absorbing infra red, are stationed in the scientific research stations at Ross Island and around the South Pole.
It’s easy to look it up. ..Antarctic Research Stations.
The driest air in the world lays over a huge sheet of ice and snow…frozen water.
Cold places give you water but more importantly they demand more in supplies than hot places. It takes more energy and more materials to heat things than to cool them.
Without enough heat you’re soon dead. Providing it and keeping it is costly in materials and clothing..
Deserts get cold at night, even the Sahara. You get a break from the heat and bright Sun.
You can burn camel dung or other dung and dried grasses to get enough heat for cooking. That’s all the heat you need.
Move when it’s cooler in the morning and evening and get shade under a high tent or in the shadow of rocks during the hottest part of the day.
You can cross the Sahara with a lighter load than for crossing Siberia.
Both places you need wildlife to live on or take your own animals. Move to where they can eat so you can keep them alive.
The reindeer herders in the far north of Finland do that, where a warm night in winter is -20C.
Reindeer provide milk and meat, furs for clothing and shoes, tents and sleeping mats, and bone for knives and ornaments.
Sami people have been living in the far north for more than two thousand years
http://norskfolke.museum.no/en/Stories/Set-1/Sami-baptismal-boots/ .. .
Http://www.suite101.com/content/the-sami-of-the-north-a222034 . . . .
In the Sahara camels and goats and sometimes sheep provide the milk and meat, and give wool for cloth to make clothing and tents and bedding rolls, and leather for shoes.
Nomads move to where the grazing is best, in the Gobi desert, and in the Sahara and Namib deserts.
In both cold and hot places you can trap birds and small animals.
Hares and arctic foxes in the far north…or lizards and snakes and the few small mammals that live in the desert..
Many cold places have rivers with fish, and by the coast the sea provides food as well….seaweeds, molluscs, fish and seals.
Desert or frozen tundra…you can live in both and thousands do.
In desert you can still get water.
Hang a fine net to collect the dew. Some plants do that.
Dew collects on the hairy leaves and stems overnight in desert air and provides water for birds and small animals. Be up early enough or it’s gone down animals throats or into the plant or back up into the sky.
That’s where the net idea came from….hairy plants that collect water from dew.
Nets are also used to collect water from fog in remote mountains,and in deserts eg in Chile.
Http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1101_TVdesertbeetle.html . . . . . .
You can dig condensation pits or condense water from plants.
Http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Water-in-the-Desert . . .. ..
You can dig into the desert where the signs tell you water lays underneath. When it’s close enough to the surface wind-blown seeds take root and you get an oasis.
Thousands of people have lived in deserts and frozen tundra for thousands of years, long before modern equipment existed like expensive water reservoirs for backpacks instead of far more useful and versatile water bottles which keep Arabian nomads alive in the fierce desert heat but are too simple for ‘must have the latest’ techy walkers.
Learn to live where you are and then you can live. Generations long past past did that quite well enough for the current populations to be there……
Have fun
Desert walks….
Http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100704125838AAOUFkW . . . . . . .
Mandy asks…
So why isn’t nuclear power being developed if global warming is such a threat?
Sustainable Development Commission statement on nuclear power: http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/presslist.php/51/nuclear-power-wont-fix-it
Further to my question on Nuclear Power (yes or no) many AGW proponents pointed out that they were in favour of it, or at least had no serious objections.
But if that’s at all representative, and if AGW is such a threat, why isn’t nuclear power being actively pursued? Take the UK, pretty much all ‘Green’ groups vehemently oppose it. The government is being advised on it’s energy policy by a commission which it set up and appointed Jonathan Porritt to head (ex-Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner).
It’s obvious that – for the short and even medium term – renewables and energy saving won’t cut it. See the calculations at www.withouthotair.com
I ask because it seems that both warmists and sceptics seem to agree on nuclear. If that’s at all representative of the views of most people then why aren’t we actually doing something rather than planning another massive conference in some far-flung location?
admin answers:
Because a lot of the people who are in charge of solving global warming are either:
a. Completely ignorant of the fact that wind and solar can’t solve global warming.
B. Heavily influenced by fossil fuel interests that would be hurt if nuclear power took away their market in the process of solving global warming.
B(2). Influenced by the fossil fuel unions who don’t want to lose their power (the workers don’t have much to worry about though, the time it’ll take to switch to nuclear will be more than enough for retraining and a lot of them would probably end up working at a vastly safer nuclear plant anyway).
C. See global warming as a means to force people to use less energy and return to ‘simpler’ times whether the population wants it or not (never mind that most people would choose global warming over what the greens want).
