I've traveled to Hawaii (specifically the Big Island) several times and drove H19 countless times between Kailua-Kona and Waikoloa. For about 30 minutes you are driving through old lava fields with a view of the ocean, some goats and the other cars on the road. I've never realized the lack of billboards and I thank those responsible for that. I can imagine that drive inundated with billboards if it was allowed. Trying to sell sunset cruises, sunscreen and your next time share.
Not really. The bee that stings you will flap her wings very vigorously, and it will rip its stinger off in less than a second trying to get away from you. Unless you're deliberately trying to get stung and save her, you won't have a chance.
Depends on the colony. The bees that have stung me have always taken 5 or 10 seconds to start trying to dismantle themselves in earnest, which (depending on location) is usually enough time to rescue them. (I'm not sure whether they survive my rescue, but at the very least they can fly away, and their stingers don't remain in my skin.)
Tungsten carbide jewelry is a mixture of tungsten carbide powder and a metal binder, typically cobalt or nickel. The metal binder is electrically conductive and thus susceptible to the induction heating you felt.
It's more than just the chain length.
The most common synthetic rubbers are styrene-butadiene copolymers. Natural rubber is polyisoprene. While it is true that shorter chain synthetic polyisoprene is available, it is a much smaller part of the market than styrene-butadiene.
Ethane (R-170) is a fine low-temperature refrigerant for lab equipment. The performance characteristics are at least as good as halocarbon refrigerants. The main drawback is flammability but propane has a similar concern and is already widely used in residential refrigerators and similar size systems.
> Not in the US (because of the flammability), unless something's changed very recently.
I don't know when it changed but R-290 (propane) is allowed up to 13oz. My ice maker uses it. I believe it must also be sealed without service ports both to prevent leaks and prevent anyone from connecting normal A/C service equipment to the system. Service requires emptying the system then brazing service ports onto the fill pipes (which are left much longer than normal for this purpose).
In commercial applications you'll see R-290. It's often used in low temperature applications, like ice cream display freezers. I've seen them in gas stations and pizza shops quite a bit.
the volume in a pipe is a lot less than what you'd find in a tank, especially considering the pressure in said pipes is usually one tenth of a psi (.6 kPa)
In the US it's typically more like 0.25psi, I don't know about elsewhere.
But it's connected to what you might consider a tank of nearly infinite volume. It's flow rate limited, but it's fast enough to get an entire house to explosion concentration in much less than a day. Perhaps only an hour.
Point is that we humans manage to figure out how to harness things that might be dangerous when they're useful. And hydrocarbon refrigerants can be very useful so we might figure out how to deal with the relatively small danger they pose.
I don't disagree to be clear, I'm just saying treating it differently than a gas pipe isn't totally crazy. A punctured refrigerant line will empty in a few minutes, and it's next to a compressor that'll likely generate a spark when it kicks on. Even if it just means we need to use thicker line, lets do it.
A fuel-air explosion will not be contained by a reasonable amount of concrete or masonry. The real safety lesson is to control sources of ignition and prevent the buildup of released gases.
Notably, Propane has almost identical refrigeration characteristics to R-22, so it was an easy drop-in replacement for systems designed for R-22 when that was banned.
From personal experience things using propane refrigerant seem to make a high pitched noise, I'm not sure if that's a property of the refrigerant or how devices using it are built.
There's no "reason" propane has to be louder but most propane refrigeration systems are used in industrial or cost-conscious applications where making the equipment quiet is less of a priority. When designing pumps it takes a non-trivial amount of engineering effort to ensure that the bulk of the noises emitted are above/below human hearing range.
This is largely a story about excessive copyright duration. The casting requirement for this 70 year old play is based on legal threats by the estate of the author who died over 30 years ago.
Please read the article first, not only the title. The above comment is completely correct. Whether their approach is acceptable though, that's another story of course.
Or if they read the policies of the venue and adhered to them, the play could go on. Saying "you can't do X at this venue" is not the same as saying "you must do X".
...but the university is doing exactly that - forcing diversity for diversity sake. The play was written to be all male and they refused them the venue as a result of no women being called to audition for a role that isn't for women.
They should've had in the casting call, a role for a woman in a sandwich-board sign, on it printed directions to the theater's fire exits. She stands at stage left for the entire performance, and has no lines, requiring no additions or subtractions to Beckett's work.
Hold an audition allowing all people to try out, and if a woman does get cast because she is best for the role, read the prepared statement before the play indicating the rights holders don't like it.
…and get sued by the Beckett estate; because that’s an out only if you’re in one jurisdiction in France. I suppose if the University was willing to accept liability, that’d be different.
> Famously, in 1988, Beckett brought legal action against a Dutch theatre company, which wanted to stage a production of Waiting for Godot, with women acting all the roles. His lawyer argued that the integrity of the text was violated because actresses were substituted for the male actors asked for in the text. The judge in the Haarlem court ruled that the integrity of the play had not been violated, because the performance showed fidelity to the dialogue and the stage directions of the play
A correction. The Kudo et al., 2002 study found that estradiol lowered the filtration rate in ovariectomised rats. But supplemental estradiol did improve the clearance rate for intact male rats.
