Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

steve here's a link.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev ... lmain.html

it's quite informative, the long and the short of it is that coal contains what could be considered high levels of uranium and other radioactive elements.


Re the other comments. I stand by my opinion that PV is only very situational, and ill suited to supplying our industrial and domestic needs.Even if you didn't live in a "mcmansion", solar is still a very expensive solution.

also food for thought on the topic of wave power - how would taking a big slice of energy out of coastal tides affect sea life? you guys would know better then me how that would work, i'm assuming a reduction in water current would have negative effects similar to building dams??

creative1 - i've stated before in other forums i work at a nickel mine. no it's not owned by any of your large oil/coal companys, they are only a small single site venture.

[quote="earthbound"]
If the whole world switched to nuclear power, apart from the fact that it would take many many decades to try and build that many power stations, there would only be enough uranium to power the world for about 20 years. Nuclear is not the answer, it is another finite resource. Solar, wind, geothermal, wave etc are all theoretically unlimited .[/quote]

I'd like to address this one.
There are significant reserves of uranium in australia alone.
http://www.uow.edu.au/eng/phys/nukeweb/ ... anium.html
as stated in the link above, known reserves in australia alone are 50 years worth of EASILY obtainable material. That is without a doubt going to increase with more prospecting, and tha'ts not even taking into account the higher cost ore that's known to be there.
then there is the fact that uranium isn't the sole source of fission we could use, and that fuel recycling technology is improving all the time.

lastly take this link with a grain of salt, and try to ignore all the american flag waving and chest beating, it still makes some very valid points.
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html
I would agree with one of it's final points that world uranium deposits could power the world for the next 1000 years.
All the main points (minus the retoric) are backed up by decent enough sources listed at the bottom of the page

interesting document timmy...............with all thins what is NOT said is just as important as what IS said.

U238 is only mildly radioactive and is found in the same concentration in soil and earth. Thorium, also mildy radioactive is used without control at 2000 ppm in tig welding electrodes........................

U238 is NOT the same as U235 (the fissionable uranium) and of the few ppm U238 in the coal, 0.71% is U235

The daughter elements produced by nuclear fission are far more radioactive with half lives from days to a few hundred thousand years...........

As a point of intrest radioactive intensity is inversly proportional to the half life of the element..............

The naturally occuring U238 in ALL soils has a half life of a few billion years

agree that 235 and 238 aren't the same, but i think the point stands that the very mild additional dose of radiation you get from a coal power station is STILL more then anything you get from a nuclear station....

The media has done far too much scare mongering for most people to think about it in those terms though. all they think is chernobyl

as an interesting side note. here is a link to someone who takes motor bike rides through the area, and the very interesting landscape as it was 20+ years ago
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

As Steve says, these emmissions are basically at the same level as normal "background" radiation.... unless you stick your head down the emmissions stack and breathe through a large straw for a decade you probably wont get sick......

You might get cancer from constant exposure to coal tars and other carceogens or lung cancer from exposure to fine particles suspended in the air though.....

But Timmy.....

Sorry, that's just the point .... you'd probably be evacuated and maybe suffer some minor respitory problems if you lived in the vicinity of a coal fired power station that burnt down.....

But being in the vicinity of a nuclear plant that burnt down you could be sure that the affects would be "STILL more then anything you get from a coal station"

Regards the bike rider zooming past Chernobyl....



... I sure as heck wouldn't be eating the road either

Sorry, I was way out with my info.. Viable uranium reserves would feed the worlds current power consumption for only 3-4 years.

http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html ... 1-22/4.php

that's just it though rupert - modern reactors CAN'T meltdown by the very nature of how they work.
1950's technology like what was in chernobyl relied on cooling to prevent melt downs, and even in chernobyl's case they manually over rode all the saftey protocol's in place.

sorry eb but that page ignores some very important facts (it also fails to link back to any sources)
1. no new exploration is being conducted for uranium, so obviously your known reserves will stay stagnant if you don't go looking for more. uranium is a very common element it often occurs in very economical situations for mining. It starts occuring at just 80m down. CHEAP known reserves are at 4.7million tonnes presently

2. breeder reactors were never a failure and that's not why they were shut down.
A perfect example is the reactor in france your site refers to. it was shutdown due to political pressure from protesting groups who actually shot a 5 russian military rockets at it in 1982 (there's irony for you, protesting against nuclear plants and almost causing a nuclear spill)

http://www.anl.gov/Science_and_Technolo ... chemy.html
these guys actually pioneered breeder reactors and made them work.

The basic problem with nuclear is not it's cost, fuel or saftey. It's the knee jerk reaction everyone has to the radioactively symbol, or the word chernobyl. If i spent decades giving fluffly white kittens bad press you'd think there's something wrong with them to.

I'm not sure that even the so called second generation breeder reactors are immune from failure Timmy, not necessarily just meltdown.

Even Chernobyl wasn't a core "meltdown" event as such but a fire and subsequent release to atmosphere..... and yes...



Absolutely correct Timmy, and in every case of failure there has been and always will be a human point of failure or a materials failure.....

Either way the consequences can be/were dramatic...... there's no such thing as a 100% safe nuclear reactor.... and it's not just the reactor as such that poses problems ....

There's the possibilty of radiation spill/accident during the enrichment processing, fuel rod transport/insertion..... spent rod and other radioactive removal/transportation.....

Terrorist attack, systems failure, natural disaster... and last but certainly not least..... WASTE DISPOSAL....

And all in the name of a (second generation) technology that's still hasn't really been commissioned commercially, has a lead time of twenty plus years and isn't cost effective without a heavily subsidised carbon tax.

I just believe we have to act before then and utilise and benefit from existing more cost effective technologies.... or at the very least fund to the same kind of levels the research necessary to resolve any constraints with solar, wind, tidal and other renewable technologies....

I'm not so opposed to nuclear as an option as you may think.... I just aren't really sure it's a timely, "safe" and economical solution.

And sorry I tend to agree with EB that it's still a non-renewable fuel source.... and while reserves may seem to be adequate for a while.... you need to equate actual processed fuel rod capacity to projected demand.... not the raw ore in the ground reserves....