D. Are afraid of losing the votes of the anti-nuclear kooks.
The green groups should not be thought of as environmentalists, for the most part they are urban trendoids who don’t really have a clue about the environment but want to feel good about doing something. There’s also a big focus on appearance for the greens and probably a bit of residual Christian morality making a virtue of sacrifice.
The views you get here probably aren’t representative of the majority of the population although the anti-nuclear movement is in decline, they should be almost gone within the decade.
The scientific community probably hasn’t done enough to tell the public and politicians what the scientific consensus on nuclear power is and why renewable energy isn’t going to be able to do what we need it to.
As for _Sustainable energy without the hot air_, that is probably a bit (or maybe a lot) optimistic for renewables although it covers the UK which has a relatively high population density, other countries might be able to get all their energy from renewables assuming that enough decent energy storage systems could be built (we don’t really have that though, pumped hydro is the best we’ve got but we don’t have enough suitable sites for it).
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Your Questions About Sustainable Energy Fund
Mark asks…
What is predicted to happen to the gas prices in california? will it ever drop?
What is predicted to happen to the gas prices in california? will it ever drop?
right now its like 5 bucks a gallon. is the price predicted to rise? when will the price start dropping again? which president do you think will help us stabilize our economy again and have decent prices for gas in california? it is outrageous.
maybe something bout US owning Antarctica? will that help the gas prices become more stable?
admin answers:
Sorry but high gas prices are here to stay until such a time exists that demand significantly decreases due to other options. The US produces about 3% of the oil on the market and we use about 25% of what is consumed worldwide. Today, China and India have a growing demand for cars and gas. Gas prices are about $9 a gallon in Europe so we really don’t have much room to complain. Both McCain and Obama will have their work cut out for them. Drilling off-shore will have no effect on gas prices for a long, long time other than some sort of immediate feel good sensation that our leaders are doing something. It will take 10 years before off-shore drilling will yield a drop. The best solution is for you and I to reduce our individual consumption and then support policies through your voting habits that fund alternative energy, conservation and sustainable living. The way I do that is to consolidate my car trips and my husband and I ride our bicycles to work. We thought about mileage when we purchased our vehicle 2 years ago, knowing that gas prices would go up (how could you not know???? I’ve known since I the oil embargo of 1973 and I was only 11!!!!) We live in the mountain southwest where it snows heavily in winter so we need an SUV and got a Honda Element, which is very fuel efficient. We voted to increase our sales tax locally to expand city bus service. The initiative passed and we hope to take the bus to work by next summer. The bottom line is that American lifestyles are going to have to change. Some people might tell you that such changes will set us down the road to a socialist way of life similar to Europe. Well I have traveled in Europe extensively and I don’t see them complaining about riding bicycles on municipally maintained bike paths and lanes or using public transit, which is fantastic. My travels suggest to me that middle class Europeans manage pretty well, despite having to pay $9 a gallon and use buses and trains to get to work and school. This is not outrageous, this is the real world.
William asks…
What are the benefits and limitations of the current method if nuclear waste disposal?
It is a long question.
If possible, please add details. If possible, because beggars can’t be choosers. I’d be thankful if you just wrote a sentence as long as it answers my question. Hell, I’d be thankful if you wrote a word.
This might be redundant, but thank you in advance for the people who answer.
admin answers:
A very important question due to the fact that the current method of dealing with high level radioactive waste is to safely contain it or isolate it from the human environment.
In fact to date, there is still no long term solution on how to safely dispose of radioactive nuclear waste.
What the governments don’t want us to know is:
1) Nuclear power is not as clean as they portray it to be.
2) Governments spend ten of millions of our tax dollars annually to promote nuclear energy as “clean”.
3) Tritium a by-product from nuclear power plants is routinely released into the air and water as a gas,; no filtering is economically feasible.
(Tritium is a carcinogen, causes radiogenic cancers, birth defects and genetic mutations)
4) Nuclear power is not sustainable technology.
5) Greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation due to uranium mining, milling and enrichment, transportation to power plants and storage facilities and storage maintenance is poisoning life on earth.
6) In the United States alone, geological data confirms that there are over 4,000 open pit and underground uranium mines, generating approximately 3 billion metric tons of toxic waste.
7) There is no safe storage or disposal solutions for the radioactive nuclear waste we produce on a daily basis.
8) Nuclear waste from spent fuel rods will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years!
9) Nuclear power facilities worldwide are at risk of being attacked and or sabotaged as they make the perfect deadly weapon.
10) The term “Isolation” from the environment is relative due to the fact that radiation from the spent fuel will eventually be released into the biosphere over time.
The extreme longevity of nuclear waste is the one reason why we should not be producing it at all.
Until we discover a way to dispose of it safely or illiminate the waste completely a moratorium on the building of any more nuclear power facilities should be enforced.
Much research and funding has gone into the finding a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem.
