• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
mlooney

NP, Friday Feb 7 2020

Recommended Posts

Just now, Darth Fluffy said:

Yes. I am saying that during a multi-years long crisis in which the water supply leads to various health hazards, long term complications, and even death, not to mention smells and looks bad, even the poorest people are sufficiently motivated to buy up the available supply, to the point where "bottled water for sale in Flint" is not a thing. People do truck some in form elsewhere, and lord knows how many folks have by now set up their own makeshift water treatment plants in their homes.

Worldwide, unsafe water still kills vast numbers; our aggregate carelessness is likely to allow such to remain a problem.

 

 

It's why I wish people would stop focusing on whether or not climate change is real and accelerated by human pollution and focus on pollution simply being bad for our health.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
21 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Yes. I am saying that during a multi-years long crisis in which the water supply leads to various health hazards, long term complications, and even death, not to mention smells and looks bad, even the poorest people are sufficiently motivated to buy up the available supply, to the point where "bottled water for sale in Flint" is not a thing. People do truck some in form elsewhere, and lord knows how many folks have by now set up their own makeshift water treatment plants in their homes.

Unless people straight up gave up on trucking water in, it would still mean that the bottled water is for sale at least occasionally.

I mean, I never was in Flint, but it's not like there would be military confiscating the water on border or anything ...

21 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Worldwide, unsafe water still kills vast numbers; our aggregate carelessness is likely to allow such to remain a problem.

Yes. There are definitely parts of world where the easiest way to get safe water is to get someone to drop it from airplane, which cost much more than the people living there can afford.

16 hours ago, Scotty said:

It's why I wish people would stop focusing on whether or not climate change is real and accelerated by human pollution and focus on pollution simply being bad for our health.

I also don't understand why we need the climate change issue to stop using fossil fuels when much better argument to stop burning fossil fuels is that the material has so many much better uses.

But people rather focus on big stuff like climate change, because by talking this big, it's easier to hide that what they propose will do nothing with climate change and nothing with pollution but will result in big amount of cash ending in their pockets. (For example, lot of people ignore that moving a factory to China will only RAISE pollution.)

It's not important if climate change is accelerated by humans. Important is if it will be cheaper to stop it or to adapt to it. And, well, most scientists are saying it's too late to stop it for several years already, so ...

(Also, to have all my rants at one place: on our current level of technology, the most ecological option for energy source is nuclear. We can play with solar and wind, but for the core energy generation, it's nuclear or oil/coal, and we already established that we want to save the oil for other stuff. Sure, nuclear waste is not nice, but there's not that much of it, compared to the gigantic amount of pollution from burning coal ... which, by the way, is also radioactive. Like, pure coal isn't, but we already burned all of that long ago.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Unless people straight up gave up on trucking water in, it would still mean that the bottled water is for sale at least occasionally.

Well, sure, but how exactly is that particularly helpful? If you were starving and I threw you one soda cracker, how grateful would you be?

 

I mean, I never was in Flint, but it's not like there would be military confiscating the water on border or anything ...

Actually one of the disappointing aspects of this is why the hell isn't the governor having the National Guard (state militia) process water for Flint? That is something they can do.

 

(Also, to have all my rants at one place: on our current level of technology, the most ecological option for energy source is nuclear. We can play with solar and wind, but for the core energy generation, it's nuclear or oil/coal, and we already established that we want to save the oil for other stuff. Sure, nuclear waste is not nice, but there's not that much of it, compared to the gigantic amount of pollution from burning coal ... which, by the way, is also radioactive. Like, pure coal isn't, but we already burned all of that long ago.)

Well, I kind of agree with you, but the track record is not great. In the relatively short lifetime of nuclear energy, there have been three major breakdowns that I recall, only one of which was contained. That's in spite of best efforts to keep it safe. And the waste is kind of horrific, it is not easily gotten rid of. It needs to be contained roughly indefinitely, well beyond the lifespan of any culture of record. If the container fails, the radioactive waste gets into the environment, notably the water table.

Whats sad is that there are ways to use at least much of this waste. It should be pursued if even just to mitigate the disposal issues.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
42 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Unless people straight up gave up on trucking water in, it would still mean that the bottled water is for sale at least occasionally.

Well, sure, but how exactly is that particularly helpful? If you were starving and I threw you one soda cracker, how grateful would you be?

I didn't said it's that much helpful.

