EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Why don’t we reprocess and re-use our nuclear waste like France does? Would it be possible for us to start doing so?  - Albert Jukowsky, Silver Spring, MD

Reprocessing nuclear waste to extract more energy from it, while expensive and controversial, is indeed to this day still practiced in France, the UK, Russia, India and Japan—but not in the United States, where it was invented. The process involves breaking down spent nuclear fuel chemically and recovering fissionable material for use in new fuels. Proponents tout the benefit of reducing the amount of nuclear waste, resulting in less highly radioactive material that needs to be stored safely.

Nuclear reprocessing was first developed in the U.S. as part of the World War II-era Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb. After the war, the embryonic nuclear power industry began work to reprocess its waste on a large scale to extend the useful life of uranium, a scarce resource at the time. But commercial reprocessing attempts faltered due to technical, economic and regulatory problems. Anti-nuclear sentiment and the fear of nuclear proliferation in the 1970s led President Jimmy Carter to terminate federal support for further development of commercial reprocessing. The military did continue to reprocess nuclear waste for defense purposes, though, until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War made continuous ramping up of our nuclear arsenal unnecessary. (more…)

One of the best features of hybrids, besides the economic and environmental benefits, is that they don’t make much sound.  It’s nice to not hear the growl of an engine.  However, President Obama made his opinion known by signing the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010 which will eventually require hybrid vehicles to make a sound so that children, the visually impaired and all pedestrians will have the ability to hear hybrids as they approach at slow speeds.

It is a very obscure and flexible law, merely directing the Secretary of Transportation to “study and establish a motor vehicle safety standard that provides for a means of alerting blind and other pedestrians of motor vehicle operation.”  As I read it, this means the Secretary has the freedom to explore this as an option at some point, with no firm deadline.

Here’s my two cents, what if hybrid manufacturers had to choose from a set of pre-approved classic rock songs to play?  Then you could be walking down the street and hear ACDC’s Back in Black coming down the road and know you shouldn’t step out into the street because a hybrid is coming. Source

The EPA’s miles-per-gallon estimates are a joke.  That’s common knowledge.  However they are trying to change the game in a good way by improving and simplifying the readability of their window stickers.  Soon you may find your potential new ride with an easy-to-read letter grade system that rates the car’s environmental efficiency.

In addition to the letter grade system we’re all familiar with, the stickers will likely have a miles per gallon number still, and a typical cost to fill the tank number.  The latter will be helpful psychologically as people consider a new vehicle.  “28 mpg highway” is one number we see often.  But when that translates to “$85 cost to fill the tank” hits the wallet a little harder.  This way, we might actually consider the real cost of filling up such a wasteful vehicle.

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Next year, baby bottles in the EU will be required to be BPA free.  BPA is the chemical that buzzed around the eco-blogosphere last year as it was discovered to be a harmful off-gas of common plastic products.  Although an organic compound, Bisphenol A’s (abbreviated as BPA) negative affect on fetuses, young children and babies is rivaled only by it’s ubiquity.

In 2008, many manufacturers and retailers began pulling products that contained BPA from shelves.  Here comes the sad news.  The EU law passed just a week after the same law failed to pass in the United States Senate.  Why?  There’s a short, two word answer: industry influence.

At least we can say one thing about the U.S. Government: their expedience at which businesses can influence policy is head-spinning.  Just ask any politician, all one needs to make lasting public policy change is a few dollars and a few friends.

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Shortly after turning down a request to restore the Carter-era solar panels on the roof of the White House, President Obama announced new units will be installed soon.  The project is out for bid by local companies.  The scope of the project has not been announced so we’re not sure how many Kilowatts will be generated.

If you’ve ever walked by the White House, you’ve noticed the activity on the roof so it can safely be assumed there won’t be a great deal of clutter added to the roof.

And with all the offices and unknown security-related electronics beneath that roof, I doubt any solar application can cover the consumption of that building.  However, every little bit counts.  In a discussion with my local passionate environmentalist: “everyone should be required to have solar panels on their roof”.  There’s some validity to that statement, although inflammatory, because if we all had a small amount of renewable energy generation capacity, it would take significant load off the fossil-fuel-powered grid.

Here’s what they had to say: “President Obama has said the Federal Government has to lead by example in creating opportunity and jobs in clean energy.  By installing solar panels on arguably the most famous house in the country, his residence, the President is underscoring that commitment to lead and the promise and importance of renewable energy in the United States.”

There are lots of options out there for installing solar on your property.  Some even allow you to rent or lease the units, keeping the out-of-pocket costs low.  It would be nice to eliminate my $80/month electric bill, it’s just hard to swallow a $10,000 investment to do so.

Source

I stumbled upon an article in the New York Times describing how North Dakota has an incredibly unusual problem.  They have more jobs than housing.  How could that be?

North Dakota has a lot of one thing: oil fields.  And those oil fields needs lots of people and they pay them a lot.  This is probably due to the high risk of the job and the very high profits of the industry.

So what’s the problem?  There isn’t any housing! People walk around the town with a pocket full of money and nowhere to live.  From motels to trailer parks to campgrounds to apartments.  Everything is full and/or has a wait list.

Why is this being discussed on an environmental blog? Because we have to make economics part of the environmental discussion every day.  The truth of our society is this: corporations, governments and communities won’t truly accept a change in lifestyle until it is economically beneficial to do so.

