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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”

#61
post #56
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…

I feel compelled, from the tone of the comment, to point this out: Limited liability isn't some surprise side effect of a corporation's legal structure, it is often right there in the name (Ltd, LLC, Pty Ltd, etc). Yes that structure lets people get away with harmful shenanigans. The system is biased towards optimism. Feature, not bug. The benefits and strengths of this have so far completely outweighed the costs to…

Limited Liability refers to the suppliers of capital, which often differ from the employees and directors that are responsible for the issues like in the article. I am fine with this since there is no moral hazard, but the parties involved / responsible should not be able to take their bonuses, click bankrupt and restart elsewhere under a new name. Society needs more protection, clearly.

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

#62

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

I'm guessing "not very radioactive" https://weather.com/news/news/2021-04-03-leak-at-florida-pho... > Hopes said Saturday afternoon that snook live in the pond that is in danger of collapsing and he has seen ducks swimming on top of it.

Not great but not terrible

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

#63
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 from wood may be compost-able, but I think the leftovers from burning coal can contain arsenic, mercury and lead among other things. There are also instances of the fly ash being radioactive. u/leetrout hints that they are from WV/EKY area, where hilly terrain can make stashing fly ash in slurry ponds less visible (but more susceptible to contaminating small streams undetected). Specifically in the eastern KY/OH regions, there massive impoundments https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html - information regarding some of the byproducts.

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

#64
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?

Power plant and incinerator fly ash contains heavy metals and other poisonous substances so needs to be separated to prevent environment contamination.

But I guess you could turn it into bricks and isolate those instead or even use them as building materials in some form of infrastructure.

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

#65

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…

[deleted]

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

#68
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I’d argue that the average western person’s food budget comes from:

1) desire to eat « fresh » foods out-of-season (greenhouses, air transport, lengthy controlled-atmosphere storage)

2) feeding food to food and getting 1/10th back (feeding corn to a cow)

3) desire for labour-intensive foods. Potatoes can be straightforward harvested from a field by a machine. Alfalfa (or anything in a greenhouse) cannot.

I think the biggest barrier to going back to « the old way » is not having manufactured fertilizer. Nobody cares if the water came by pump instead of by hand. But I supposed over-watered at the end = more water in the product instead of useful matter.

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

#69
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...

I live in a rural area with farming and fishing as main industries. Many of the farms are family owned due to the limited land area here (island). Farmers want to grow food for people many have done it for generations. The rural area and nature is what they love. They want to grow food in a way that's as healthy as possible they don't want to deal with agricultural herbicides and pesticides.

But many people are in denial about how much work is needed to grow the food that feeds everyone. Crop yields need to be high and costs low at the grocery store end but farmers often only get around 200 dollars per ton for their hard effort.

Here's an old article from my region: https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/it-costs-a-pile-to-gro...

* Land $3 to $5 million

* Equipment $1 million

* Storage $1 million (shared/co-op or separate organization)

* Farmer profit ~$20,000 (16 hour days all spring/summer/fall) - other costs and taxes

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

#70
This coming at the heels of Matt Gaetz suggesting that Miami with in abundant clean resources can become a crypto mining Mecca. What endless flow of energy you ask? Nuclear... (can’t find the link all that comes up is the sex trafficking charge)
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