MSimon wrote:Giorgio wrote:This is a very old technological idea.
Calcium Oxide (lime) is heavily used to reduce the sulfur emission from power plants burning low grade carbon (carbon with high sulfur content) by transforming it into Calcium Sulfate (gypsum). Using this same technology to capture CO2 would require before everything else a complete cleaning of the CO2 stream from all impurities (including Uranium), otherwise the produced CaCO3 will have very little (if none) market value.
So true. And we need to get the uranium in sand removed before it can be used in concrete.
URANIUM
We are doomed.
Do you know why dirt is dirty? It has uranium in it.
We need to clean up our dirt.
And rocks. Lots of rocks will need their uranium removed.
And people - people have uranium in them. That will require extensive cleaning.
Uhm, it looks like you are talking just for the fun of it.
We are not doomed as a matter of fact, but there is not much to be happy about burning some grade of coal to make power, as it is not uranium that kills, it is its concentration that kills.
While it is true that many mineral sands and rocks have an higher uranium content than some type of coal, it is not an absolute truth. Some mines produce coal with an higher than average uranium and thorium content and, when it is burned, the volatile ash has 10 to 30 times the content of the original coal. I can assure you it is not healthy to breath.
We have a coal power plant 30 Km from where I live, it was built in the 60's without taking into consideration the predominant winds, that, unfortunately for us, blow directly toward the 3 major cities of the area. In the 50 Km downwind of the stacks there is the higher concentration of leukemia cases of all the region, with rates 6 to 7 times higher than just 10Km abovewind of the stack.
There in nothing funny in this.
I personally prefer to see Uranium burned in a nuclear reactor and switch off all the coal based power plants, at least until a better solution is found.
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