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Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

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Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#41

Post by pfdietz »

IgorPartola wrote: post #39
leetrout wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal operations have slurry ponds where they store the sludge from washing the coal. And coal power plants have fly ash ponds which are bad for the environment. We’re shutting down the coal plants but these ponds will be around forever. Here is a map of ash ponds from power plants https://earthjustice.org/features/map-coal-ash-contaminated-... Here’s a link to the slurry spill I lived through with no water for days h…

I am curious what you could do with all this. I was under the impression that ash could be composted pretty well. It is organic material after all. Or is the issue the other added chemicals?

Ash is not organic material.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#42

Post by IgorPartola »

zokier wrote: post #26
foxhop wrote: post #15

Industrial Agricultural is a biohazard. We need to embrace the methods we used to feed ourselves for millions of years, with nature instead of in opposition of nature. Reference: https://archive.org/details/permaculture1adesignersmanualbyb...

> we used to feed ourselves for millions of years Use of fire at all emerged about 1.5 million years ago. Homo Sapiens emerged about 300 thousand years ago. First signd of any sort of agriculture are from about 15 thousand years ago. Stone age ended and we got first bronze tools less than 10 thousand years ago. The only method we have had "for millions of years" is hunter-gathering with stone tools.

Not only this but ancient agriculture supported fewer humans with a lot more work. This romanticized idea of growing food the old fashioned way and forget today’s busy way of life omits the part of doing nothing but growing food from not figuratively dawn to dusk. I spent some time in my youth farming the old fashioned way: hand tools only, carrying water from somewhere else, removing pests and weeds by hand. It is a terribly labor intensive process that managed to supplement my family’s food needs but not eliminate the need for purchased food by any means. We managed to do literally nothing else. We certainly couldn’t have fed anyone else since we didn’t have any kind of excess.

I don’t like industrial food. It is killing the planet abs pretty quickly. But it’s not doing it because farmers are evil. It’s because it the cheapest way to produce food. If we as a society want to go to a place where food costs 10-100x as much while availability goes down by about the same amount, let’s figure out how we will prevent mass starvation and population decline. But if the GP expects that farmers will switch to compost abs hand tools, they should probably expect to pay a lot more for a lot less food.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#43

Post by pfdietz »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #12

So, how radioactiove exactly it is ? I suppose it's the very bad kind of radioactive too, since water can easily be ingested ?

Phosphate ores contain uranium. The gypsum picks up the decay product radium, which is an alkaline earth element like calcium. Radium emits gamma rays and alpha particles, and also produces radon.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#44

Post by cortic »

mc32 wrote: post #34
voisin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When state officials hit the company with a multimillion-dollar fine for the damage done, it declared bankruptcy and shut down. This makes me furious. The employees and directors all go about their lives elsewhere with nary a scratch despite causing such a disaster. This is the problem with capitalism. Privatize profits, socialize losses. The only solution is to force companies to put up bonds or insurance sufficie…

[flagged]

The owners of Chernobyl (the government) didn't declare bankruptcy and piss off, they spent massive moneys containing the problem. So, socialize profits, socialize losses.

Trying to stop catastrophes from happening needs regulation and incentives, both of these things are broken in capitalism by its nature. But its not impossible to have regulation and incentives in either capitalist or socialist projects.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#45

Post by pfdietz »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21

> "For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates 5 tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste..." Is that correct? That sounds unsustainable, as well as unprofitable. Also, is it safe to presume that if the cost of proper disposal was reflected in the price of food, food would be significantly more expensive? Finally, are there particular foods this is used for?

Phosphate is the most limiting long term global mineral resource. Eventually we're going to have to mine it from average rocks (at 0.1% concentration). There is no substitute if you want agriculture.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#46

Post by luckylion »

foxhop wrote: post #18
zokier wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean cut the world population by order of magnitude and have majority of the populace slave on fields for a pittance. Sounds delightful.

That's not at all what I said or mean. Working with nature means using natural systems to produce food with less human energy and fossil fuels, and chemicals, and cutting down forests. A quick quote from the referenced work: """ The pragmatic and practical approach to the main body of this work largely omits reference to those visions or beliefs classifiable as spiritual or mystical; not because these are not a norma…

> produce food with less human energy and fossil fuels, and chemicals, and cutting down forests

It requires less input, less labor, less land --- why isn't it already trashing the market by simply being much cheaper?

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#47

Post by brudgers »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Sounds like a case of "it's too expensive to deal with this wastewater, so let's just put it in a big pond and hope the dam bursts and we can claim it was all a big accident" Mining industries are especially famous for this - there are ponds of waste that are 70 years old, just waiting for their moment to escape...

There's not much that can be done with it because essentially (not basically) it is acid. Phosphate mining uses sulfuric acid to extract the phosphates. These are large scale operations and produce a lot of water with a pH of 1.5-2. There's no comparable industrial process that can consume it as input. So it sits.

The gypsum stacks are the other waste byproduct. But it's less problematic because it doesn't flow, it just sits. The low level radiation prevents it's incorporation into commodity products such as gypsum wall board.

The byproducts get conflated because for convenience the radioactive gypsum waste from phosphate mining is used to contain the acidic sludge from phosphate mining. But it's the acidic sludge that is the fast acting ecological disaster. The gypsum will give you cancer of course, but as Joe Jackson sings everything gives you cancer. [1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsQyru5ACmA

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#48

Post by shagie »

colechristensen wrote: post #23
curryst wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are any kinds of radiation that are safe to ingest. But yeah, I would guess it's gamma radiation.

Have you ever eaten a banana?

Following up on this... https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Eating a banana is slightly more radiation than living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant (and 1/3 the amount from living within 50 miles of a coal plant).

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#49

Post by BlueTemplar »

curryst wrote: post #19
BlueTemplar wrote: post #12

So, how radioactiove exactly it is ? I suppose it's the very bad kind of radioactive too, since water can easily be ingested ?

I don't think there are any kinds of radiation that are safe to ingest. But yeah, I would guess it's gamma radiation.

My point is that some types of radiation carriers are easier to ingest (or breathe in) than others.

Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”

#50

Post by darkerside »

voisin wrote: post #33
antattack wrote: post #31

Results of a leak that happened in 1997: "amid heavy rains, a dam broke atop one of two gypsum stacks at the Mulberry Phosphates plant on State Road 60, unleashing a 56-million gallon spill of the acidic wastewater into the Alafia River. The pollution killed everything in its path for 42 miles, eventually rolling into Hillsborough Bay. The death toll included more than 1 million baitfish and shellfish and 72,900 game…

> When state officials hit the company with a multimillion-dollar fine for the damage done, it declared bankruptcy and shut down. This makes me furious. The employees and directors all go about their lives elsewhere with nary a scratch despite causing such a disaster. This is the problem with capitalism. Privatize profits, socialize losses. The only solution is to force companies to put up bonds or insurance sufficie…

This seems like mostly schadenfreude. What does it matter to you if they pay or we all do, assuming that we have more than enough as a society to pay for it, i.e. the benefits of capitalism outweigh the losses.

The only impact is potential moral hazard, but that could be prevented with loss of licenses, etc.

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