What do I think, What can I do?

Archive for August, 2011

Some Words about Fukushima

Fukushima

Imagen from the reactors (From http://www.fayerwayer.com cc)

I wrote this title when Fukushima was a mayor headline, and after that I left blog writing for some months. However, Fukushima still holds some interest in my blog apart from the overwhelming tragedy for zone inhabitants, workers and most Japanese in general.

I wrote in a previous post that nuclear was dangerous but at the same time give us important KW*h not easy to substitute in this moment. I still hold this opinion in spite of the disaster. We have checked that nuclear security fails in some cases (it was extraordinary I admit it) and when it fails the consequences are disastrous but closing all of them together is a price we can’t afford in this moment. I prefer to maintain their installed power while we close the oldest and less secure, and even accept to install a new one in some cases to maintain power.

Nevertheless all this should be conditioned to rigorous security checks. Just thinking that there is a very old nuclear power station at 60 Km from my home makes me feel quite edgy and knowing the desing is not different from Fukushima even more. But the main idea I wanted to work was about the cost of Fukushima. Without knowing the details I think it is clear it will be very expensive, however making some simple figures it becomes much worse.

Following Doc’s green blog the total cost may reach $50000 million, so $5*10^10. Considering total energy output per year for nuclear plants is around  2.5 10^12  KW*h (2009 data from WWI), it gives us a rough estimate of 2 cent per KW*h over the whole world production of nuclear energy this year. It is not despisable, and will likely be paid to a great extent by Japanese goverment and so Japanesee in general.

Do you consider it a subsidy for nuclear? I do.

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My small friends the worms: Real CO2 savers

Composter Image

Our home worm composter

Last day my wife brought home some colleagues working in the enviroment deparment of the town hall that wanted to see our composter worms. It was a very nice visit and myabe the first time in the several years we live with those wonderful worms, in which I feel proud of them and not afraid of being discovered.
This story started aroung 7-8 years ago when after reading the web compostadores and some others. I bought there the composter (not difficult for skilful or time owner to build by oneself), I learnt from them some tips, bought the worms and they have become our pet as my son says in school. OK, maybe it is not so pink but I am happy because I do not employ too much time or effort with them, they survive and eat a good part of our domestic litter (the vegeatble part, the biggest one) transforming it into good compost.

I suppose you are asking, very ecological but does it have any relationship with climate change? Maybe it is not the critical factor but other litter treatments generate more GHG as methane or CO2 when they are stored or burned. Whereas composting (worm composting in this case, it could be done without worms but in a different way with more space requirements, and this composter lives at home in a small balcony) just fixes the Carbon in soil fertilizer. Apart from transport related CO2, not needing movement is always a saving in CO2 until we change our tranportation technologies.

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Why can´t be my roof white?

I live in a 9 plant house and we are facing several maintenence/repairing operation last years due to the age of the building. With my limited knowledge I participate in a small comission to check our next project, which involves changing our wasted roof.  As we were talking with the architach about the project Y asked why we could not use a white material (or at least paint it) instaed of the greyish one we will finally use. He simply did not take the question into consideration.

Maybe he thought it was about aestetics but it was about albedo.  This strange word plays a role in our climate and can be explained with few words (although maybe not bery precisely): It is the amount of light and so, energy, from our sun that our land reflects. For that reason a quick trick to improve our situation could be to increase this and reflect more solar radiation. I know it sounds quite artificial, but we are not in a situation with too many choices and anyway we are reducing our albedo by melting several glaciers and polar snow. And its easy and in many cases costless at least in some buildings, roofs, etc… It is not the definitive solution for climate change but it could help.

Composition if 3 images from Google Maps. Left: My home city with red roofs, not very reflective. Right: An industrial area not far from the left image, the albedo is much higher. Bottom: Image from Iceland snow, real great albedo.

However, it is not commented anywhere and no goverment (local or higuer) has it included in building rules or politics. So, standard arquitetchs and building material producers will continue thinking it is about colour preference.

I would not be difficult to encourage people to love white for their houses roofs and we could counteract some tons of CO2 without terrible effort. Or at least explain its possibilities for all of us to make choices.

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I am Back

It is more than one year since I started this small trial. And I wanted to celebrate this anyversary around May. However my post frequency reached a worryful minimum this spring and I stopped to write. And the more you stop the more difficult it becomes to return.
But I still have ideas I want to write, to share to some extente or maybe I just feel that this blog can help me organize some thoughts about this subject.
Because even I am not working onit, even if I do not belong to any organization close to this subject, or I am not someone to offer updated scitentific, social or politic opinion about it. I am still very worried and I read something and think about Climate Change. I still think it is a mayor challenge and should be a great priority in those economically difficult times. And finally, I feel some internal need to write again.
My intention is to write weekly. I know it is a poor frequency for a blog, but I expect it is realistic for me. Actually, this blog does not intend to be a standard blog, for the moment is more a place to write and/or organize my thoughts.

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