On 02/06/13 08:32, polygonum wrote:
On 02/06/2013 06:24, harry wrote:
As usual you are full of crap as always. .The mercury from CFLs can
be recovered and reused and will always be useful.
The important thing is that defunct CFLs are disposed of properly Ie
in the recycle centre not just chucked away.

Given their fragility, actually removing them from their lamp-holders,
storing them and transporting them to such a recycling point is full
of opportunities to release the mercury.

Am also wondering what will always be useful about mercury? We seem to
have moved away from its use for thermometers, sphygmomanometers,
electric switches, and anything else that could allow exposure of the
public. There appears to be a wholesale move towards LED lighting
leaving both CFLs and conventional fluorescent with a probably finite
future. Dental amalgam has been increasingly rejected both by patients
and by various authorities. So we still use it as Thiomersal. There
are still a few niche uses. But looks to me as if we are heading for a
lake of unwanted, unusable mercury that will nonetheless need to be
safely stored.

its ********. Without running it through a nuclear reactor, the amount
of mercury in the world (excluding what has been sent off into space in
satellites, or arrived in meteorites) is and always has been and always
will be, a constant.

It is far more deadly than radioactive elements which are, by reason of
their radioactivity, reducing as the earth ages. And are assisted in
that process by running them through nuclear reactors.

Nuclear power reduces the net amount of radioactivity in the earth overall.

I only meant to illustrate the fact that 'storing a dangerous substance
for millions of years' is as applicable to many non radioactive
substances as the few radioactive ones, and yet its not done. Classic
doublethink by the anti-nuclear brigade.

I mean logical extension of the nuclear panic theory would have us
spending trillions digging up Dartmoor, refining the uranium in it and
encasing it in glass blocks and putting it in safe storage to reduce the
background levels there to the sorts of levels the Japanese are trying
to get the exclusion zone to.

There is an estimated 4 BILLION tonnes of radioactive uranium in the
sea. Which will be there for the next few billion years. Its
radioactive.,. It always has been and will be so for aeons to come.

Yet putting even a few tonnes more in there is frowned on.

The human body contains a highly detectable amount of Carbon 14 (and
indeed potassium 40) which is produced all the time by cosmic rays
hitting the atmosphere. This means that corpses are low level
radioactive waste that 'need to be stored for millions of years' too..





--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.