Bye reactor number 4 - for now
Next year the French consortium Novarka (VINCI Construction Grands Projets (lead contractor) and Bouygues Travaux Publics) will start building a 18000 ton sarcophagus. It will be 105 metres high, 150 metres long and with a span of 257 metres - formed as an arch. Construction will be done 2012/2014.
It will be built next to the old shelter and slid over it on rail tracks and hopefully it will last 100 years.
Meanwhile the inner construction will be slowly dismantled and removed and in 50 years the nuclear fuel will be extracted. No one has reported where yet.
Ukraine’s president Victor Yushchenko said last year that areas in Chernobyl is ready to be used again, he is convinced that the Chernobyl-zone will wake up with increasing phase.
To this date there are 439 nuclear power plant world wide and there are 35 under construction. Each of these produce 25-30 tonnes high level waste each year and we haven’t yet agreed what to do with it.
Edited this part a bit : (death toll of millions was a bit much)
This one “little” nuclear plant in Chernobyl may cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people, isn’t it a bit naive to thrust it won’t happen again? We can add all the depots as factors on top of the 439 nuclear power plants.
Death toll above is highly debatable though, check out these links :
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/mar/25/energy.ukraine
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Long-term_health_effects
- http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406
Starpower - the future energy source
The Norwegian energy company Statkraft announce that they have developed so-called gamma capturers that will capture the energy generated when stars explode.
What to believe?
On February 28th the large Wilkins Ice Shelf in west Antartica began to colaps, images of the process between February 28th and March 8th can be found
I am ofcourse concerned about our environment, but I don’t like hysteria, especially when hysteria can ruin an important case. What if people milks money of this hysteria and people find out. What will peoples reaction be? Its like collecting money for starving people in Africa. When people found out that only a small percentage of the money comes the starving people’s beneficial people stopped giving.
What if the general public stopped caring for the environment because a group of people made money of scaring us?
This question comes to my mind these days because I find it strange that David Vaughan screams “GLOBAL WARMING!” today but not long ago explained he explained how fragile this particular area is and why it so unstable. They say “One possible culprit could be a deep ocean current that is channelled onto the continental shelf close to the mouth of the glacier. There is not much sea ice to protect it from the warm water, which seems to be undercutting the ice and lubricating its flow. ” What they forget to tell you is that the Wilkins Ice Shelf rested on water. For hundreds of year this area has seemed to be stable, seen from above! Picture what will happend after 1500 years of waves digging benieth the surface.
I wish the scientists would be more humble, that they think before they leak info to the media.
We need proper actions anyway, not scared people and fake-environment-sollutions. I wonder who benefited David Vaughan’s latest comments.
It is wrong of me to focus on this?
Small steps.
Media Heap set up a nice reminder last year that small steps count. At blackle.com the lights are off, an idea they got from TreeHugger. They have now saved 472,290.538 Watt hours. While more and more people use LCD-monitors this wont matter as much as CRT-monitors, but on CRT one can actually save usage by using darkness. I like Media Heaps’ idea, its a nice way to remind us that we all can contribute to the environment.
All pollution should count
Until now greenhouse gas emisions from container ships has not been counted, because of difficulties in calculating whos cape it should go under. The amount of greenhouse gas from container ships is much lower than from air and land transport but it should count.
Maersk - one of the worlds largest shippers, has calculated a release of 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, from 1000 ships sailing the north sea. That is as much as Denmark’s total release.
Picture then, that there are right now about 100.000 ships out there.
Some say that it would be unfair to count Maersk release in Asia, but the shippers has now been given until the end of 2008 to find a sollution to this, a system for calculating greenhouse gas emmisions from their cargoships.
(The image is from Skysails, Maersk should look into this)
New site for my Colibri
Welcome to my new domain, thank you a lot for following me. I hope I wont regret that I moved my blog.
Good night! Moving blogs like this is not recommended after 23:00. hehe
Polar Ocean ice free this summer
Do you remember the reports talking about ice free arctic sea in 2040? And some horrific predictions calculating ice free summers in 2013? Guess what, most likely all of the experts were wrong.
Olav Orheim predicts ice free arctic sea this summer, from Siberia - the ice is thin now and it melts fast. This means that in August to September ordinary freight ships can save half the time using this route.
He points out that this is worrying since there are no disaster reduction measurements in these area. We know what happends when disasters strike fragile coasts - but we at least have some disaster reduction. The Arctic has 0. Who is willing to take the cost? If Olav Orheim is right, there isn’t much time.
When a small shipment company can save $200k on one tour, what can the major companies save?
Ships from the west coast of USA and southeastern Asia can save over 40% time going through the ice free arctic sea instead of the Panama channel.
Some might need reloading in northern Norway to tougher sihps before continuing, will the harbours be ready for this? I haven’t seen any plans out yet.
(Sources : Arctic Frontiers, NRK, Teknisk Ukeblad) (Norwegian)
Funtagged!
I haven’t seen this until Nicole at NicholeB Photography funtagged me. Its pretty cool, I’ve found many great blogs this way - my feedsub list is growing each day and its exciting to follow this. How far will it go?
Heres how it goes :
Rule #1: Copy all the links below and replace a single link under the appropriate letter of the alphabet. If your domain name, or even the title of your blog, starts with an “A,” you’d replace the link under that letter “A” and put the replaced link at the bottom. Also, don’t forget to credit the tagger, or where you got the list from, at the end of the list with a full URL of the post so that a pingback gets generated.
A acowboyswife.com
B bloggingcents.com
C caffeine-overload.com
D delusionsofgrandeur.org
E everythingandanythingblog.com
F forumfinder.net
G GeekMomMashup.com
H hoysater.no
I ipentimento.com
J juliesjournal.com
K kabalyero.com
L ladylike4.com
M michaelpark.net
N nicoleb.org
O originalmx5.net
P peapodsquadstuff.com
Q qweddings.com
R rowdigrl.com
S shirleysdelight.com
T TenaciousCreations.com
U utada-online.net
V valmg.com
W wickedbabylon.com
X xaviermedia.com
Y yimto.com
Z zbudapest.com
Replaced link: happykeg.com
Previous tagger: nicoleb.org
Rule #2: You now have to “tag” at least five people and encourage them to participate. Remember, though, that not everyone’s into these kinds of things, so don’t be upset if they don’t participate. Just simply replace your tag. Remember to tag blogs only and no pornographic ones as we do want to keep the integrity as a blogging community.
Here is the ones I tag :
Nickoo Shore
THe Inner Breath
About Every Litle Thing
Aman’s Space
Goofy Girl Blog
Have fun!
Mother of pearl clouds
I had to pull up my cell phone while driving this morning to picture this, Mother of pearl clouds - or Nacreous as some call it is a seldom phenomena. I wish I had a better camera, my cellphone is not suited for this but you get the picture, and you should do a image search on Google on it. These clouds were in about 20 to 25 kilometers up, they occur by strong westerly winds.
Entrebanking
Biz Beacon at Entrebanker is first out with a great idea. He will help new Entrecarders get started by loaning them Entrecredits! Great idea since its though for newcomers to advertise on the more profiled sites. Kudos to you!
Loaners are already applying, its going to be fun to follow this up.
By the way, Biz Beacon have several Blogs, one is dedicated Entrecard and it is good reading, check it out.