More good news. So much is being pulled from aquifers to make up for and combined with the loss of surface water that the water table is dropping (along with the entire central valley). This means that, as they draw down reservoirs to empty to supply downstream communities with water, much of that water goes underground because the water tables have dropped below river beds, so the rivers cannot retain and transport the water. This is just starting to happen, but is definitely going to have major impacts in the future, causing the majority of California's water transportation system to be unusable.

Time to invest in desalination.

That'd be an awesome fun think for my boys. They just spent an hour going nuts having a blast in our patio yesterday playing with their water table (which they hadn't played with since 2 years earlier).

They would go bananas playing with something like this.

Agree with @Fairbs...this is total self serving fracking propaganda and nothing more.
It is good they take some steps to not pollute.
It is ridiculous and terrible that they pretend the steps they take are fool proof and all inclusive. They have failed repeatedly (almost consistently) causing irreversible damage FAR more expensive than fracking is profitable. If they had to pay to really completely clean up even one contaminated aquifer, it would cost more than they could ever make off of the entire US gas reserves, and would never be completed because it's impossible to do.

15% of the fluid recovered means up to 85% of the toxic fluid is being pumped up through fractures, some of it into the water system. Even if only 10% makes it there, that's millions of gallons of unknown, poisonous contamination of our water systems.
True, aquifers may sit mostly at higher levels, but they have channels and fractures that reach below the level of the fracking, making a channel for the toxic drill fluid to enter the water table. Pretty simple to understand.
Also, the method used to fracture the rock is pulsing huge pressures through the tubes. Under those conditions, steel 'casings' flex (and sometimes rupture) and concrete fractures, destroying any 'seal' it could have made or, at best, creating channels outside the casing for the toxic fluid to travel up and out of.
I see many reasons this is not a viable industry without exemptions from legal and environmental regulations, which should never be granted to anyone.

@GeeSussFreeK

I tried to stay way from issues specific to the use of nuclear technology for a reason. There's very little in your reply that I can respond to, simply for a lack of expertise. So bear with me if I once again attempt to generalize and abstract some points. And I'll try to keep it shorter this time.

You mentioned how construction times and costs are pushed up by the constant evolution of compliance codes. A problem not exclusive to the construction of power plants, but maybe more pronounced in these cases. No matter.

What buggers me, however, is what you can currently observe in real time at the EPR construction sites in Olkiluoto and Flamanville.
For instance, the former is reported to have more than 4000 workers from over 60 nations, involving more than 1500 sub-contractors. It's basically the Tower of Babylon, and the quality of work might be similar as well. Workers say, they were ordered to just pour concrete over inadequate weld seams to get things done in time, just to name an example. They are three years over plan as of now, and it'll be at least 2-3 more before completion.
And Flamanville... here's some of what the French Nuclear Safety Authority had to say about the construction site: "concrete supports look like Swiss cheese", "walls with gaping holes", "brittle spots without a trace of cement".

Again, this is not exclusive to the construction of NPPs. Almost every large scale construction site in Europe these days looks like this, except for whatever the Swiss are doing: kudos to them, wonderful work indeed. But if they mess up the construction of a train station, they don't run a risk of ruining the ground water and irradiating what little living space we have in Europe as it is.

Then you explain the advantages of small scale, modular reactors. Again, no argument from my side on the feasability of this, I have to take your word on it. But looking at how the Russians dispose of their old nuclear reactors (bottom of the Barents Sea) and how Germany disposes of its nuclear waste (dropped down a hole), I don't fancy the idea of having even more reactors around.

As for prices, I have to raise my hands in surrender once again. Not my area of expertise, my knowledge is limited to whatever analysis hits the mainstream press every now and then. Here's my take on it, regarding just the German market: the development, construction, tax exemption, insurance exemption, fuel transport and waste disposal of the nuclear industry was paid for primarly by taxes. Conservative government estimates were in the neighbourhood of €300B since the sixties, in addition to the costs of waste disposal and plant deconstruction that the companies can't pay for. And that's if nothing happens to any of the plants, no flood, no fire, nothing.

That's not cheap. E.ON and RWE dropped out of the bid on construction permits for new NPPs in GB, simply because it's not profitable. RWE CEO Terium mentioned ~100€/MWh as the minimum base price to make new NPPs profitable, 75.80€/MWh for gas-powered plants. Right now, the base (peak) price is at 46€/MWh (54€/MWh) in Germany. France generates ~75% of its power through NPPs, while Germany is getting plastered with highly subsidized wind turbines and solar panels, yet the market price for energy is lower in Germany.

