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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

#141

Post by chm »

sourkremlin wrote: post #94
gaius wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kurzweil believes that being very very small allows you to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics. There's no physics to back this up...

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?

You're then both saying the same thing. S has to go up somewhere.

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

#142

Post by dllthomas »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #85
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.

They redirect water from Northern to Southern California. Why not from rural Wyoming to, say, Colorado? We may have 5M people here, and are chronically short of water. The water from Colorado (via the Colorado River) also supplies Utah, Arizona, Southern California, Nevada, and Mexico with water. All of those areas need more water; even if Colorado stays at its current demand level, you could imagine one or more of t…

"Why not from rural Wyoming to, say, Colorado?"

Or also to Southern California? So what if there's a few mountain ranges in the way?

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

#143

Post by ars »

vacri wrote: post #122
saulrh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic bags last longer in landfills than nuclear waste will last in a repository; plastic photodegrades in about 500 years, multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years [1]. Nuclear waste is fundamentally static; unlike tailings, it pretty much stays where you put it. Coal plants actually produce titanic amounts of radiation, vastly more than nuke pl…

multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years You can take a landfill, put dirt over the top, and now you have parkland for people to use. It's happened to two intracity landfills within a couple of kilometers of where I live. The same can't be done with nuclear waste.

> The same can't be done with nuclear waste.

Why not? Just bury it a bit deeper.

But it doesn't matter - you don't need to. Unlike bags, there is so little nuclear waste we can afford to dedicate one tiny area to it.

The entire nuclear waste of the US in the past 40 years can fit in a room 350 feet on each side. (Basically 1 city block.) That's it. That's all the space you need for the entire united states!

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

#144

Post by huherto »

cjensen wrote: post #57

It seems to me that if you need to dig a well that deep you have utterly failed to address the real problem: you are using MUCH more than falls on the ground. Wait a few more years and you'll just have to dig an even deeper well. It's just postponing the inevitable. [1] With that principle in mind, I'm not sure I care if deep resources are polluted for a few hundred thousand years. [1] Mexico is rapidly improving eco…

Just a note in Mexico. It can be divided two parts with different water problems. In central and southern Mexico, there is abundance of rain, and it is more populated. The main problem is managing the rain. Northern Mexico is like the American Southwest, sparsely populated, great extensions of land and very little rain.

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

#145

Post by dllthomas »

msandford wrote: post #139
pdonis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the notion that you can have a power plant which requires outside power in order to not melt-down is -- frankly -- retarded You're right that this is an additional risk factor, which would be eliminated in a design that required only passive cooling after shutdown (and newer designs have this feature). But "retarded" is too strong. Just having the backup generators not come on for a short time period isn't enough; th…

I agree that average over the kilowatt-hours nuclear might be safer than coal. But the problem is that the risk is HIGHLY concentrated. I can self-insure my computers because if one ever fails I have the cash to handle it. It's not a financial crisis. I don't self insure my car (for collision/comprehensive) because it's too big of an expense for me to absorb at any one time without severe hardship. Nuclear reactors (…

Frankly, I think the concentrated, visible threat is better. We're much better at dealing with those.

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

#146

Post by jessaustin »

jessaustin wrote: post #39
moocowduckquack wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current nuclear industry has some serious downsides. The only reason established nuclear is presented as ecological is due to the discussion about climate impact. Without the CO2 blinkers on though, it is pretty fucking messy.

True, and it's somewhat disturbing to see "environmentalists" tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to argue for nuclear with a straight face.

When I said "it's somewhat disturbing" I didn't mean that I desired forthwith to be somewhat disturbed.

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

#147

Post by jessaustin »

ars wrote: post #143
vacri wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years You can take a landfill, put dirt over the top, and now you have parkland for people to use. It's happened to two intracity landfills within a couple of kilometers of where I live. The same can't be done with nuclear waste.

> The same can't be done with nuclear waste. Why not? Just bury it a bit deeper. But it doesn't matter - you don't need to. Unlike bags, there is so little nuclear waste we can afford to dedicate one tiny area to it. The entire nuclear waste of the US in the past 40 years can fit in a room 350 feet on each side. (Basically 1 city block.) That's it. That's all the space you need for the entire united states!

Why don't they do that then? Why do I keep seeing news of waste languishing in temporary storage, being "secretly" moved to different temporary storage, drifting in dust form over entire communities, leaking out into groundwater, etc.?

Maybe DOE should hire some HN experts so they'll learn how the job ought to be done? As much money as the nuclear industry has stolen from taxpayers, I think they can afford you.

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

#148

Post by cgrubb »

cgrubb wrote: post #124
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…

I think this is the mine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Ranch-Highland This is the process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-situ_leaching#Uranium Hard to evaluate how serious the problem is without knowing how toxic and radioactive the waste is and how large the underground aquifers are.

Having read up more on this, it looks like there are 2 active uranium mines in AZ, and one in each of NE, UT, WY. Industry people seem to think leaching is the cleanest way to mine uranium. Older techniques created radioactive dust.

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

#149

Post by VexXtreme »

angersock wrote: post #116
k-mcgrady wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was never an option. Why do you hate America?

I know you're being facetious but some people actually do think this way. I witnessed a discussion a few days ago where a person took a positive pro-change position regarding something and people literally started saying things like "Why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate our constitution?".

A lot of people aren't willing to stand up for what's right and good and feel that attacking you is an appropriate response when you criticize their feudal overlords. It's really depressing and disheartening.

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

#150

Post by rbanffy »

dredmorbius wrote: post #138
rbanffy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we used geothermal sources just to boil water, not generate energy to desalinate it, and just free that water vapor to the atmosphere?

To what end?

The water would rain down eventually and replenish natural reservoirs. This, of course, further limits where the plant must be located (coastal areas would not be adequate for this)
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