epistula in latina scribere cogiti. salvete amicibus blogibus! translationem in latina Fridaymus Rebecca Black, quod dies Veneris hodie est.
Septimus ante meridian, in mane resurrectio
novus es volo, in atrium venere volo
scaphius meus habere volo, nutrimens habere volo
omnia specto, tempus venas
tices et tices, mundus omnia festinas
ad plaustrum advenio
meus amici specto
in curulis primus tempus bene habere
in curulis durus sedere
constituere volo
quod curulis capio?
dies Veneris, dies Veneris est
tempus bene habere volo in dies Veneris
dies cubitus, dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
dies Veneris, dies Veneris
in dies Veneris tempus bene habeo
dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
tempus bene, tempus bene,
dies cubitus volerant
septimus quadragintaquin, in via ambulo
festinere vitare, tempus advolere volo
tempus bene, tempus bene, tempus bene cogito
quod est scias
habeo, habes
amicus meus dextella meus est
habeo, habes
nunc scies
in curulis primus tempus bene habere
in curulis durus sedere
constituere volo
quod curulis capio?
dies Veneris, dies Veneris est
tempus bene habere volo in dies Veneris
dies cubitus, dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
dies Veneris, dies Veneris
in dies Veneris tempus bene habeo
dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
tempus bene, tempus bene,
dies cubitus volerant
heri dies Thor erat
hodie dies Veneris est
multus candidus sumus, sumus, sumus
multus candiduc sumus
gelamen hodie habimus
cras dies Saturni est
dies Solisque post est
dies cubitus exeuntere nolo
R-B, Rebeccius Aquilus
in curulis primus tempus bene habere
in curulis durus
adigo, veho, ita vero ita vero
celer via, via abeo
cum currus a tergo meo est
currus infantis adnato
ticus tocus facet, quiritare volo
tempus specto, dies Veneris est, dies cubitus est
tempus bene habimus, ita vero, ita vero omnia
dies Veneris, dies Veneris est
tempus bene habere volo in dies Veneris
dies cubitus, dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
dies Veneris, dies Veneris
in dies Veneris tempus bene habeo
dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
tempus bene, tempus bene,
dies cubitus volerant
dies Veneris, dies Veneris est
tempus bene habere volo in dies Veneris
dies cubitus, dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
dies Veneris, dies Venerus
in dies Veneris tempus bene habeo
dies cubitus mundus omnia volerant
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
gelamen, gelamen
ita vero!
tempus bene, tempus bene,
dies cubitus volerant
Whoever said it was a waste of time taking Latin GCSE? :P
Friday, 24 June 2011
Monday, 13 June 2011
Renewable energy, and why nuclear (fission) power is a really really really good idea.
Seeing as I turned eighteen on the first of June, meaning I am now legally an adult, I thought I'd write a serious post to mark the occasion.
Now, everyone's aware that we're running out of fossil fuel, with estimates for running-out times being a bit too close for comfort, especially as far as crude oil is concerned. In fact, unless I am run over by a bus tomorrow, the chances of fossil fuels running out in my lifetime approaches one, an alarming concept (bearing in mind the fact that anything is possible so long as it doesn't defy the laws of physics, in which case it's entirely possible that Earth will spontaneously turn into a big blob of crude oil as soon as I hit the "publish post" button.) Because of the shortage of non-renewable fuel, the race to find a viable alternative is on, and so far several alternatives have been proposed.
One of the most commonly trotted out ideas is solar power, and at first, it seems brilliant. Harnessing the sun's energy basically forever! Yaaaay! Wait a minute. Where are the the majority of the world's solar panels? Germany. How many wetter, cloudier countries do YOU know? Well, unless you bunked geography at school, your answer ought to be "very few" or less. Essentially, the places advocating (and therefore making use of) solar power are the countries it's the least useful in. Now, you might say this could be remedied by making it more popular elsewhere, but you need to consider what solar panels actually are. There are two types of solar panel, ones which are easy enough to make, lots of thin pipes of water with a black surface, but can only provide hot water when the sun's out, or photovoltaic cells, which harness the sun's energy and can store it for later use. The one problem with these is that they can take an incredible amount of energy to create, to the point that some solar panels never manage to generate as much energy as they took to create. Big problem that, a negative net gain. In addition to these problems, solar power is hopelessly unreliable - you don't know when it's going to be sunny. No, I do not think solar power is the way forward.
Wind power? No. Have you seen the big turbines? They're ugly, noisy, and kill bats and goats (through the sudden drop in pressure, their lungs can't take it.) Out to sea is an option, but it's incredibly expensive. I'd say it's not worth the money.
Wave power? Well, this has its merits in that it's reliable (the moon isn't about to disappear from the sky) and relatively cheap. However, it wouldn't produce enough power for everywhere.
Biomass? No no no no no. To produce enough biomass to fuel the world, you'd require more space than there is on the planet to grow crops. It's not a good idea.
Hydrogen power? Ah, I like this one. The idea is that hydrogen burns in air, producing only water. Then again, water vapour is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas, and to get hold of hydrogen to burn, you have to electrolyse water. Guess what? You need power to electrolyse water. Where does one usually get the power from? Fossil fuel. That could be changed to something else, but the efficiency is very questionable. However, hydrogen is, I think, the best option for replacing petrol or diesel in cars.