Yes, the conditions are vastly different in the US, and yes, the next generation of NPPs might be significantly cheaper and safer to construct and run. I'm all for research in these areas. But on the field of commercial energy generation, nuclear energy just doesn't seem to cut it right now.

So let's hop over to safety/dangers. Again, priorities might differ significantly and I can only argue from a central European perspective. As cold-hearted as it may sound, the number of direct casualties is not the issue. Toxicity and radiation is, as far as I'm concerned. All our NPPs are built on rivers and the entire country is rather densely populated. A crashing plane might kill 500 people, but there will be no long term damage, particularly not to the water table. The picture of an experimental waste storage site is disturbing enough as it is, and it wasn't even "by accident" that some of these chambers are now flooded by ground water.

Apologies if I ripped anything out of context. I tried to avoid the technicalities as best as I could in a desperate attempt not to make a fool of myself. Again.

And sorry for not linking any sources in many cases. Most of it was taken from German/Swiss/Austrian/French articles.

Water pipes and water tables?

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Your confusing the meaning of big. Big here is referring to scope. Like the thought experiment, the scope of the police force went from local to national...that is the size difference he was talking about.
How do you address the claim that large central government misrepresent larger portions of the populations due to their non-regional considerations?
US airports are not government facilities.
It is foolish to assume that local governments are more corrupt than distant ones. If the people right under your nose are muxing things up, how about the people 1400 miles away...how much more corrupt can they be without your constant eye? And when they are corrupt, they do it with a larger portion of pie. Granted, that pie might add up to the same pie that would be lost to local corruption of the whole system...but like the video suggests, you are more likely to catch and correct it on the local level.
Also, can you name one super large corporation that isn't also highly regulated, I can't. Microsoft is protected by intellectual property laws, the news giants all started as legal monopoly telco and cable providers, Energy has been quazi-government/private for decades, Rail roads where publicly sponsored then privately owned. Can you name one truly organic natural monopoly that arose from someones good business practices and not its status with government and regulations?

>> ^vaporlock:
I haven't finished watching this yet but hasn't everything been "getting bigger"? Our population, corporations, number of consumer products, number of food items in a supermarket, number of schools, number of airline flights, number of roads, etc, etc. Has government really grown at a rate greater than everything else? Can I really believe that my local town can regulate or even protect itself from big corporations? For example if a BP gas station leaks fuel into the water-table. Mind you my hometown has a problem even cutting the grass on the side of the highway.
I'm all for controlling how the government exploits the rest of the earth, but the airports, national parks, national laboratories, and roadways in the US are some of the best in the world. These were done partially by our "big government". You just have to look at the small governments in the South and local communities across the US to see real corruption.
OK... rant over... start video
After watching. I can say that I agree with the analysis but not the conclusion. Government is not the problem, it's corporate control over government. When you consider the growth of the military alone, his point about the growth of the government is mute. How big was the military in 1907, how big in 2007. The military is a huge percentage of the government, even bigger when you consider government contractors and corporations with contracts, etc. I'm guessing that the growth of the "military industrial complex" alone accounts for much of the 30% difference between 1907 and 2007.
Cut the military, stop f'cking with the rest of the world, guarantee civil rights for everybody, protect the environment, make sure the food and other consumer products are safe, maintain the roadways, support science and education, and I'm all for a big atheist government of the people.




I'm guessing he meant without federal funding of infrastructure our airports, for instance, wouldn't be as good as they are. example Yes, there are private options to this, but when you want to take a global edge in something at a large scale, the only option is the federal option.

The video is ostensibly true in that smaller governments are more efficient, with greater accountability in their daily minutia. However, there is a certain efficiency in extending 'good' programs to the entire country at once rather than requiring every small subsection to enact it independently. It's also pointless at this point(I'll do it anyway) to even mention that many inefficient programs are as a result of undue influence of special interest groups. Public campaign funding, greater transparency and more effective dissemination of information from watchdog groups are all ways of making the federal government more efficient. In this age, it should be possible to catch more of the bullshit happening, which the political media coverage consistently fails to do for various reasons.

