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Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

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Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#101

Post by jotm »

drivers99 wrote: post #78
jotm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought exactly! Is this accurate, deep water reserves are allowed to be polluted? That doesn't make sense at all, and it's completely insane if it's true... Even Russia has laws protecting deep aquifers, in fact they're considered cleaner than the surface reserves (that may actually be true seeing as Baikal has a goddamn paper mill on its shore).

Reminds me of this radioactive contaminated lake in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

Well, that's just fooking great...

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#102

Post by ars »

techdmn wrote: post #82
ars wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Becaus…

I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.

Aside from the excellent reply by saulrh the waste not a problem because there is just so little of it.

(Plus with a bit of confidence and engineering we can burn all the waste to energy, leaving nothing at all.)

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#103

Post by bananacurve »

cylinder wrote: post #64
refurb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it's an issue, go talk to the EPA, they approve all the of the deep injection wells used for waste containment. http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/ Edit: Actually, something doesn't make sense, the type of well described has been banned in the US[1] [1]Inject hazardous or radioactive wastes into or above USDWs. These wells are banned unless authorized under a federal or state ground water remediat…

All of the momentum in the US economy right now is rooted in the natural gas boom (fracking). Nobody is going to touch it.

I don't think you understand the scale of the US economy.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#104

Post by grecy »

gwern wrote: post #68
peterwwillis wrote: post #17

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…

What in rural Wyoming would ever justify spending half a million dollars for a single water well? I do not think an example like the massive urban conglomeration of Mexico City (greater area: 21.2 million people) naturally analogizes to such areas.

> What in rural Wyoming would ever justify spending half a million dollars for a single water well?

You need to think further into the future. What happens in 50-100-200 years when all the surface and near-surface water is spoken for, and there is literally not enough water for the population to even drink?

(If you think I've being doomsdayish, this actually happens in Australia - a buddy of mine with a newborn in a city of 30,000 people had to rely on bottled flown-in water just to be able to drink)

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#105

Post by maxerickson »

gaius wrote: post #100
sourkremlin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is. The second law of thermodynamics (which I am assuming you are referring to) only applies to an isolated system and describes its tendency toward thermal equilibrium -- it doesn't apply when you are able to add energy to the system. Am I misunderstanding you?

Simply that nanotech can accomplish miracles. You have to power your nanobots somehow, and you have to dump the heat they create by doing work.

If you harvest solar energy you can do a whole lot of work without worrying about any new heat.

Harvesting a tiny fraction of the total solar energy available (on Earth) would look an awful lot like a miracle.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#106

Post by k-mcgrady »

narrator wrote: post #60
Arjuna wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of this quote, attributed to the Cree Native Americans: "Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

Kurzweil would probably respond that nanobots and the singularity will fix everything.

How about not fucking things up in the first place? It's stupid to cause an unnecessary problem because one day we might have a solution.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#107

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

grecy wrote: post #104
gwern wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in rural Wyoming would ever justify spending half a million dollars for a single water well? I do not think an example like the massive urban conglomeration of Mexico City (greater area: 21.2 million people) naturally analogizes to such areas.

> What in rural Wyoming would ever justify spending half a million dollars for a single water well? You need to think further into the future. What happens in 50-100-200 years when all the surface and near-surface water is spoken for, and there is literally not enough water for the population to even drink? (If you think I've being doomsdayish, this actually happens in Australia - a buddy of mine with a newborn in a…

I mean, on those time scales we could (more expensively) desalinate water using fusion power.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#108

Post by moocowduckquack »

ars wrote: post #65
schiffern wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And solar is rapidly out-competing and out-innovating both.

Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Becaus…

Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear.

It produces treatable wastes, ones that can be allowed to enter the normal economy and processed, rather than wastes we are so scared of that we can't let anybody touch them and so inject them into deep water aquifers instead.

Also, all waste comparisons I have seen people make with nuclear generally seem to only include volume of spent fuel, and not the wastes from the process of making the fuel in the first place, which are several orders of magnitude greater.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#109

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #86
ars wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And coal power is like a constant never ending fukushima. It's gut, but un-informed feelings like yours that are the cause of so much environmental destruction. > I knew people first hand who died from chernobyl's toxic rain. And I know of people who today are suffering from asthma and lung cancer from coal's toxic exhaust. And newsflash: There are way way way way more of them.

Why do you assume I am defending coal? It's irrational confidence like yours that nuclear power is in any way safe, and therefore a good replacement. Coal doesn't need a replacement, we need to start using energy responsibly. That means not using energy when we don't have it. A nuclear plant is not an acceptable way to generate energy.

We think you're defending coal because you say things like "Coal doesn't need a replacement [...] a nuclear plant is not an acceptable way to generate energy" despite the fact that the coal plants are way more polluting and radioactive.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#110

Post by moocowduckquack »

schiffern wrote: post #59
Zancarius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it curious that on HN of all places, there are some who seem appalled that technology could be used to offset much of what we've done, largely as a fault of technological advancement. That's not to say I'm against conservation. I think conservation is a necessity that few appreciate (having lived in a desert all my life, I have a certain appreciation for scarce resources), but comments like the one you replied…

>comments like the one you replied to are exactly the kind we don't need. GP here. :) I'm 100% in favor of using technology "to offset much of what we've done, largely as a fault of technological advancement." After all, rainwater collection is technology! But desalination isn't that kind of technology — it's the destructive kind. My question was genuine. What advantage does plastic greenhouse desalination have over…

I am not entirely sure what you think these greenhouses are.

Desalination does not intefere with rainwater harvesting. Rainwater harvesting is an entirely parallel enterprise, mostly involving accumulating very large bodies of freshwater.

Currently desalination is very energy intensive and so tends to do harm due the pollution generated from producing that energy.

These greenhouses desalinate water with a fraction of the energy requirements (pumping sea water inland takes energy, but nowhere near as much energy as you might imagine, as long as the inland end is not too far above sea level), while producing food, increasing the amount of moisture in the local area so greening that area of desert, and also increasing the amount of water available to the local municipal supply, at a rate that can be offset by the main farming business.

This is only control of water in the way that a pipe is control of water. It is continuous production of clean water in areas where that is often a problem.

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