Nuclear fusion? A fantastic idea on paper. Do let me know when you manage cold fusion in your basement, but it looks unlikely for the moment.
Now, my choice for a fossil fuel replacement that could be rolled out worldwide in the next decade or two is nuclear fission. It's already in use in many places in the world, with something like 10-15% of the world's energy produced by nuclear fission. There are a great many pros to the idea, with the main one being that a huge amount of energy is produced from very little fuel (I've done my research, and a medium-sized power station operates on about a metre cubed block's worth of uranium-235 or plutonium-239 per year.) This is a ridiculously small amount! True, uranium isn't a renewable material, but there's certainly enough available to last a good century or two with what we have. Who knows? By that point, it's entirely feasible that someone will have worked out how to fuse lighter elements to get something which decays into U-235 or Pu-239 - you never know.
Now, whenever I tell anyone I'm pro-nuclear power, I get one of two responses. I either get the whole "oh, that's a good idea!" positiveness, or skeptical looks and ridiculed. You see, a lot of people believe the horror stories associated with nuclear power, for example the Fukushima incident. Let me dispel this one. The Fukushima incident occurred as the result of a magnitude 9.0 megathrust earthquake along a major faultline in the Ring Of Fire. Germany have declared that they're turning off their nuclear power stations before 2020 because of the Fukushima incident. This is terrible reasoning! A similar earthquake could not possibly happen in Germany - in fact, Japan is one of two places where such a large earthquake is able to occur (the other is by Chile.) This is because the only earthquakes powerful enough to be megathrust earthquakes are ones along major faultlines, which are straight(ish) lines for several hundred miles.
Other major incidents in the past have been accidents. Chernobyl, for example, blew up during an inspection, when the coolant system was being mucked around with. Similar incidents can be prevented simply by learning from our own mistakes. Nuclear terrorism may be presented as an issue, but there's a big problem with that. So far, there hasn't been one attempt to blow up a nuclear plant. I know one might say there's always a first time, but don't you think something would have happened sooner if it were going to at all?
Once you've got past matters like that, the main argument presented by anti-nuclear hippies is that of the waste it generates. Well, if you're aware of how little fuel is used, the amount of waste produced is actually quite small and there are ways of dealing with it. An idea I've heard proposed is to vitrify it, and dump it in Erta Ale (for those aforementioned people who bunked geography as a kid, that's the famous volcano with an active lava lake in the caldera.) The argument is that this has many positive points - the radioactive material is being returned to the Earth, it wouldn't hurt the locals (who are all tribes who wouldn't have a clue what the fuss is about and therefore wouldn't complain) et cetera, but what happens if Erta Ale produces a lava flow, as it does every couple of decades? No, there are better ways of returning it to the Earth's core.
What of dumping it in the sea? No, stop thinking that, it is actually a fairly good idea. If one were to put it in some sort of aerodynamically designed, concrete-filled pod and launched it into either a trench between destructive tectonic plates, or even just into the primordial silt at the bottom of the ocean, it could be disposed of for good. Launching it between plates puts it straight back into the earth's core (when the plates move, anyway) and the silt at the bottom of the oceans remains undisturbed for an extremely long time. It's astonishing how little happens down there. The great thing about this idea is that even if the radioactive waste did manage to escape the concrete and metal of its pod and the several feet of silt it would be buried under, the amount of radioactive substance leaked to the sea wold be literally neglegible in comparison to the amount of radioactive substances already present in the sea - seawater contains several tons of uranium per km^3 of water. It's also worth bearing in mind that because radiation is more commonplace in the sea than on land, a small leak in the ocean wouldn't affect living creatures, as they're more used to the isotopes (and their bodies are more able to ignore them) than humans are.
Well, I'm bored of typing now, if anyone has any questions, I'd be delighted to laugh at/answer them in the comments.
Lowri :)
Now, everyone's aware that we're running out of fossil fuel, with estimates for running-out times being a bit too close for comfort, especially as far as crude oil is concerned. In fact, unless I am run over by a bus tomorrow, the chances of fossil fuels running out in my lifetime approaches one, an alarming concept (bearing in mind the fact that anything is possible so long as it doesn't defy the laws of physics, in which case it's entirely possible that Earth will spontaneously turn into a big blob of crude oil as soon as I hit the "publish post" button.) Because of the shortage of non-renewable fuel, the race to find a viable alternative is on, and so far several alternatives have been proposed.
One of the most commonly trotted out ideas is solar power, and at first, it seems brilliant. Harnessing the sun's energy basically forever! Yaaaay! Wait a minute. Where are the the majority of the world's solar panels? Germany. How many wetter, cloudier countries do YOU know? Well, unless you bunked geography at school, your answer ought to be "very few" or less. Essentially, the places advocating (and therefore making use of) solar power are the countries it's the least useful in. Now, you might say this could be remedied by making it more popular elsewhere, but you need to consider what solar panels actually are. There are two types of solar panel, ones which are easy enough to make, lots of thin pipes of water with a black surface, but can only provide hot water when the sun's out, or photovoltaic cells, which harness the sun's energy and can store it for later use. The one problem with these is that they can take an incredible amount of energy to create, to the point that some solar panels never manage to generate as much energy as they took to create. Big problem that, a negative net gain. In addition to these problems, solar power is hopelessly unreliable - you don't know when it's going to be sunny. No, I do not think solar power is the way forward.