43 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I mean, I never was in Flint, but it's not like there would be military confiscating the water on border or anything ...

Actually one of the disappointing aspects of this is why the hell isn't the governor having the National Guard (state militia) process water for Flint? That is something they can do.

Possibly because so many people is claiming it's already ok.

44 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

(Also, to have all my rants at one place: on our current level of technology, the most ecological option for energy source is nuclear. We can play with solar and wind, but for the core energy generation, it's nuclear or oil/coal, and we already established that we want to save the oil for other stuff. Sure, nuclear waste is not nice, but there's not that much of it, compared to the gigantic amount of pollution from burning coal ... which, by the way, is also radioactive. Like, pure coal isn't, but we already burned all of that long ago.)

Well, I kind of agree with you, but the track record is not great. In the relatively short lifetime of nuclear energy, there have been three major breakdowns that I recall, only one of which was contained. That's in spite of best efforts to keep it safe. And the waste is kind of horrific, it is not easily gotten rid of. It needs to be contained roughly indefinitely, well beyond the lifespan of any culture of record. If the container fails, the radioactive waste gets into the environment, notably the water table.

Track record of our industry in general is not great. I think that the radioactive waste is just easier to point to. Like, look at Deepwater Horizon for example.

50 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Whats sad is that there are ways to use at least much of this waste. It should be pursued if even just to mitigate the disposal issues.

Yes. And our chance to develop even better ways how to use that waste - or produce alternative nuclear reactors with less dangerous waste - is much better than our chance to completely switch our civilization to solar power which, as a five year old would tell you, is not available all the time but only during the day if it's good weather.

I'm not saying that nuclear power is ideal. I'm saying it's best alternative we have.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Whats sad is that there are ways to use at least much of this waste. It should be pursued if even just to mitigate the disposal issues.

The big political stumbling block to reprocessing nuclear waste is that doing so is an easy way to extract and purify weapons-grade Plutonium--and therefore you don't want anybody reprocessing the waste whom you don't want also having the means to build their own nuclear weapons. This is why spent fuel rods, which actually still have the majority of their fissile isotope remaining (though not enough for them to continue to be used in a reactor without reprocessing to remove fission products), are not reprocessed much, and instead just get stowed away.

This in fact is the main conundrum with nuclear fission energy: How do you give people outside of the existing Nuclear Weapons states access to Nuclear Energy without also giving them access to Nuclear Weapons?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, ijuin said:

The big political stumbling block to reprocessing nuclear waste is that doing so is an easy way to extract and purify weapons-grade Plutonium--and therefore you don't want anybody reprocessing the waste whom you don't want also having the means to build their own nuclear weapons. This is why spent fuel rods, which actually still have the majority of their fissile isotope remaining (though not enough for them to continue to be used in a reactor without reprocessing to remove fission products), are not reprocessed much, and instead just get stowed away.

This in fact is the main conundrum with nuclear fission energy: How do you give people outside of the existing Nuclear Weapons states access to Nuclear Energy without also giving them access to Nuclear Weapons?

That is true, although there are nations that have nuclear power that are not currently known publicly to have nuclear weapons.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I didn't said it's that much helpful.

Lol, that's almost self-referent. It could at least be said recursively.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Possibly because so many people is claiming it's already ok.

Yes, the politics of the situation is quite dirty. On the plus side, it appears some of the officials will be held accountable.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Track record of our industry in general is not great. I think that the radioactive waste is just easier to point to. Like, look at Deepwater Horizon for example.

Fair point.

 

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yes. And our chance to develop even better ways how to use that waste - or produce alternative nuclear reactors with less dangerous waste - is much better than our chance to completely switch our civilization to solar power which, as a five year old would tell you, is not available all the time but only during the day if it's good weather.

I'm not saying that nuclear power is ideal. I'm saying it's best alternative we have.

Solar is amazingly viable, beyond what I would have thought possible even five years ago, but it helps if you have vast tracts of unused desert, like the US, Russia, China, and Canada. Not so sure it would do much for Europe. Battery technology is essential, but has also made great leaps with the advent of viable electric cars. It is also helpful that most individuals peak usage occurs during the daytime, but if you are using electricity directly for heat, that will shift the peak to the night. In the US, electric heat is tremedously expensive relative to fossil fuel alternatives, but it is desirable from a carbon footprint reduction standpoint.

