Nuke Dump Structures Moved After Study:

Engineers moved some planned structures at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump after rock samples indicated a fault line unexpectedly ran beneath their original location, an Energy Department official said Monday.

Allen Benson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas, said adjustments to the project were made in June.

“That’s why we do studies, to come up with information to make the repositories safer,” Benson said.

The department responded to a published report that cited a May 21 letter in which U.S. Geological Survey maps showed the Bow Ridge fault “may be farther east than projected.” The Las Vegas Review-Journal said it obtained the documents last week.

Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and the state’s chief anti-Yucca administrator, said he was not reassured by what he called “just-in-time engineering.”

“This represents a complete lack of understanding about the site’s characteristics,” Loux said. “They’ve been out there for 25 years or longer. And they get surprises like this. This is basic geology, stuff they should have known all along.”

Oops.

More substantively, I don’t think anyone should get too carried away with “look at the nuclear bullet we dodged!” stuff. But this is clearly a very strong sign that we should be pushing any such project very hard to make absolutely sure they have their facts right.

Once again, I go back to my basic risk equation and how it shapes public perceptions of nuclear power. The expected value of an accident is the probability of an accident times the average impact of an accident. People who like nuclear power focus on how small the probability of an accident is, while people who don’t like it focus on the high cost of an accident. It’s like playing Russian roulette with a gun with one bullet and many more than the usual 6 chambers. Things like this “surprise” discovery of a fault line only convinces people that the number of chambers in the gun is smaller than they thought.

Record winter heating prices expected:

Prices for home heating oil are expected to be almost 28 percent higher than last year’s level, according to NEADA. The average family is projected to pay about $402 more for heating oil than last year for a total of $1,834.

The average U.S. household will pay $992 for heating costs this winter, up $94, or 9.9 percent, from last winter, according to NEADA, a policy organization for the state energy aid officials.

You want toasty, you pay for toasty.

CO2 emissions could violate EPA ocean-quality standards within decades:

In a commentary in the September 25, 2007, issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), a large team of scientists state that human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will alter ocean chemistry to the point where it will violate U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Quality Criteria [1976] by mid-century if emissions are not dramatically curtailed now. This is the first recognition that atmospheric CO2 emissions will cause ocean waters to violate EPA water quality criteria.

The paper also says that carbon-dioxide induced “changes in ocean chemistry within the ranges predicted for the next decades and centuries present significant risks to marine biota” and that “adverse impacts on food webs and key biogeochemical process” would result.

An international team of twenty five leading researchers described the evidence to date regarding the effects of CO2 emissions on the acidity of the world’s oceans.

“About 1/3 of the CO2 from fossil-fuel burning is absorbed by the world’s oceans,” explained lead author Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology. “When CO2 gas dissolves in the ocean it makes carbonic acid which can damage coral reefs and also hurt other calcifying organisms, such as phytoplankton and zooplankton, some of the most critical players at the bottom of the world’s food chain. In sufficient concentration, the acidity can corrode shellfish shells, disrupt coral formation, and interfere with oxygen supply. ”

Most of the research today points to a future where, in the absence of a major effort to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, there will be double the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (760 parts per million, or ppm) by century’s end. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could reach 500 ppm by mid-century. Pre-industrial concentrations, by comparison, were 280 ppm and today’s concentration is about 380 ppm.

The acidity from CO2 dissolved in ocean water is measured by the pH scale (potential of Hydrogen). Declines in pH indicate that a solution is more acidic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [1976] Quality Criteria for Water state: “For open ocean waters where the depth is substantially greater than the euphotic zone, the pH should not be changed more than 0.2 units outside the range of naturally occurring variation …” The euphotic zone goes to a depth of about 650 feet (200 meters), where light can still reach and photosynthesis can occur.

“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations need to remain at less than 500 ppm for the ocean pH decrease to stay within the 0.2 limit set forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [1976],” remarked Caldeira. “If atmospheric CO2 goes above 500 ppm, the surface of the entire ocean will be out of compliance with EPA pH guidelines for the open ocean. We need to start thinking about carbon dioxide as an ocean pollutant. That is, when we release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we are dumping industrial waste in the ocean.”

Keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 500 ppm level would require a rapid global transition to a system of energy production and consumption that releases very little carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

We’re on track to have illegal, dead oceans? Oy.