Of course, there are many watchdog groups that examine the inner workings of the federal government, because it's large, centralized and presents a larger impact on the country. They often detect corruption but don't have the platform to spread their findings to the larger public unless a larger media conglomerate picks up on it. The geographic distance from a centralized government is not a significant factor in detecting corruption as it is balanced by the large number of eyes focusing on it. If you mean local populaces remaining unaware of how terrible their national representatives are, then you have a point. But this factor will hopefully be alleviated in the future through continuing improvement in getting information to the public.

Don't pretend oversight at the local level isn't without it's problems, though they tend to take a different form from the federal level.

Yes, I'm deeply concerned with the government handing out monopolies like candy. I favor copyright/patent reform.

tl;dr Government requires constant supervision and representatives should be treated like children and changed when they crap themselves. But we love them anyway because they're essential for society to continue.

Your confusing the meaning of big. Big here is referring to scope. Like the thought experiment, the scope of the police force went from local to national...that is the size difference he was talking about.

How do you address the claim that large central government misrepresent larger portions of the populations do to their non-regional considerations?

US airports are not government facilities.

It is foolish to assume that local governments are more corrupt than distant ones. If the people right under your nose are muxing things up, how about the people 1400 miles away...how much more corrupt can they be without your constant eye? And when they are corrupt, they do it with a larger portion of pie. Granted, that pie might add up to the same pie that would be lost to local corruption of the whole system...but like the video suggests, you are more likely to catch and correct it on the local level.

Also, can you name one super large corporation that isn't also highly regulated, I can't. Microsoft is protected by intellectual property laws, the news giants all started as legal monopoly telco and cable providers, Energy has been quazi-government/private for decades, Rail roads where publicly sponsored then privately owned. Can you name one truly organic natural monopoly that arose from someones good business practices and not its status with government and regulations?


>> ^vaporlock:

I haven't finished watching this yet but hasn't everything been "getting bigger"? Our population, corporations, number of consumer products, number of food items in a supermarket, number of schools, number of airline flights, number of roads, etc, etc. Has government really grown at a rate greater than everything else? Can I really believe that my local town can regulate or even protect itself from big corporations? For example if a BP gas station leaks fuel into the water-table. Mind you my hometown has a problem even cutting the grass on the side of the highway.
I'm all for controlling how the government exploits the rest of the earth, but the airports, national parks, national laboratories, and roadways in the US are some of the best in the world. These were done partially by our "big government". You just have to look at the small governments in the South and local communities across the US to see real corruption.
OK... rant over... start video
After watching. I can say that I agree with the analysis but not the conclusion. Government is not the problem, it's corporate control over government. When you consider the growth of the military alone, his point about the growth of the government is mute. How big was the military in 1907, how big in 2007. The military is a huge percentage of the government, even bigger when you consider government contractors and corporations with contracts, etc. I'm guessing that the growth of the "military industrial complex" alone accounts for much of the 30% difference between 1907 and 2007.
Cut the military, stop f'cking with the rest of the world, guarantee civil rights for everybody, protect the environment, make sure the food and other consumer products are safe, maintain the roadways, support science and education, and I'm all for a big atheist government of the people.

I haven't finished watching this yet but hasn't everything been "getting bigger"? Our population, corporations, number of consumer products, number of food items in a supermarket, number of schools, number of airline flights, number of roads, etc, etc. Has government really grown at a rate greater than everything else? Can I really believe that my local town can regulate or even protect itself from big corporations? For example if a BP gas station leaks fuel into the water-table. Mind you my hometown has a problem even cutting the grass on the side of the highway.

I'm all for controlling how the government exploits the rest of the earth, but the airports, national parks, national laboratories, and roadways in the US are some of the best in the world. These were done partially by our "big government". You just have to look at the small governments in the South and local communities across the US to see real corruption.

OK... rant over... start video

After watching. I can say that I agree with the analysis but not the conclusion. Government is not the problem, it's corporate control over government. When you consider the growth of the military alone, his point about the growth of the government is mute. How big was the military in 1907, how big in 2007. The military is a huge percentage of the government, even bigger when you consider government contractors and corporations with contracts, etc. I'm guessing that the growth of the "military industrial complex" alone accounts for much of the 30% difference between 1907 and 2007.

