Global Anthropogenic GHG Emissions by Sector
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Animation: SeaGen Tidal Power Turbine
Watch this excellent animation of how the new SeaGen project in Northern Ireland built by Marine Current Turbines will work. Transport of the units began a few weeks back and the installation of SeaGen should be completed shortly.
‘Fallout’ from Coal Burning
Here’s an interesting and complicating bit of information to add in for the nuclear power debate at Sustainablog:
Because mineral coal contains trace amounts of radioactive materials such as thorium and uranium, when the coal is burned, those previously trace elements become far more concentrated in the fly ash residue. As a result, coal plant fly ash is actually more radioactive than nuclear power plant waste, and the land around a typical coal plant has a higher background radiation level than a similar area around a typical nuclear power plant.
The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals’ bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.
The whole article on coal fly ash at Scientific American makes for thought provoking reading.
David vs. Goliath, Microbe vs. Man
Humans might have ushered Earth into the Anthropocene, but we’d be unwise to ignore the fact that we’re always going to be living in the Age of Microbes, according to a new article in Microbiology Today. “Microbes will continue as climate engineers long after humans have burned that final barrel of oil,” says author Dave Reay of the University of Edinburgh. “Whether they help us to avoid dangerous climate change in the 21st century or push us even faster towards it depends on just how well we understand them.”
Image courtesy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
