The 10th planetary boundary: Salt

Posted on November 29, 2023 by

Preface.

In 2009, Johan Rockström proposed that there were nine planetary boundaries we must not cross.  In 2023, Richardson et al found that 6 of the 9 boundaries had been transgressed: Climate change CO2 and radiative forcing, Biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities (synthetic chemicals, pollutants, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, nuclear waste, etc). Of the remaining three still within the safe operating space, ocean acidification is very near to crossing the boundary. Only atmospheric aerosol loading and stratospheric ozone depletion are still within it.

Now Kaushal (2023) has proposed that there may be a 10th: Salt. Human activities are making Earth’s air, soil and freshwater saltier, which could pose an “existential threat” if current trends continue.

The study’s authors called for the creation of a “planetary boundary for safe and sustainable salt use” in much the same way that carbon dioxide levels are associated with a planetary boundary to limit climate change.

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Unpave concrete & asphalt to save energy and money

Posted on November 22, 2023 by

Preface. The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads ought to be evaluated for their potential to be unpaved.

Many of these roads should have never been paved to begin with, but the costs of construction, asphalt, and energy were so cheap it was done anyway.  Now many rural roads are past their design life and rapidly deteriorating, especially in the Midwest from enormously heavy trucks taking corn and soybeans to biorefineries.  It is both difficult and expensive to maintain them, and dangerous to let these roads fall apart and degrade into gravel on their own.

For more drainage/less flooding, wildlife, trees, and more plants, concrete and asphalt are being removed from parking lots, driveways, parking lots and more. Depaving can also keep sewage and other pollutants from washing off of concrete into waterways. Portland has had a depave group since 2008.  It’s good for the climate too (Baraniuk 2024).

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Subsistence life in West Virginia before capitalism

Posted on November 15, 2023 by

Preface.  These are a few of my kindle notes from Steven Stoll’s “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” that may give you an idea of how people might survive after collapse. It is a damning critique of capitalism.

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Will Congress ever create a new independent agency to store nuclear waste permanently?

Posted on November 8, 2023 by

Preface. The lack of permanent geological storage of nuclear waste will be yet another nightmare for those living after fossils have declined and civilizations go back to biomass fuels and muscle power. They will already be dealing with heat making parts of the planet unlivable, rising sea levels, floods, and dam failures that release hazardous chemical and nuclear waste, depleted aquifers and topsoil, natural disasters, wars, mass migrations, and death by a thousand other cuts.

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Nuclear waste will harm future generations for a million years without underground storage

Posted on November 1, 2023 by

Preface. This is a book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste” and the best book I’ve read on the topic, as well as additional research on the topic.

Now that world wide production of conventional and unconventional oil probably peaked in 2018 (coal in 2013, and perhaps natural gas in 2019), our top priority should be to bury nuclear wastes as soon as possible. Once severe shortages arrive,  remaining oil will to to agriculture and other essential needs.  This short window of time now may be our only chance to bury nuclear wastes — our descendants certainly won’t have the energy, diesel equipment, or technology.

Yucca mountain is the best possible place to put nuclear waste in the U.S.  The only place to put it actually, a $15 billion facility that models put through thousands of permutations of multiple calamities such as earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding and more.  Yucca was found to be a safe place to put nuclear waste.

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A Nuclear spent fuel pool fire could force millions to evacuate & cost $2 trillion

Posted on October 25, 2023 by
Source: Stone R (2016) Near miss at Fukushima is a warning for U.S., panel says. Science

Preface. Nuclear cheerleaders love to talk about how safe nuclear power is.  You will never ever hear them talk about nuclear fuel pools because that would destroy their argument. Though like Limits to Growth and Malthusian overpopulation dismissed by capitalists, they would probably use the same “it hasn’t happened so it will never happen”. Continue reading →

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A Mega Storm in California might cost $1 trillion & destroy a third of America’s food

Posted on October 18, 2023 by

Preface. Hurricane Katrina cost somewhere between $109 and $250 billion dollars (Amadero 2017). Estimates of hurricane Harvey range from $100 to $190 billion (Kollewe 2017, Lanktree 2017).

