Air powered
- Thread starter the_killjoy
- Start date
Yes, legal under EU rules since there have also been some compressed air powered cars running on the road in France that more than one company has long been promoting. They have zero road tax too as ultra low emission vehicles.
Peugeot's is a hybrid, but the first company promoting this had a pure pre-compressed tank city car.
.
Peugeot's is a hybrid, but the first company promoting this had a pure pre-compressed tank city car.
.
Last edited:
With almost 80% of France's electricity from nuclear stations and much else hydro, their home country emissions are only a tiny fraction of our coal powered ones though.
.
There genuinely is a bird death problem though. Contrary to popular belief the USA was first to environmentally use wind power on a large scale and have suffered deaths of large numbers of birds in some circumstances. This has been worst when there's some confinement such as the turbines being in a canyon or close together.
The problem is blade tip speed. Although the wind turbine blades appear to be slow moving, tip speed of the longer blades can be up to 200 mph which is far too fast for the bird's anticipation and reactions.
We all see occasional birds dead on the road after being hit by vehicles doing only a fraction of that speed, illustrating how big the turbine blade problem can be.
.
Nucleur might be gaining approval from some quarters now as a way of mitigating the worst of climate change. But the environmental damage of mountains of radioactive waste with a half life of thousands of years isn’t much better.
Not to mention the risks. In the sixty years since the first full scale nuclear power station at Calder Hall there have been four or five major accidents. So to paraphrase the great Sod, as written in his third law: What can happen will happen at some point.
Not to mention the risks. In the sixty years since the first full scale nuclear power station at Calder Hall there have been four or five major accidents. So to paraphrase the great Sod, as written in his third law: What can happen will happen at some point.
A bit overdone surely? The mountains are of lower level waste, the high activity waste being in much smaller volumes easy to cope with, and much of that is recycled into new fuel rods after enrichment. Some 90% of the "mountains" of nuclear waste is in fact cold war waste since the production of weapons grade content is terribly inefficient. That will all become valuable when easily mined uranium runs out since we can then use it in fast breeder reactors to generate our power.
There have been three major nuclear accidents difficult to deal with, all were first generation stations without the benefits of the layers of computer control that they now enjoy. The first was due to a Magnox reactor feature and none of those exist in service any more, and the second and third were both due to human control errors in the absence of computer prevention of errors.
Today's second and third generation PWRs have intrinsically much safer reactors since they self correct anyway, and with the multi-layer computer control protection added are unlikely to ever cause problems. We've now had almost as long a time since that last major accident (1986) as the whole period of nuclear power preceding it.
The remaining problem is that possible due to a natural disaster like the Fukushima tsunami which brought a nuclear consequence, but it's important to keep that in perspective. The tsunami killed over 144,000 people, the nuclear consequence has killed none and is unlikely ever to. Clearly the Japanese were unwise to build that station on the known tektronic faultline coast when on the other side of the island there could never have been that problem.
No-one is going to make that expensive mistake again.
When the competition for the first train was won by Stephenson, a man stepped out in front of one not realising the danger and was killed. When one of the first cars was demonstrated at Crystal Palace a woman did the same and also got killed.
We could have banned all trains and cars in future, but instead we sensibly just made them safer and learned to live with them. That's exactly what has been done with nuclear generation, which is in fact by far the safest of all forms of electricity generation.
.
Last edited:
I’m afraid you’r very complacent there. Sweden is planning to put its waste from power stations underground in deep rock as we in this country have been planning to do for years. But no one wants it in their backyard of course so all our waste is still stored ’temporarily’ above ground. Power station waste is not low grade at all, anything but.
This from a piece on the site from a year or so ago.
Finland is ahead of Sweden, and recently began to store its waste in deep caverns under the Arctic. They are intended to be sealed in 2120 and stay sealed for 100,000 years! No one has any idea what or who will be living there then. But the chances if the current global civilisation still going are pretty slim; and slim just died of radiation sickness.
This from a piece on the site from a year or so ago.
Just to add, Of the four major accidents which happened that we know about. Two of the sites are never going to be inhabited again in our civilisation’s likely lifetime. Chernobol and its surrounding area is sealed, but will need much more money spent to make it safe for the next couple of thousand years or so, and Japan’s reactor is likely to be sealed the same way when they finally get it to stop leaking in a massive concrete dome.
The surrounding area will almost certainly never be safe to be lived in again for thousands of years.
All this after sixty years of the miracle of nuclear power. Just think what can happen when sod’s law really kicks in?
The surrounding area will almost certainly never be safe to be lived in again for thousands of years.
All this after sixty years of the miracle of nuclear power. Just think what can happen when sod’s law really kicks in?
Yes, I'm entirely happy about the waste situation John, both now and long into the future. We humans love our scare stories and every advance has been accompanied by dire predictions, for example the prediction that the human frame could not stand a speed above 30 mph without death following. With escape velocity at 25,000 mph there was a slight error there!
As for future proofed warnings on storage facilities, there isn't a problem. Firstly it's highly likely we will reopen the facilities to reuse the content fo r it's energy once easily mined uranium is depleted. Secondly the human race is hardly likely to go backwards technically to such a degree that they won't know what such a store is and how to detect it. Thirdly if they do go backwards into a primitive state that's unable to perceive the dangers, they won't be able to break in with their bone tools.
.
