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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 18 2019, @04:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the let-it-snow-let-it-snow-let-it-snow dept.

Only 6 years after the weathermen needed a new color for just one spot of extreme temperatures on the map, this is how it looks when that color needs to be used for over 30% of the Australia's area. And that for 3 days in a row, starting today, Dec 18 2019 (like, meh, just a balmy 40C in Melbourne at 18:30, she'll be apples).

[40C is 104F and 50C is 122F --ed.]

Coverage:
BBC - Australia heatwave: Nation endures hottest day on record

Guardian Australia heatwave: records forecast to be broken as temperatures surge past 40C

Severe-weather.eu An extreme heatwave is about to swipe across Australia, raising maximum temperatures up to near 50°C (122°F) in S/SE parts of the continent, breaking many all-time records!

AFP Australia has its hottest day on record, more to come


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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:09PM (19 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:09PM (#933815) Homepage Journal

    I've not seen a decent very long term strategy for dealing with the waste, even if there's less with thorium. What happens when someone digs it up in 500 years in a civilization where Geiger counters no longer exist? Fusion on the other hand would be a different story.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:15PM

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:15PM (#933819)

    > what happens when someone digs it up in 500 years in a civilization where Geiger counters no longer exist?

    They might get cancer a bit early, but when Geiger counters no longer exist they are more likely to die of childbirth, plague, war, starvation, or indeed lung disease from mining 1 km underground.

    Meanwhile what is the impact *now* from global warming.

    > Fusion on the other hand would be a different story.

    Alas, global warming is happening *now*. Fusion is in "50 years".

    Stop mucking about and prevaricating. There is a solution that works *now*. Do it.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:34PM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:34PM (#933823)

    There is no such thing as nuclear waste, if it is radioactive it can be used as fuel.

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:46PM (3 children)

      by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:46PM (#933838) Homepage Journal

      Can be but can we trust those motivated by profit to do so and to properly contain it in the mean time?

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @08:47PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @08:47PM (#933892)

        No, you can't trust anyone. Ever. Their motivation makes no difference. I know plenty of people motivated to help the sick who are only feeding them poisons.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:59PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:59PM (#933991)

          How is that interesting? Is SN 90% trolls now?

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:02AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:02AM (#933994)

            No, you just don't have common sense.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 18 2019, @09:31PM (10 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 18 2019, @09:31PM (#933919) Journal
      Not if it's too dilute. For example, some metals can become radioactive through exposure to neutron radiation from a reactor. The smart solution is to never let those metals get near a reactor. But people are dumb and mistakes happen (say like hypothetically leaving a wrench next to a active reactor). So what do you do with the radioactive metal now? It's not worth trying to extract the minute amount of radiative material out. The answer is that it's radioactive waste and gets buried somewhere.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @10:44PM (9 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @10:44PM (#933957)

        If it is energetic enough to harm someone it is energetic enough to extract energy from. What you really mean is there are easier things to extract energy from instead.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:05PM (5 children)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:05PM (#933967) Journal

          If it is energetic enough to harm someone it is energetic enough to extract energy from.

          Would you like some micrograms of Polonium in your tea? I hear it's smashing.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:47PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:47PM (#933982)

            I'm sure you can use micrograms of polonium to heat up some stuff if it is that dangerous.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:07AM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:07AM (#933997)

            The energy released by its decay is so large (140 watts/g) that a capsule containing about half a gram reaches a temperature above 500oC.

            https://web.archive.org/web/20120310145431/http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/polonium.pdf [archive.org]

            So 140 uW per ug. You can use 1 microgram to power about 140 watches:

            1×10−6 = tech: approximate consumption of a quartz or mechanical wristwatch

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power) [wikipedia.org]

            • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:39AM (2 children)

              by anubi (2828) on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:39AM (#934046) Journal

              Until the Carnot tax.

              By the time you pay off all the energy to get the remaining energy in the form you want it, usually in the form of electricity or shaft work, you find there isn't much, if any, left.

              Kinda like a Cheetah expending 100 calories to catch rodents having 80 calories in them. No matter how many rodents the big cat catches, it's gonna starve.

              --
              "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:33AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:33AM (#934067)

                This is morel like harvesting 100 calories in per microgram of mouse.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:29PM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:29PM (#934173) Journal
                  So it's like 125 calories of work to harvest that 100 calories of microgram mouse?
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:16PM (2 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:16PM (#933970) Journal

          If it is energetic enough to harm someone it is energetic enough to extract energy from.

          No, doesn't work that way. The biological thresholds can be a lot lower than the threshold for viable energy extraction.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:45PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:45PM (#933980)

            You keep using that weasel word "viable". The energy is there to be extracted, it is just that there are easier ways.

            • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:20PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:20PM (#934170) Journal
              And you keep being an idiot. How do you extract energy from a slightly radioactive wrench or some protective suit covered with dust? Let us note actual nuclear reactors typically work on temperature gradients of a few hundred degrees and achieve thermodynamic efficiencies in the 30-40% range. Meanwhile your wench might be a fraction of a degree warmer than it's surroundings. That 4 orders of magnitude different in temperature is not the energy per mass that can be extracted, it's the efficiency. So a typical heat extraction approach to removing energy is going to be four orders of magnitude less efficient.

              We can increase the efficiency somewhat by dumping all the radioactive stuff into some sort of insulated warehouse and let it warm up a bunch, but you'll never get more energy out of that than the massive investment of energy and time you put in.
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @07:58PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @07:58PM (#933875)

    I've not seen a decent very long term strategy for dealing with the waste, even if there's less with thorium. What happens when someone digs it up in 500 years in a civilization where Geiger counters no longer exist?

    Roughly, the half-life of a material is an inverse approximation of how radioactive it is --> the longer the half-life, the less radioactive (and therefore, less dangerous to handle).

    Stuff with very short half life can be very dangerous but irrelevant long term as it will all be gone. Iodine-131 falls into this category.

    Stuff with very long half life will stick around for the long game but also isn't very radioactive so not a big worry.

    The worrisome bits are reaction products that fall somewhere the middle, very typical nuclear waste products in this category are Strontium-90 and Caesium-137, both with a half life of about 30 years.

    We can estimate the scenario you describe based on past incidents. Caesium-137 was the material involved in the a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident'>Goiânia accident when a scavenger found a 93g sample, did not know what it was or the dangers it posed, and 4 people died from exposure to high energy gamma rays.

    So with a half life of 30 years, after 500 years this will have decayed by half a little less than 17 times. So if we bury 10 tonnes of Caesium-137 and 500 years later someone digs it up, about 100g will remain and we have roughly the same amount of material that lead to the Goiânia accident. However, a key difference is that remaining caesium-137 will not be very pure, mixed with ~10 tonnes of other crap and I suspect it will be less fascinating to the people who find it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:02PM (#934183)

      you're going to need quiet a few nuke reactors to make enough electricity to smelt enough iron and possibly lead to to build that ginormous dig-dug that can handle 10 tons of radioactif caesium ^_^

      but i guess it's ok to concentrate more power in fewer hands ... sunburn is for losers.