Unfortunately this sort of mining has long-term impacts on deep sea ecology. It causes substantial loss of species diversity and activity even 26 years later, with this paper estimating recovery will take at least 50 years for a small test patch.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5922
1. Surface mining also has environmental consequences which have to be weighed against the costs of deep sea mining. An area impacted by surface mining can recover in just a decade, but it takes intensive environmental restoration efforts on the part of humans (https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/05/mine-remediation.html). If similar techniques could be developed for deep sea applications, it could reduce the impact of deep sea mining.
2. Researchers are developing robots with advanced propulsion systems which could dramatically reduce the disturbance to sea-floor sediment by mimicking the ways that rays move. (https://interestingengineering.com/culture/new-autonomous-su...) Of course, this is still an active area of research, and it would probably take regulation to force deep sea mining companies to adopt these measures.
3. Nodules are much easier to process, reducing the carbon footprint of deep sea mining vs. surface mining by up to 80% for some metals. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262...) This study even tries to account for the secondary effects of mining such as the different impacts that surface and deep sea mining have on carbon sequestered in the ecosystem.
The effects of deep-sea mining on ocean ecology are much less well understood than the effects of surface mining. While I do think there's good reason to be optimistic about the benefits of deep-sea mining, especially if it can displace surface mining, we shouldn't assume we understand what will happen. I hope the industry continuous to be forced by regulators to move forward cautiously and allow time for environmental studies to take place.
edit: These people are trying to build a deep sea miner that doesn't destroy the seafloor: https://impossiblemetals.com/
Sea floor mining is widely ridiculed by both environmental and mining professionals as having more risk than equivalent and better understood efforts on land. At least its close cousin, space mining, has the benefit of taking place off planet. I hope we never see this activity occur commercially in our lifetimes: we barely have gotten a handle on surface and underground mining, why do we run off to scrape the ocean as well?
On 1: The study you have referenced refers to the difficulties of remediating historical abandoned sites, often run under inadequate regulations typically in the 1850's - 1960's. Modern sites are no joke to remediate, but regulators are beginning to pick up on what causes problems to occur and how to ensure these costs are factored into the mining operation. The difficulty of applying effective regulations to international undersea areas is enormous.
On 2: That's great -- lots of things could happen to improve technology in both terrestrial and submarine mining.
On 3: Carbon footprint is not everything when determining the appropriateness of mining. The study cited by the Science article assumes tailings deposition at sea -- mines are not permitted to do this. The article also swans repeatedly over how "high grade" nodules are, but makes no direct reference to their actual grade. The underlying paper suggests a grade of 1.3-1.4 weight percent which is on the bottom end of mid-grade.
On 4: This point can not be concluded without further study. While terrestrial mining has had more historical impacts to humans, this does not allow for comparison on future terrestrial mining vs. a relatively unknown ecosystem impact from aquatic mining. Mining is also not assessed on purely anthropocentric impacts. We've begun to appreciate that systems are interconnected and humans are only one receptor. Enormous caution is required, certainly more than "lower emissions = good".
I'm not sure that sea floor mining is widely ridiculed. I've seen it taken about as seriously by grantmakers as other emerging technologies. That said I’m not in the mining space.
I'm don't disagree with your points - there's a lot of uncertainty around all of this research. But, from what I can see, regulators are doing the right thing and being very cautious to do environmental studies at each step of the way. Maybe I'm way off about that.
>Surface mining also has environmental consequences which have to be weighed against the costs of deep sea mining.
What will actually happen is both types will be happily used at the same time, so there's little point in weighting one against the other.
Any other rationalization misses the fact that this is an extremely poorly understood environment (especially if we do compare with surface mining). It's never a good idea to tinker with unknown at scale without understanding it first, let alone commercializing it. Mining history is practically written in mistakes like that.
Right. Especially as we ramp up our reliance on solar panels (and therefore batteries). These operations are now heavily subsidized and we'll likely be making 100% use of every avenue available to mine as much as possible as soon as possible
sigh. If only we put this much funding into solving our exploding e-waste crisis which could also help alleviate the problems of rare metals
I don't think it's true that both will be used at once - if deep sea mining is cheap enough, it could make surface mining non-viable. A carbon tax could certainly eliminate surface mining because smelting surface minerals uses so much more energy compared to smelting nodules.
We actually put much more funding into e-waste recycling. Allseas most recent funding round was $150m, and they're the only major player in the deep sea mining space. But Redwood materials, one of many e-waste recycling startups, has raised $700m in their most recent round.
We don't need weird elements to support solar with batteries. Grid stabilization can do fine with lead-acid batteries. Both lead and sulfur are readily available. There are also iron batteries and other emerging battery chemistries, as well as non-battery storage like pumped liquids or pressurized gases.
