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#303706 - 11/04/17 12:33 PM
Re: SMR (Small modular reactor)
[Re: pondering_it_all]
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veteran
Registered: 04/26/10
Posts: 8773
Loc: New Mexico (not old Mexico)
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I would love to see vast herds of buffalo roaming parts of the Mid-West again, but too slow and it has limited potential. It doesn't affect all the coal and oil we burned, but rather just makes agriculture carbon-neutral. Then there's always the question of where you get the energy to do all that organic farming First of all, I am not making any arguments against better ways to make electricity and other forms of energy. I am advocating specifically to not bypass the myriad of means already at our disposal to use less energy, to NEED less energy, and to change our culture to be better at integrating systems of better ways to live, which will do more in the aggregate to solve system human-caused problems than focusing on any one sexy technofix for maintaining our current squanderous lifestyles. Back to pulling carbon out of the air, I wasn't referring to vast herds of buffalo. Here's a pinch from a rather long and geeky paper: ISAR’s research indicates that farmers growing these crops under carbon trading protocols could grow biomass representing up to 50 tons of net sequestered CO2 per acre (A) of cropland. These crops would produce revenues of approximately $50- $150/acres, thereby insuring grower’s adoption and enabling a smooth transition from conventional to IP agricultural practices. IP has the capability to absorb current total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (30,398 million tons CO2/year) through adoption of year- round IP production on 17% of the world’s arable cropland or through the growth and incorporation of ~4 tons/acre dry biomass on cropland worldwide. The IP approach does not require high-tech equipment or have high costs for implementation. IP can be practiced in any country by farmers of any ability creating economic opportunities and bene ts worldwide, including third world countries. With the implementation of IP, valuable resources of energy, capital and captured CO2 would not be pumped into a “hole-in-the-ground” or to extreme ocean depths, but will be captured and incorporated into soils to improve the quantity, quality and health of farmland worldwide, while increasing crop yield and food quality. This methodology does not require waiting for some technology to mature, it just needs people to acknowledge and adopt it. Using this system would require significantly less use of tractors and they could be powered by electric motors using energy generated from a range of sources, possibly even including SMRs.
Edited by logtroll (11/04/17 12:35 PM) Edit Reason: add link
_________________________
"You can't fix a problem until you understand what the problem is." Logtroll
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#303716 - 11/04/17 09:07 PM
Re: SMR (Small modular reactor)
[Re: pondering_it_all]
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veteran
Registered: 04/26/10
Posts: 8773
Loc: New Mexico (not old Mexico)
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Once you get the carbon in the farmland I don't think you can put a lot more in there. Natural processes in the soil make organic material decay and release CO2 back into the atmosphere. So you can offset all the anthropogenic CO2 for a few years and then you have great soil on every arable hectare and get no such additional carbon sequestration. That's true for labile carbon but not for recalcitrant carbon. There probably is a limit to how much recalcitrant carbon can go back into the soil, but the amount is humongous and, according to the calculations of many, enough to "save" us from what we have done so far. But we do have to stop living like total morons and change our ways, critical as one strategic vector. As said before, IP is something that can be done now, at positive economic levels, with multiple positive co-benefits besides atmospheric carbon reduction. I encounter this all the time - resistance to immediately implementing conserving strategies that are 'shovel ready', usually on the argument that we will need more energy eventually, or that they aren't 'big' enough. I don't get it.
_________________________
"You can't fix a problem until you understand what the problem is." Logtroll
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#303827 - 11/09/17 09:42 PM
Re: SMR (Small modular reactor)
[Re: jgw]
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member
Registered: 05/22/06
Posts: 1914
Loc: Port Angeles, WA
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We gotta have faith in our military. Trump has put them in charge and they have told him, apparently, that everything is winnable so, perhaps, they can get us into a war that will kill off our overpopulation?
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