Ecologicaleconomy

Uranium Mining causes severe Problems in Namibia

Stefan Spiess — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:09:59 +0000

According to Norbert Suchanek of German „Neues Deutschland“ [article], people in Namibia are not only suffering from health problems due to radiation, but also the mining process consumes masses of water, which is in very short supply in he Namib Desert anyway. Further, it is said that the conamination caused by the mining is underestimated about tenfold by some official reports. The water consumption of uranium mining in Namibia is said to be about 3,3 million m² per year, which equals the water consumption per year of about 4,5 million persons (Only for drinking, not calculating anything else. Assumed per capita consumption for an adult is 2 litres a day.).

It is not only radiation and water supply that worries people in Namibia: In addition to uranium, many other highly toxic chemicals are set free in the process, among which are arsenic, cadmium and copper. The river Wonderfontein Spruit alone is said to transport an estimated 50 tons of uranium and it’s byproducts per year, exposing many poor africans to the radioactive waste and an enormous amount of heavy metal.

Source: en.WikiPedia.org

New mines are planned and probably starting to run in 2009. The rising interest of mining companies for africa is probably a consequence of tightening environmental and health regulations in Australia, which is very rich in uranium and was one of the top areas for uranium mining in the past (21% of world uranium mining in 2007, compared to 6% for Namibia). Inge Lindemann, an expert on uranium mining states that there is no such thing as safe uranium mining:

Wherever you find uranium, people are suffering. (translated by author, original in the article mentioned above)

PROGRASS – Bioenergy from Biomass

Stefan Spiess — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:19:20 +0000

Good news for PROGRASS [home]! The Department of Grassland Science and Renewable Plant Resources at the university in Kassel managed to qualify for 1,6 million € of external funds from the LIFE+ Environmental Policy and Governance [home] pool of the European Union. The project aims at several things, some of the main points are:

Securing the conservation of species-rich grasslands habitats with a distributed bioenergy production. A new approach will be demonstrated and the feasibility will be proved.
Producing Bioenergy without competing with the production of food (A problem causing severe problems in the production of biofuel from sugarcane and corn.) The solution: Using abandoned grasslands.
Development of a technology that uses up to 70% of the energy contained in the biomass.

Entries in WikiPedia concerning the most important terms are: biomass, bioenergy and biogas. They also contain information on some critical points about biofuel production.

Links for further reading on the web:

Detailed information on PROGRASS [PDF, English]
Uni Kassel [home, German]

Ecological Frontiers – Andalusia goes Environmental

Stefan Spiess — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:22:33 +0000

The province of Andalusia had two major headlines concerning ecological progress the last weeks. One was about the production of hydrogen using solar energy without the circuit via electric energy [Read here on oekonews.at and here on GEO.de, both in German]. and the other was about producing solar energy. Both were state-of-the-art ideas about how we could ensure at least a little bit more of the energy we’re going to need in the future. This is a milestone to me, since Andalusia was formerly mostly popular for its especially wasteful consumption of its ecosystem [this satellite picture might show you, why].

This is my first entry, and I decided something very important about the philosophy of this blog. Usually it is the German blogosphere that benefits from news in the english blogosphere and press, but I might at least try to give a little bit back to the Anglo-American world.

Production of Hydrogen - Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center)

To put it short, the key fact about the Project is that they managed to produce Hydrogen by using solar power directly. This makes the production carbon-neutral. And by that I do really mean carbon-neutral, not only the „buying someone else’s license to produce carbon“-neutral. Of course you have to consider the amount of carbon needed to produce and maintain the facility, but that is probably a question of time. From a previous experimentary version that did only supply 10kW, they did now build a new one providing 100kW, and that „only“ by heating water to about 1200 degree centigrade. (This is the project in „the sea of plastic“-Almeria )

The production of solar energy (Abengoa Solar)

A quite similar mechanism can be used to produce electricity. By heating water to – guess what? – over 1000 degree centigrade (You just read it a few lines above, didn’t you?) they produce enough heat to operate a turbine creating the electricity. And that is enough (well, probably not in Scandinavia, but in Andalusia it’s perfect…) to power 11.000 households. This Project is near Sevilla, where my love is.