Last edited:
This really is absolute nonsense. The Chernobyl area is not and never has been sealed. When the residents found little support elsewhere large numbers of them returned to their homes and have lived there ever since, often well into their eighties, growing their vegetables as they've always done. The ground is polluted but it's not killing them or even making them ill. The area is rich in all wildlife which has also been assessed and found unharmed. Perhaps you don't realise that just twelve weeks after the Chernobyl accident, a staff team returned to restart reactor number one which then continued supplies to the Russian grid through to year 2000. So much for believing it sealed off.
A sarcophagus is being constructed over the failed reactor to seal just that off, that's all. Japan will do the same at Fukushima and it's contaminated surrounding area is tiny and no great inconvenience in the long term.
As for Sods law in years to come, no problem since reactors built nowadays are enclosed by containment buildings preventing radioactive escape as Three Mile Island proved.
There's further proof of the lack of long term harm from radioactivity. Some atolls in the Pacific were used for hydrogen bomb testing before the possible dangers of airborne radiation were fully appreciated. Ten years after a test scientists returned to one atoll suited up to measure the effects. That there were many seabirds nesting was not a surprise since they'd flown in, but what staggered them was that the island was infested with rats living off the seabird life. Clearly they hadn't swum a thousand miles to get there, it was just the continuing population. Many were trapped and tested but found to have no genetic damage, despite an H bomb explosion being infinitely more contaminating with radioactivity than any power station reactor failure could ever produce.
Since rats are genetically suitable for use in testing human medicines and chemicals, some measure of safety is indicated for us, even in such extreme circumstances.
Finally, when life first evolved on earth it was many times more radioactive from it's uranium 238 content than it is now, it's a part of our evolution.
.
Really? How long as the human race existed as modern man? 150,000 years or so.
How long since farming enabled civilisations to form? 8,000 years or so. Farming was still spreading and taking over the last hunter gatherers late into the last century BTW.
How long since the industrial revolution? 250 years or so.
And you think that the human race will survive for as long again as a technological civilisation as it has almost from its beginnings as skin wearing hunter gatherers? Even the people planning the repositories for lethal waste don’t believe that.
Just look around at how we have been breeding and eating up the planet’s resources and spreading over it. In the process destroying other life in the largest wave of extinctions for millions of years. With overpopulation and water and food and the resource shortages, and climate change, and war for what’s left. I give us less than a man’s full lifetime before the pressures on the world which have been accelerating since industry spread over the whole globe causes it all to go tits up. Almost all the civilisations which ever existed destroyed themselves through overuse of the resources which they depended on.
I think there is a much higher chance that our descendants - that is the survivors - will be illiterate goat herders than living in a technological civilisation.
I did say life and wasn't referring to humans. The fact that it started at all in the presence of much higher levels of radiation when so few places in the universe appear to have been so blessed/cursed is somewhat indicative of lower harm from radiation than is often feared.
I fully agree John and have included that as my option three. But I wish them luck in using their bone tools to break into a granite cavern deep underground store with thick steel doors. They'll probably worship it as a shrine instead!
.
You are quite wrong. The area around Chernobyl was surveyed and changes were found in the animals and plants living there. They were found to have very high doses of radiation and some genetic changes. But no one knows how many just died and whether the ones surveyed were descendants of ones which adapted.
Many of the old people did ignore the authorities and go back because they had nowhere else to go. They have been found to have very high levels indicating a risk of thyroid cancer. But as they are so old it was thought that they were more likely to die before that was going to kill them. Families with children are heavily discouraged from visiting and around 6000 extra cases of thyroid cancer have been found in children from the areas around the site.
If radiation is as benign to humanity as you seem to think it is why do we take such care not to come into contact with it?
I’m sure they will, and they’ll think the ancients who built it we’re gods. But the chances of leakage into water and surrounding rocks over the millennia are still high, and we should not be passing on our poison to the far future.I fully agree John and have included that as my option three. But I wish them luck in using their bone tools to break into a granite cavern deep underground store with thick steel doors. They'll probably worship it as a shrine instead!
.
The Scandinavian depositories are gold standard BTW. Most parts of the world are a lot more cavalier. I don’t think the Chinese have even given it any thought.
The area around has been opened to tourists on occasions for them to see the area, but children are indeed not welcome. The position was worse overall for childhood thyroid cancer than you indicated since the total affected was even higher. It's successfully treatable though and doesn't add to the deathroll. However, this cannot happen again, since unlike at Chernobyl, all nuclear countries since have plenty of iodine tablets for everyone to take one in the event of a nuclear accident. There will be no thyroid cancer resulting from Fukushima for example, adult or child. All part of the learning to live with advances as I commented earlier.
Because as with every other risk, we set safety levels so far below any actual risk.
Take what actually happens with the highest level waste from reactors. After five years of immersion we vitrify it and place it in steel drums. Then these are stacked around the power station sites with people in normal clothing walking by them all the time and this has been happening for decades with stacks of it. No-one has died from that or even got ill as a result.
.
I think the difference between us is that you are an optimist and I’m pessimistic about the future.
Dr Johnson once remarked that re-marriage was a triumph of hope over experience, and I think that the belief that mankind will find technological solutions to our problems is much the same.
Anyway must get on. I enjoyed our little chat.
Dr Johnson once remarked that re-marriage was a triumph of hope over experience, and I think that the belief that mankind will find technological solutions to our problems is much the same.
Anyway must get on. I enjoyed our little chat.