Some of the proposals which have been very controversial and opposed have been;
Disposal of the radioactive waste deep below the earths surface in mined repositories deemed geologically sound.
This is the actual legal designated form of disposal to date, though it has not been demonstrated to be technically safe or infallable.
There have been other proposals in the past such as, shooting it up into space and burying it up underneath the polar ice caps.
One of the most troubling and insane ideas has been to bury it underneath the bedrock on the oceans floor. It would be almost impossible to monitor and it would take only one mistake to release and poison the earths oceans for millions of years.
Nuclear waste has been kept out of the publics mind and out of sight for the most part. This is done intentionally to avoid any opposition or public “watchdog” reviews.
It is the future of the planet that we are choosing to ignore when we let government and corporations take control of such an important issue. The nuclear power industry has only one objective, to make money! To promote their industry.
The more nuclear power plants built, the more radioactive waste the earth is going to be contaminated with.
Our future generations will be burdened with monitoring the millions of storage facilities littering the face of the earth.
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Developing Nuclear Power as Alternative Energy
Many researchers believe that harnessing the power of the atom in fission reactions is the most significant alternative energy resource that we have, for the fact of the immense power that it can generate.
Nuclear power plants are very clean-burning and their efficiency is rather staggering. Nuclear power is generated at 80% efficiency, meaning that the energy produced by the fission reactions is almost equal to the energy put into producing the fission reactions in the first place. There is not a lot of waste material generated by nuclear fission although, due to the fact that there is no such thing as creating energy without also creating some measure of waste, there is some. The concerns of people such as environmentalists with regards to using nuclear power as an alternative energy source center around this waste, which is radioactive gases which have to be contained.
The radiation from these gases lasts for an extraordinarily long time, so it can never be released once contained and stored. However, the volume of this waste gas produced by the nuclear power plants is small in comparison to how much NOx (nitrous oxide that is, air pollution) is caused by one day’s worth of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles. While the radiation is certainly the more deadly by far of the two waste materials, the radiation is also by far the easier of the two to contain and store. In spite of the concerns of the environmentalists, nuclear power is actually environmentally friendly alternative energy, and the risk of the contained radiation getting out is actually quite low. With a relatively low volume of waste material produced, it should not be a difficult thing at all for storage and disposal solutions for the long term to be developed as technology advances.
The splitting of an atom releases energy in the forms of both heat and light. Atomic power plants control the fission reactions so that they don’t result in the devastating explosions that are brought forth in atomic and hydrogen bombs. There is no chance of an atomic power plant exploding like a nuclear bomb, as the specialized conditions and the pure Plutonium used to unleash an atomic bomb’s vicious force simply don’t exist inside a nuclear power plant. The risk of a meltdown is very low. Although this latter event has happened a couple of times, when one considers that there are over 430 nuclear reactors spread out across 33 nations, and that nuclear reactors have been in use since the early 1950’s, these are rare occurrences, and the events of that nature which have taken place were the fault of outdated materials which should have been properly kept up. Indeed, if nuclear energy could become a more widely accepted form of alternative energy, there would be little question of their upkeep being maintained. Currently, six states in America generate more than half of all their electrical energy needs through nuclear power, and the media are not filled with gruesome horror stories of the power plants constantly having problems.
Your Questions About Renewable Energy Definition
Linda asks…
Is tidal Power tiddle power compared to the power of the Nukes Industry?
Slim Footwear (Greenpeace) responding to Chris Hulme’s announcement that 8 Nuclear Power Stations are to be built and the Green Energy tidal generation plans will be scrapped.
“Lib Dem voters backed a party that supported renewable energy and opposed taxpayer handouts to the nuclear industry..”
admin answers:
It depends largely on how you cost the two proposals. If you ignore the cost of decomissioning and waste treatment, then nuclear power is more economical.
If however, you factor in the cost of decomissioning and treatment of waste – the case for nuclear power becomes very, very difficult to support. That’s just the financial cost – there’s also human costs as regards unwanted land use.
Tidal power – by definition – does not take up any land, other than to manufacture the equipment.
This is very disappointing.
Paul asks…
What is the difference between renewable and sustainable energy sources?
Can something be sustainable but not renewable?
admin answers:
Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished)Renewable energy is derived from natural processes that are replenished constantly. In its various forms, it derives directly from the sun, or from heat generated deep within the earth. Included in the definition is electricity and heat generated from solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, biomass, geothermal resources, and biofuels and hydrogen derived from renewable resources.
Each of these sources has unique characteristics which influence how and where they are used.
Sustainable energy sources are most often regarded as including all renewable sources, such as biofuels, solar power, wind power, wave power, geothermal power and tidal power. It usually also includes technologies that improve energy efficiency
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