Han wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in news:g0na0502lr3
@news2.newsguy.com:

Han wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in news:g0mksh11jc5
@news3.newsguy.com:

Han wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote in
m:

How about maybe developing our own oil fields and reserves?
A
few nuclear reactors might be helpful as well. Had Bubba
Clinton
not prohibited drilling in ANWR in 1994, saying that it would
take 10 years before anything resulted anyway, we would now be
getting 1 million barrels a day from that field.

But the Saudis have just stated that supply and demand are in
equilibrium. You don't believe your friends grin?

Conservation should be first and renewable energy second.
Developing
coal strategies third (with CO2 retention to prevent
accumulation
of
greenhouse gases),

So what, we're going to warehouse an increasing volume of CO2
forever?

Mother Gaia has done it, in clathrates, or whatever they call the
complexes in the cold nether regions of the oceans. It can be
done
other ways as well.

And where do we put these clathrates or "other ways"?

I really think we agree on the need for responsible use and
generation of renewable energy . I'd suggest to put clathrates in
the voids of coal or other mines, to help prevent sinkholes.

nuclear fourth (with a strategy for making use of
nuclear waste),

Calculate the volume required to store the CO2 from using coal
and
the volume required to store the waste from nuclear plants that
produce the same amount of power and tell us which makes more
sense.

I'm all for nuclear energy, but the volume of waste is not the
problem. The problems with nuclear waste are the heat generated

How much heat do you believe to be generated by nuclear waste once
the short-half-life elements have decayed?

I'm not a nuclear engineer, so I can't quote you numbers, but I do
believe that the heat generated by nuclear waste can be
considerable.
Obviously it depends on the energy of the decay step(s) and their
respective energies expressed per unit mass or volume (ducking).

Short term it's "considerable" which is why high-level waste stays at
the power plant until it's decayed enough for shipment. By the time
it gets to a long-term storage facility the heat generated is
negligible.

and
the need to contain it for a very, very long time.

Whereas the CO2 has to be kept warehoused _forever_ or else there's
no point in warehousing it.

Warehousing would suggest you're going to use it again, which does
not
seem logical if you couldn't possible get energy or other use out of
it. I think it has to be put away permanently, really.

Whatever word you use, it still has to be kept forever.

Definitely
problems that can be conquered, but there is a lot of NIMBY to
contend with.

And you think there won't be a lot of NIMBY once people figure out
that warehousing CO2 is going to take a huge amount of storage
volume?

Of course there will always be NIMBY, but I think that filling
underground voids generated by mining would be a good place.

Will those voids be sufficient, considering that what you're putting
in them has had two atoms of oxygen added to each atom of carbon that
was taken out? And will those voids be sufficiently secure to keep it
segregated _forever_? If so then why not put nuclear waste there?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)