Don’t need manganese or any rare minerals for batteries. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are used in the least expensive Teslas (base Model 3 and Y), and although lithium is very abundant, you can even substitute it for the even more abundant Sodium with only a slight weight increase. That’s superior to Lead based batteries in nearly every way.
Manganese is not a rare mineral. One does not mine manganese nodules for the manganese. Mining them would create an enormous surplus of manganese that would get dumped in waste piles.
I wasn't making a judgment here. I was just pointing out that most of the manganese ends up in the waste stream. One would not be mining these things for the manganese (although what manganese that could be sold would be sold.) In a world mining manganese nodules, the price of manganese would be very low.
Or you can reduce your need for batteries by combining wind and solar with green, safe nuclear reactors - and smart grids capable of varying their demand instead of us trying desperately to adjust supply.
For example, as more folks move to electric cars, a smart grid would allow chargers to charge less at periods of intense demand.
We've historically focused exclusively on adjusting supply to meet demand - which is clearly very difficult and very expensive (especially if you look at gas peaker plants) - but we instead (or in addition) can adjust aspects of the demand curve to smooth out variability in load. This should be easier and significantly cheaper.
Whether something is more efficient might not be relevant. What's relevant is whether there is a path from here to there that keeps us under a survivable amount of climate change. Staying on that path may require some decisions that seem superficially inefficient.
1kg of Lithium in an LFP battery provides diurnal storage for about the same amount of power as 1kg of Uranium can produce, lasts 3x as long, is recyclable, and mining the lithium is less harmful.
Batteries don't store "power". They store energy. Uranium fission, on the other hand, produces energy. Comparing energy storage with energy production is not valid.
Also, your numbers are way, way off. 1 kg of U-235 can produce about 24,000,000 kWh of energy. There's no way you're going to store that in 1 kg of lithium batteries.
Hilarious attempt at misdirection. The conceit is that the 'need' for batteries to run renewables is environmentally destructive and makes renewables a bad option. Putting that in context reveals it's still a better option than nuclear, even though there are other options that are even better on the renewable side where they're appropriate.
You don't mine U235. You mine 99.3% U238 and then leave a third of your U235 in enrichment tailings (or burn it straight in a CANDU).
And storage of a given time duration is indexed by power. 1kW of diurnal storage is enough storage to provide 1kW over daily variation.
Extracting 1kg of Uranium nets you 1kW for a few years.
Extracting 1kg of Lithium nets you enough storage to run 1kW of solar + wind for several times as long.
The solar panel is made of about the same amount of sand as goes into the nuclear power plant. It is less limited by Silver than the control rods are limited by indium, silver and cadmium.
No, you were not "clear". You said that batteries store "power". They do not. Period.
Worse still, you were attempting to confuse "power" (actually energy) storage with "power" (actually energy) production. That's not even apples and oranges -- more like apples and poetry.
It's like saying that because a refrigerator can hold 100 kilograms of food, buying a refrigerator is same as actually growing 100 kilograms of food. The two are not comparable in any way.
Doubling down on lying about words that are right in front of you doesn't make the lie any truer.
Nor does having a tantrum over having the lie called out. Instead it just makes you look like a cry-bully.
The constant stream of lies and whining when those lies are called out from nuclear "advocates" would reflect incredibly poorly on the industry if it weren't obvious it was just a tactic to keep fossil fuels relevant for a little longer.
You still need batteries to support the solar and wind systems. If making the grid responsive to total load increases efficiency then hell, let’s do both
Abundant battery chemistries are already most of the way through commercialisation. ZnBr, Sodium/Prussian blue, Iron flow, and Iron air are all proven practial and rapidly scaling. AlS, NaS and LiS are hopeful next steps.
The only critical mineral not yet eliminated for the most commercially viable upcoming option is silver which requires about one ounce per net kilowatt with state of the art processes.
Unless you meant cheap energy will subsidize mining, in which case you are correct and this is a problem.
Point 4 is mostly confined to old abandoned sites, as mentioned in your link. Modern tailings aren’t left to leach acid all over the place, at least not in North American mines. I get that all bets are off in eg Africa, however.
Sure, but a lot of surface exploitation is planned globally. Africa and Asia are certainly going to be seeing new mines opening due to demand for solar/batteries.
For sure, I was taking issue with the absoluteness of the assertion that all terrestrial mines are leaching from their tailings piles/ponds. It’s not true of many (most?) modern mines.
The nodules themself offer a habitat with its hard crust compared to the soft sea-floor. As it takes millennia for the nodules to form this means the habitat for those organisms is basically lost.
I wonder how large a patch we could mine over 50 years, and if it is a meaningful fraction of the ecosystem? The planet is almost covered with deep sea ecology. Plumes and water contamination could significantly increase the affected area, which I'd hope for these studies to be watching for.
(how much affected by drag net fishing might give a ballpark figure)