There are alternate nuclear energy paradigms that promise to be a great deal safer than conventional nuclear plant designs. As I understand it, in the US many of these are not viable because of archaic safety rules; for instance cooling specifications that don't apply. There may be other ulterior motives blocking them. Thorium based power plants have several advantages, one of which is that the byproduct does not lend itself to weaponization.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

That is true, although there are nations that have nuclear power that are not currently known publicly to have nuclear weapons.

 

There are, but allowing them to reprocess their own spent fuel is the technology that we don't want them to have, since that would enable them to refine weapons-grade fissile material. Thus, they would instead need to send the spent fuel to the established Nuclear Weapons States for reprocessing, which several nations (including Iran) balk at--they would sooner let the waste sit unprocessed than rely on foreigners whom they don't like very much to do it for them, especially if they WANT to join the Nuclear Weapons Club.

*gets out a six pack of Nuka-Cola* Bottoms up, everyone!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Actually one of the disappointing aspects of this is why the hell isn't the governor having the National Guard (state militia) process water for Flint? That is something they can do.

Probably because it'd cost just as much money to have the National Guard use their equipment as it would to just replace all the pipes.

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Possibly because so many people is claiming it's already ok.

That worked soo well for Walkerton 20 years ago.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
18 hours ago, ijuin said:
20 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Whats sad is that there are ways to use at least much of this waste. It should be pursued if even just to mitigate the disposal issues.

The big political stumbling block to reprocessing nuclear waste is that doing so is an easy way to extract and purify weapons-grade Plutonium--and therefore you don't want anybody reprocessing the waste whom you don't want also having the means to build their own nuclear weapons. This is why spent fuel rods, which actually still have the majority of their fissile isotope remaining (though not enough for them to continue to be used in a reactor without reprocessing to remove fission products), are not reprocessed much, and instead just get stowed away.

That still doesn't explain why at least the nuclear powers aren't doing it. Or at least not doing it with ALL of their nuclear waste.

15 hours ago, ijuin said:
15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

That is true, although there are nations that have nuclear power that are not currently known publicly to have nuclear weapons.

There are, but allowing them to reprocess their own spent fuel is the technology that we don't want them to have, since that would enable them to refine weapons-grade fissile material. Thus, they would instead need to send the spent fuel to the established Nuclear Weapons States for reprocessing, which several nations (including Iran) balk at--they would sooner let the waste sit unprocessed than rely on foreigners whom they don't like very much to do it for them, especially if they WANT to join the Nuclear Weapons Club.

I'm not surprised about Iran. However, I think that for right price, most nations wouldn't mind selling their nuclear waste to Nuclear Weapons States.

13 hours ago, Scotty said:
19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Possibly because so many people is claiming it's already ok.

That worked soo well for Walkerton 20 years ago.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Yes, the politics of the situation is quite dirty. On the plus side, it appears some of the officials will be held accountable.

I'm not sure if they are held in correct way. Meaning, traditionally, by genitals.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Solar is amazingly viable, beyond what I would have thought possible even five years ago, but it helps if you have vast tracts of unused desert, like the US, Russia, China, and Canada. Not so sure it would do much for Europe. Battery technology is essential, but has also made great leaps with the advent of viable electric cars. It is also helpful that most individuals peak usage occurs during the daytime, but if you are using electricity directly for heat, that will shift the peak to the night. In the US, electric heat is tremedously expensive relative to fossil fuel alternatives, but it is desirable from a carbon footprint reduction standpoint.

I'm not so sure Canada's deserts would be that usable, but I'm definitely sure Europe doesn't have any such deserts. Britain for example is know for lot of rains: statistics confirms that 156.2 days per year is raining. Hard to rely on solar in such circumstances.

Battery technology is dead end. Lithium is rare mineral in any solar system with planets. We will use up all for it just for cars, there isn't enough of it for core energy generation. Actually, not sure if there is enough of it for cars.

Most people need quite a lot of energy in evening, say in prime time. Astronomically, that's already night, and solar power wouldn't be available most of the year ... however our civilization considers it still part of day.

And there is lot of industry which needs to run ALL THE TIME, with every stop meaning heavy loses.

The best thing we currently have for storing big amount of energy are Pumped hydroelectric energy storages. However, they tend to occupy quite a lot of place and they need water, which is considered scarce in lot of places. See some more info. Also, just noticed they have nice graph there ...