Cut the military, stop f'cking with the rest of the world, guarantee civil rights for everybody, protect the environment, make sure the food and other consumer products are safe, maintain the roadways, support science and education, and I'm all for a big atheist government of the people.

I know this is dipping into conspiracy theory here, but the thing that stuck out in my mind after reading that article was "...Risks of ingesting fluoride include Chronic Kidney Disease, Thyroid Disease, reduced brain development in children, reduced IQs, dental fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis, and increases in hip and other bone fractures. ..."

Paired with the fact that 'They' want us to drink more and more water per day under the guise of 'General Health and Wellbeing' just adds more fuel.

>> ^Sagemind:

"ANOTHER LOOK AT FLUORIDE IN THE WATER SUPPLY"
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/fluoride.htm


--


The water-table-effect is scary as well, guaranteeing that humankind as a whole is affected, rather than just civilized/urban areas. Why stupify 50% of the population when you can get 100%?

</tinfoil_hat>

Seriously though, potentially scary stuff... Pharmaceuticals in the water table are cause for a lot of *fear as well. I can't wait until literally everyone with a penis is walking around with a permanent hardon due to the massive amounts of Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra being dumped into the world-water-supply. Funny shit.

And no one will be depressed, but they may all be potentially suicidal.

I wonder about birth control as well. Surely 100% of the medication isn't being metabolized, so it would gather in waste water also. Population decrease, lower IQ, and perma-stiffy's the world 'round.

Here's a study referenced off Wikipedia.
I know chlorine evaporates from water pretty quickly. Fluorine and chlorine are both halogens gases and both exist as salts in water so since studies say it doesn't build up I'm guessing something takes fluorine out of the equation like it does for chlorine. Pharmaceuticals on the other hand are complex compounds, not just salts so I think that's why they stick around. I took 2 chemistry classes in college so take that with a grain of salt ;-)

>> ^ButterflyKisses:
This article brings up a good point and raises a few more questions:
How is mass water fluoridation affecting the water table?
Not to mention that studies have shown that we now take in various levels of pharmaceuticals due to waste water recycling. Doesn't this also compound and ever more increase the amount of fluoride in the water as the water is continually recycled and fluoride is continually added? This same water is also used in products like soda pop, fruit juices, etc.
I wonder if any studies of this aspect have been done.
This is a very interesting topic in my opinion because it directly affects us all.

>> ^Sagemind:

"ANOTHER LOOK AT FLUORIDE IN THE WATER SUPPLY"
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/fluoride.htm


This article brings up a good point and raises a few more questions:

How is mass water fluoridation affecting the water table?

Not to mention that studies have shown that we now take in various levels of pharmaceuticals due to waste water recycling. Doesn't this also compound and ever more increase the amount of fluoride in the water as the water is continually recycled and fluoride is continually added? This same water is also used in products like soda pop, fruit juices, etc.

I wonder if any studies of this aspect have been done.

This is a very interesting topic in my opinion because it directly affects us all.

>> ^demon_ix:
"There's no proof, they're saying, that it would kill the birds"..........
Who's saying? The same "There's no proof that global warming is man made" people?
Would someone please slap some common sense into anyone that thinks that eating big chunks of plastic is good for any kind of wildlife?


You can eat plastic. It just goes through your system. No digestion occurs, so no toxins will enter your system. Of course, you could choke on it... P.S. I'm a biologist.

Anyway, this whole thing is ironic since people have been touting the values of plastic over paper for years now. Save the trees and all that. If all that trash were paper, it'd be gone long before it got out that far into the ocean. I vote: tree farms, tree farms, tree farms.

"I don't see why people are so friggin shocked. Where do you think the garbage of the world goes? If we're not burying it and building cities over the landfills it's being dropped in rivers, lakes and oceans."

We have a tremendously huge amount of space for landfills... profound amounts of space. The paranoia of the 80's about trash and landfills has been debunked as a child of media hype and activist exaggeration. In addition, we now harvest methane from landfills. When they get "full", they are buried and these fills are managed by people who aren't moronic enough to dump... say... radioactive waste or anything to unsafe that might end up in the water table. Of course, we should fullfill the 3 R's as we were taught. Reduce, reuse, recycle... but we shouldn't sacrifice our reason. Penn and Teller gave a good shake to recycling on their show. I recommend it.

Looks awesome and we just need to know the long-term effects of this and if there is any bad interactions with food or water table issues.