The next California ArkStorm is likely to cost $900 billion, or even a trillion dollars (NRA 2013 Schlosberg 2020).

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Sodium Sulfur Batteries

Posted on October 11, 2023 by

Recent research progress in sodium ion batteries: (a) cathode, (b) anode, (c) electrolyte and (d) binder. Source: Hwang J (2017) Sodium-ion batteries: present and future. Chem. Soc. Review 46: 3529-3614  DOI: 10.1039/C6CS00776G

Preface. If lithium were used for both EV and utility scale energy storage, reserves would not last long. But there’s a lot of sodium. A sodium battery is better than lithium as well because it is safer and keeps most of the charge when temperatures fall far below freezing.

But sodium batteries have an enormous disadvantage: they need to be bigger than lithium batteries to hold the same electrical charge. So this doesn’t solve the #1 energy crisis problem: Transportation. They’d be far too heavy to electrify long-haul trucks, tractors, locomotives, ships, and other heavy-duty vehicles that run on diesel.

Their best use would be large-scale electric grid energy storage. In fact, Sodium sulfur (NaS) batteries are the only kind of large-scale energy storage for which there are enough materials on earth (Barnhart 2013).

Although Barnhart may be wrong about the amounts of sulfur available. Sure, sulfur is the fifth most common element in the world, but deposits large enough to exploit are extremely rare, mostly near volcanoes. Most sulfur or sulfates are combined with copper, iron, lead, zinc, barium, calcium (aka gypsum), magnesium, and sodium.

Today 80% comes from oil and natural gas refining into pure elemental sulfur, safe and easy to transport, unlike sulfuric acid, and with the bonus of preventing sulfur dioxide emissions and acid rain. But there are scientists warning about 25 years of conventional oil left in the world at current rates of consumption. Others say more than that. But whatever the amount left, exponential growth from population and capitalism shortens consumption time.

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Book review: Atomic Days. The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America

Posted on October 4, 2023 by

Preface. Plutonium for nuclear weapons was produced at the Hanford Washington site for nearly four decades. Today it is the world’s most polluted site chock-a-block with radioactive waste and toxic chemicals. Chemical pollution is one of the planetary boundaries that has been exceeded, which includes nuclear waste: Richardson K et al (2023) Earth beyond 6 of 9 planetary boundaries. Science. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

The department of energy estimates a clean-up could cost as much as $641 billion dollars (DOE 2022). Six years ago, the estimate was $110 billion.  It’s a ticking time bomb that could release radioactive materials like Chernobyl and Fukushima if facilities were ruptured by an earthquake, fire, or explosion.

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Bill Gates Gen IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) in Wyoming

Posted on September 27, 2023 by

Source: Japan abandons Monju fast reactor: the slow death of a nuclear dream. The Ecologist. ‘Fast breeder’ reactors are promoted by nuclear enthusiasts as the clean, green energy technology of the future. But all the evidence tells us they are a catastrophic failure: complex, expensive, unreliable and accident-prone. Is Japan’s decision to abandon its Monju reactor the latest nail in the coffin of a dead technology? Or the final stake through its rotten heart?

Preface.  A GEN IV sodium-cooled fast reactor is such a bad idea that I am stunned Bill Gates would support it. Worse yet, a lot of the $4.5 billion cost  for the Wyoming reactor is not his money, it’s taxpayer dollars.

These types of GEN IV reactors are called sodium-cooled Small Modular Reactors (SMR), or Sodium cooled fast reactors (SFR). No matter what you call them, they have always failed over the past 70 years, mainly due to higher risk of breakout fires than standard light water reactors. On contact with air sodium burns, with water explodes. There is a much higher risk of accidents.

What follows is a letter written by Arnie Gundersen who makes a good case for why these are not worth building.

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