Wind power? No. Have you seen the big turbines? They're ugly, noisy, and kill bats and goats (through the sudden drop in pressure, their lungs can't take it.) Out to sea is an option, but it's incredibly expensive. I'd say it's not worth the money.
Wave power? Well, this has its merits in that it's reliable (the moon isn't about to disappear from the sky) and relatively cheap. However, it wouldn't produce enough power for everywhere.
Biomass? No no no no no. To produce enough biomass to fuel the world, you'd require more space than there is on the planet to grow crops. It's not a good idea.
Hydrogen power? Ah, I like this one. The idea is that hydrogen burns in air, producing only water. Then again, water vapour is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas, and to get hold of hydrogen to burn, you have to electrolyse water. Guess what? You need power to electrolyse water. Where does one usually get the power from? Fossil fuel. That could be changed to something else, but the efficiency is very questionable. However, hydrogen is, I think, the best option for replacing petrol or diesel in cars.
Nuclear fusion? A fantastic idea on paper. Do let me know when you manage cold fusion in your basement, but it looks unlikely for the moment.
Now, my choice for a fossil fuel replacement that could be rolled out worldwide in the next decade or two is nuclear fission. It's already in use in many places in the world, with something like 10-15% of the world's energy produced by nuclear fission. There are a great many pros to the idea, with the main one being that a huge amount of energy is produced from very little fuel (I've done my research, and a medium-sized power station operates on about a metre cubed block's worth of uranium-235 or plutonium-239 per year.) This is a ridiculously small amount! True, uranium isn't a renewable material, but there's certainly enough available to last a good century or two with what we have. Who knows? By that point, it's entirely feasible that someone will have worked out how to fuse lighter elements to get something which decays into U-235 or Pu-239 - you never know.
Now, whenever I tell anyone I'm pro-nuclear power, I get one of two responses. I either get the whole "oh, that's a good idea!" positiveness, or skeptical looks and ridiculed. You see, a lot of people believe the horror stories associated with nuclear power, for example the Fukushima incident. Let me dispel this one. The Fukushima incident occurred as the result of a magnitude 9.0 megathrust earthquake along a major faultline in the Ring Of Fire. Germany have declared that they're turning off their nuclear power stations before 2020 because of the Fukushima incident. This is terrible reasoning! A similar earthquake could not possibly happen in Germany - in fact, Japan is one of two places where such a large earthquake is able to occur (the other is by Chile.) This is because the only earthquakes powerful enough to be megathrust earthquakes are ones along major faultlines, which are straight(ish) lines for several hundred miles.
Other major incidents in the past have been accidents. Chernobyl, for example, blew up during an inspection, when the coolant system was being mucked around with. Similar incidents can be prevented simply by learning from our own mistakes. Nuclear terrorism may be presented as an issue, but there's a big problem with that. So far, there hasn't been one attempt to blow up a nuclear plant. I know one might say there's always a first time, but don't you think something would have happened sooner if it were going to at all?
Once you've got past matters like that, the main argument presented by anti-nuclear hippies is that of the waste it generates. Well, if you're aware of how little fuel is used, the amount of waste produced is actually quite small and there are ways of dealing with it. An idea I've heard proposed is to vitrify it, and dump it in Erta Ale (for those aforementioned people who bunked geography as a kid, that's the famous volcano with an active lava lake in the caldera.) The argument is that this has many positive points - the radioactive material is being returned to the Earth, it wouldn't hurt the locals (who are all tribes who wouldn't have a clue what the fuss is about and therefore wouldn't complain) et cetera, but what happens if Erta Ale produces a lava flow, as it does every couple of decades? No, there are better ways of returning it to the Earth's core.
What of dumping it in the sea? No, stop thinking that, it is actually a fairly good idea. If one were to put it in some sort of aerodynamically designed, concrete-filled pod and launched it into either a trench between destructive tectonic plates, or even just into the primordial silt at the bottom of the ocean, it could be disposed of for good. Launching it between plates puts it straight back into the earth's core (when the plates move, anyway) and the silt at the bottom of the oceans remains undisturbed for an extremely long time. It's astonishing how little happens down there. The great thing about this idea is that even if the radioactive waste did manage to escape the concrete and metal of its pod and the several feet of silt it would be buried under, the amount of radioactive substance leaked to the sea wold be literally neglegible in comparison to the amount of radioactive substances already present in the sea - seawater contains several tons of uranium per km^3 of water. It's also worth bearing in mind that because radiation is more commonplace in the sea than on land, a small leak in the ocean wouldn't affect living creatures, as they're more used to the isotopes (and their bodies are more able to ignore them) than humans are.
Well, I'm bored of typing now, if anyone has any questions, I'd be delighted to laugh at/answer them in the comments.
Lowri :)
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