800px-Energy-Units-01.png

... yeah.

16 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

There are alternate nuclear energy paradigms that promise to be a great deal safer than conventional nuclear plant designs. As I understand it, in the US many of these are not viable because of archaic safety rules; for instance cooling specifications that don't apply. There may be other ulterior motives blocking them. Thorium based power plants have several advantages, one of which is that the byproduct does not lend itself to weaponization.

Again: that's something which I believe to have more potential than solar. At least until we will have technology to build solar power plant on orbit with area similar to Moon, and then get that energy down to Earth. (Which, BTW, would be another political nightmare: anything capable of getting such amount of energy down to Earth will be more dangerous than most nuclear weapons - you only need to change aim.)

I consider good news - well, "news", there is nothing new about it - that India is researching thorium reactors heavily. I believe they will be much less affected by both bureaucracy and ecological activists than Europe or US, and they don't have enough uranium for more traditional nuclear reactors so their options are limited.

(In fact, they can afford to balance every ecological activist with four starving children. I think not even Greta Thunberg would be able to compete against that.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 hours ago, Scotty said:

Probably because it'd cost just as much money to have the National Guard use their equipment as it would to just replace all the pipes.

It would not be cheap, nor would it be a long term solution, but it would prevent people from getting sick now.

If cost is a factor, they should not have been so penny wise, pound foolish to begin with.

 

18 hours ago, ijuin said:

... especially if they WANT to join the Nuclear Weapons Club.

Once there is a club, everyone wants to join.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm not so sure Canada's deserts would be that usable, ...

Any particular reason?

Plenty of smaller countries have considerable arid land that could do this as well.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Battery technology is dead end.

I thought so over thirty years ago, yet it keeps improving. I suppose it's got to hit a wall eventually.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm not sure that article is germane. (Very nice article, by the way.) That relates to the lithium content of a star, which is not available either way.

A similar point, lithium burning is one of the easiest (lowest temperature) forms of fusion, so it tends to get consumed.

 

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The best thing we currently have for storing big amount of energy are Pumped hydroelectric energy storages. However, they tend to occupy quite a lot of place and they need water, which is considered scarce in lot of places. See some more info. Also, just noticed they have nice graph there ...

   < snipped awesome chart, available on hkmaly's original post >

... yeah.

Again: that's something which I believe to have more potential than solar. At least until we will have technology to build solar power plant on orbit with area similar to Moon, and then get that energy down to Earth. (Which, BTW, would be another political nightmare: anything capable of getting such amount of energy down to Earth will be more dangerous than most nuclear weapons - you only need to change aim.)

I consider good news - well, "news", there is nothing new about it - that India is researching thorium reactors heavily. I believe they will be much less affected by both bureaucracy and ecological activists than Europe or US, and they don't have enough uranium for more traditional nuclear reactors so their options are limited.

(In fact, they can afford to balance every ecological activist with four starving children. I think not even Greta Thunberg would be able to compete against that.)

Wind still has much potential to be further exploited.

Hydro has been pretty well tapped out; it's an older technology, so has had time to be more or less fully exploited. New hydro comes at the expense of sacrifices of land. Maintaining existing hydro infrastructure is on the other hand, something that needs some attention.

Solar had much additional potential, but there are limitations. If I recall correctly, the panels have key ingredients that may be a bottleneck.

There is a lot of available energy in geothermal, but the water becomes very corrosive. Geothermal is still in its technical infancy. I suspect cost cripples it. It would actually be useful to siphon off energy from geothermally active sites, to mitigate future eruptions.

Space based power would be nice, and I agree, politically difficult.

If we're going to reduce the use of fossil fuels, that leaves nuclear to take up the slack.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
40 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm not so sure Canada's deserts would be that usable, ...

Any particular reason?

Plenty of smaller countries have considerable arid land that could do this as well.

Latitude.

41 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:
3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Battery technology is dead end.

I thought so over thirty years ago, yet it keeps improving. I suppose it's got to hit a wall eventually.

Well, other people thirty years ago though fossil fuels will be already consumed at this point. It doesn't mean the supply is infinite.

45 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Wind still has much potential to be further exploited.

45 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

New hydro comes at the expense of sacrifices of land.

Did you SAW a wind turbine? Not pretty. Birds also don't like them.