As evidence, look at the evolution of environmentally friendly vehicles.  Green vehicles didn’t hit the market until the business model started to erode and the consumers demanded clean vehicles.  A pathetic but true fact.

On one major platform, societies are judged by their knowledge, which is clarified and communicated by language, using words which are the framework of this language.

With this as a guideline, one might conclude that if a particular word had many, often disparate meanings, then societal knowledge would suffer, creating confusion and potential chaos.

Chaos? Isn’t that a bit exaggerated?

Perhaps , but certainly relative to one’s personal experience with chaos itself, or perhaps academic study into chaos theories of combustion powerful enough to create solar systems.

Ah, but the word. That particular word. Green, that’s it. Green.

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Everyone seems to be writing “Year in Review” posts right now.  We considered that too, but since everyone else is doing it, why would we?

We settled on a different idea.  We looked back on 2008 year in reviews to compare between then and now.  We asked: How far have we come? Are we where we hoped to be? Is our slope of innovation steep enough?  There are so many more questions to ask but these were enough to get started.

1. T. Boone Pickens was getting some press.  His plan is still out there: to use our domestic wind resources to power the country.  Although this hasn’t happened yet, it is catching on as a realistic idea.  But coming from a man who made his billions from the oil industry – can’t we rely on anyone else?
2. Big money was getting pumped into solar.  From unconventional solar installations to micro-solar applications on your roof, we saw big investments in solar.  This hasn’t come to fruition yet either, but solar is steadily growing in terms of infrastructure and capacity.  As we invest more and more in this renewable energy source, we predict the U.S. will reach the solar tipping point in 2010.
3. President Obama had just picked a green technology expert to lead us into the next decade.  Steven Chu, an alternative energy and green tech guru was picked to lead the U.S. into the future of renewable energy policy.  We have yet to see sweeping changes in this area.  To be fair, the Administration has been focused on healthcare and the horrific mess in the Middle East.
4. Flexible computer displays promised to put energy-efficient computers in every hand.  The race for the $100 laptop was similar to the race for the smallest, most mobile and flexible computers.  Flexible displays promised to put more mobile devices in people’s hands – thus limiting the reliance on big, energy-sucking desktop computers.  This also hasn’t happened yet, but would be great to see in the near future.  Our prediction: the price is (and will remain) too high for the average consumer for some time.
5. Cloud Computing was going to take the CPU out of your computer.  The idea of cloud computing is amazingly simple. It would decentralize your files, your computing power, etc. and only place minimal components in your hands.  This would lighten the energy load of your computer and allow you to access files and computing power from virtually anywhere.  This has not come to reality just yet.  Some companies are still pushing the idea, including Google.  Maybe in 2010?
6. President Obama was poised to change the U.S.’s position in the world of climate change. We were set to become the leader in progressive energy policy. From Ecollo.com we saw this prediction for 2009 “Speaking of the U.S. government, President-elect Barack Obama could turn the country into climate change leaders by the end of the year, says the Globe and Mail. The columnist for the paper also predicts that the price of oil is now reasonable enough to implement a cap-and-trade and that climate change will be the – for lack of a better word – hot topic of 2009.”  This has not happened and Copenhagen was a giant disappointment.
7. The Huffington Post predicted the United States Government could make bottled water a thing of the past.  Again, the Government has failed us.
8. JetsonGreen.com predicted the non-green would perish.  This is partly true.  We have certainly seen an increase in the number of green products available.  Although some of these are greenwashing, there are many companies innovating and inventing like crazy to keep up with consumer demand for environmentally friendly products.  The economic down-turn helped with this, but we would love to see the next evolution of this movement be to de-consumerization (I think we just made that word up).  Rather than buying more eco-friendly products, should we just buy less products?

So we ask, have we made the progress we hoped to make?  Have we grown in environmental courage like we planned?  We have made tons of progress and many eco innovations.  However, we put entirely too much faith in our world leaders to make the changes the majority of us are asking for.

What we hope to learn from the minimal progress made in 2009 is that real change begins at the bottom.  Originating with the people, lasting and effective change happens when citizens collect themselves to identify a need and offer a solution.

Sources:

• www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/the-top-10-gree/
• www.ecostreet.com/blog/eco-technology/2008/01/16/2008s-most-desirable-eco-gadgets
• www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/frameshop-10-phrases-that_b_154276.html
• www.ecollo.com/post/2009/01/Green-predictions-for-2009.aspx
• www.jetsongreen.com/2009/01/seven-green-tre.html

Image Credit: JetsonGreen

World leaders have gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to address the issue of climate change.  There are tons of bloggers and conventional media outlets discussing this very topic recently.  There is even a huge advertising campaign called “Hopenhagen” aimed at convincing the attendees to stand up and commit to real, lasting change.  We say, “Copenhagen, Shmopenhagen”.  Politicians have never been the source of change.  If people want to address the climate crisis in an effective way, they will have to do it themselves.  Innovators, business leaders, inventors… these people have the skills to change how the world works.  Visit Hopenhagen.org

Al Gore, the patron saint of anti climate change efforts, has written a guest post on Huffington Post | Green. Vice President Gore has been one of the most courageous advocates for policy changes that would address global warming. Check it out here.