Gristmill

Waste

On Energy Priorities, a short but interesting piece on France's struggles with nuclear waste. The good bit:

Every day, about ten shipping containers arrive on trucks at the Soulaines-Dhuys storage facility outside Troyes, in the province of Ardennes, 180 kilometers east of Paris. On board are barrels of waste that isn't radioactive enough to be stored at Marcoule. Every year, 15,000 cubic meters of waste contaminated with uranium, plutonium and tritium arrive here.

The 350-acre site is like an above-ground Yucca Mountain. Construction cranes hover above a hundred bunker-like cement blocks already filled with barrels encased in concrete. In 60 years, the cranes' job will be done, the 400-bunker facility will be full, and the entire facility will be covered with a concrete lid. What then?

The Soulaines-Dhuys site will enter a 300-year surveillance phase. After that, the plan is to observe the site until the stored waste loses its radioactivity.

The initial 300 years is just the beginning. Even moderately radioactive plutonium retains hazardous for 24,000 years. Skeptics wonder if future generations will follow the plan -- or even remember where the site is located.

Is it smart to rely on a form of energy the byproduct of which requires 24,000 years of constant, careful monitoring? Honestly.

Chew on this

I received a letter from freelance illustrator Kirk Werner in response to my post on gum pollution. Werner wrote to tell me about his latest work, a children's book about gum littering written by Sherry Garr and titled a Grist-worthy Gumfounded. The Gumfounded website offers some peeks into the book and the main character Tia, who steps in gum and begins sticking to all types of litter, which she drags all the way to school. The duo is also planning to add books on air pollution and water conservation to the Tia series.

A truly green house

This news bit is a little late, but still worth noting: Last month, an independent team made up of designers from Seattle architecture/design firm Mithun won first place in an international sustainable housing competition in Roanoke, Virginia, with their design for a house powered by--of all things--spinach. The house (the design is pictured at left) will be built this summer in Roanoke, along with other contest winners.

The C2C Home Competition, which drew 625 entries from 41 countries, was inspired by William McDonough and Michael Braungart's work on cradle-to-cradle design principles. They ask designers to go beyond pollution prevention to creating objects and processes that nourish and replenish our communities, using materials that can be recycled indefinitely.

The team's house takes energy from the sun and uses spinach protein sandwiched between glass to generate electricity for the entire neighborhood, turning the house into a supplier rather than a consumer--a house that acts more like a tree than like a machine.

The real meaning of “roadless”

While shilling for drilling during last week's Senate debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) claimed that oil development would have a negligible effect on the area: "When we talk about the roadless areas we have available for exploration, we mean it. We do mean that we are going to put down an ice road that will disappear when the summer comes."

Bizarrely, as Felicity Barringer of The New York Times points out, roadless might not mean what you think it means.  

"[T]he term 'roadless' does not mean an absence of roads," Interior Department officials wrote in a recent environmental impact statement about drilling in another region of Alaska. "Rather, it indicates an attempt to minimize the construction of permanent roads."

The sheer inventiveness of the Bushies' Orwellian contortions is awe-inspiring.

Response to “Death”: Part V

Today is Part V of Ken Ward's response to "The Death of Environmentalism," in which he concludes by laying out concrete steps the movement could take to mount an appropriate response to the danger of global warming. It's a bold strategy -- curious to hear what readers think of it.

Don't forget to read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

More Wolfowitz, more oil, more looney-tunes

Gawd. Speaking of oil: It really is astonishing what some folks in this administration are willing to do to avoid breaking our petrol-addiction.

Wall Street and peak oil

At this point, predictions of peak oil are no biggie. But it seems significant that a Wall Street research and analysis firm -- John S. Herold Inc. -- is getting in the game. The analysts at Herold ...

... have begun estimating when each of the world's biggest energy companies will peak in its ability to produce oil and gas. Herold's work shows that the best minds in the energy industry are accepting the reality that the globe is reaching (or has already reached) the limit of its own ability to produce ever increasing amounts of oil.

...

Since last fall, Herold has done peak estimates on about two dozen oil companies. Herold believes that the French oil company, Total S.A., will reach its peak production in 2007. Herold expects 2008 to be critical, with Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., BP, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and the Italian producer, Eni S.p.A., all hitting their peaks. In 2009, Herold expects ChevronTexaco Corp. to peak. In Herold's view, each of the world's seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing production declines within the next 48 months or so.

Of course Herold's specific predictions are controversial, but the firm itself is quite well-respected. Peak oil is slowly but surely sinking into mainstream discourse. If Herold is correct, says Salon:

• Oil prices -- which are already at record levels -- will continue rising as demand outstrips supply. In a few years, gasoline prices of $2 per gallon could seem like a bargain.
• State-owned oil companies like Mexico's Pemex, Venezuela's PDVSA (Petroléos de Venezuela) and Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco may be unable to increase their production enough to meet burgeoning global demand.
• The producers who belong to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and Saudi Arabia in particular, may have even more leverage over the global oil market in the coming years.
• The United States will be ever more reliant on oil imported from countries filled with people who don't like George W. Bush or his policies.

Read the whole thing.

Rorschach poll

There are any number of ways one could interpret the results of this poll.

If you're cynical, you might conclude that people are liars. If 66% of people (even 57% of conservatives! even 67% of NASCAR fans!) think driving a fuel-efficient car is patriotic, then why aren't they driving fuel-efficient cars? One might conclude that patriotism is a handy way to attack people you dislike, but somewhat hollow as an actual motivation for sacrifice, or even changing one's own behavior.

If you're a more optimistic type, you might conclude that this level of support for fuel efficiency -- 89% think it's important for government to act to reach 40mpg -- is a vast, largely untapped political force. One might think that an aggressive program of education and advocacy would open people's eyes up to the fact that their government is in fact doing very little, and get them fired up.

Or one could just conclude that polls don't mean much at all.

(The full results of the poll are in a press release here as a PDF.)

Also, check out 40mpg.org, launched today in the wake of the poll. Very cool site.

10th birthday for Yellowstone’s wolves

Next Monday will mark precisely 10 years since wolves re-appeared in Yellowstone National Park, from where they had been absent since the 1920s. The re-introduction program was a smashing success, far exceeding even optimistic predictions.

 

On March 21, 1995, federal biologists finally opened the acclimation pens holding 14 gray wolves, sometimes called timber wolves, brought from Alberta. Earlier that year an additional 14 wolves had been set free in central Idaho's mammoth wilderness. And the following year, 17 more wolves were released into Yellowstone and 20 more into Idaho.

A decade later, Yellowstone's wolf population has grown more than five-fold and expanded into adjacent areas of Wyoming and Montana. Idaho's wolf population expanded even more spectacularly--by thirteen-fold--with an estimated 452 animals in the Gem State at last count in 2004. All told, over 850 wolves now roam the US Rocky Mountains. It's only a matter of time until they begin returning in numbers to Washington and Oregon, where they are now only rare visitors. [Click on the chart at left for state-by-state trends.]