permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

More on phosphate mining, superphosphate production and farming 
bionaturally.

Interesting thoughts on wasting a prime non-renewable resource, 
phosphate ore, on triple super P & sodapop - another reason to farm 
using natural methods and materials.

Found this tonight randomly surfing Blogger blogs & thought I would 
share it with you. Add this to the previous discussion on phosphate 
mining. -LL

Lounge of the Lab Lemming
http://lablemminglounge.blogspot.com/

Friday, January 29, 2010
Some thoughts on the uranium cycle

"2. Phosphate, which is currently mined for fertilizer production, 
contains a reasonable amount of U. It is currently uneconomical to 
remove it, so it dissolves into the H3Po4 during the phosphoric acid 
production, and stay there through ammonization until it eventually gets 
dumped on the fields that grow the food we eat (take a scintillometer to 
your favorite agricultural warehouse sometime). Somewhere around 
$100/pound it becomes economical to extract it to burn in a reactor 
instead. So correctly calculating the risk of increasing U production 
needs to take into account the benefits of not dumping the stuff on crops.

3. Radiation is very dangerous, and can easily kill you if you are 
stupid. Unlike the days of the Manhattan project and the cold war, we 
now know a lot more about how to mitigate the risks and how it behaves 
in the environment."