46 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Solar had much additional potential, but there are limitations. If I recall correctly, the panels have key ingredients that may be a bottleneck.

Yes, there's that as well.

47 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

There is a lot of available energy in geothermal, but the water becomes very corrosive. Geothermal is still in its technical infancy. I suspect cost cripples it. It would actually be useful to siphon off energy from geothermally active sites, to mitigate future eruptions.

That sounds nice, but lava is really not easy stuff to work with. Problem is that we can basically use just narrow range of sources which are neither too hot nor too cold.

Also, I wonder if sometime in future we manage to create some issue with wind, geothermal, tidal or something like that which would be even worse than current climate change. We don't know how Earth works as well as we think. Current geothermal projects tends to raise the instability (cause more earthquakes etc) instead of having calming effect ...

52 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

If we're going to reduce the use of fossil fuels, that leaves nuclear to take up the slack.

Definitely. It's true that there are other options with potential, but that potential would take time to develop. Nuclear energy is already here. Even those new ideas for reactors are in better shape than the idea of getting energy from geothermally very active sites like volcanoes. I would say that's comparable to where fusion is.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Did you SAW a wind turbine? Not pretty. Birds also don't like them.

I drove across Kansas many years ago; it was flat farmland. I drove across a couple of years ago, and there were hundreds of huge wind turbines. They were definitely not a picturesque as old time windmills. Huge, looming objects, hard to get a handle on how large, too large to get a good sense of comparison. They were rotating slowly, and I'd imagine even with that, the tips were moving at high velocity. I saw a parked set of railroad cars with some replacement blades; a single blade spanned a bit less than two railroad cars long. I'd estimate that the diameter of the spinning blades was roughly one hundred feet, so something like thirty meters.

If I had to rate these for visual appeal, the fair comparison would be vs nuclear plant with it's cooling towers, fossil plant with smoke plumes, a solar farm, and a hydroelectric plant. Hands down, the smoke plumes are the worst. I've lived in a steel mill town pre-environmental concerns, and intense industrial smoke will forever bring back bad memories. The cooling towers look worse, but it's easy to remember that's steam, not smoke.

I'm not sure if you mean the turbine merely bother the bird, but they do kill birds, just like highways kill other wildlife. Said wildlife does not appear to be getting much smarter about highways, maybe it's too soon. I suppose birds will have similar issues.

With the low rotational speeds and massive architecture, there must be some incredible infrasonics going on. I wonder what effect that has.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Did you SAW a wind turbine? Not pretty.

That's a matter of opinion. I've been to see some wind turbines in my area, and I thought they looked rather elegant (not to mention really impressive in their scale when you got close to them).

Mind you, I've heard plenty of complaints about them being "eyesores" and I can't recall anyone else defending their looks, so my opinion may be the minority.

The issue of the danger to birds on the other hand, is something I'm concerned about. I wonder if some way could be developed to warn birds away from them?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

If I had to rate these for visual appeal, the fair comparison would be vs nuclear plant with it's cooling towers, fossil plant with smoke plumes, a solar farm, and a hydroelectric plant. Hands down, the smoke plumes are the worst. I've lived in a steel mill town pre-environmental concerns, and intense industrial smoke will forever bring back bad memories. The cooling towers look worse, but it's easy to remember that's steam, not smoke.

Remember that you need to compare the visual per gigawatt. Even if not, however, I don't think the cooling towers look worse ... might depend on weather. Yes I agree that the smoke plumes of fossil plants are worst, and in addition to that they SMELL worst ... actually, they are the only option of generating energy which is detectable by smell.

Now, hydroelectric plant may easily look as normal lake, with everything suggesting it's not hidden underground.

... I read that solar farm can also easily look as normal lake and birds are very surprised they can't drink from it nor rest on the surface.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I'm not sure if you mean the turbine merely bother the bird, but they do kill birds, just like highways kill other wildlife. Said wildlife does not appear to be getting much smarter about highways, maybe it's too soon. I suppose birds will have similar issues.

7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

The issue of the danger to birds on the other hand, is something I'm concerned about. I wonder if some way could be developed to warn birds away from them?

The "don't like them" was attempt to make comical understatement.
I think the problem is that it's not similar to any danger they evolved to avoid. It's permanent, so it's not like storm, and it's big area. It's similar to the reason why highways kill wildlife: the cars move TOO FAST. If predator moves towards you this fast, you can give up already, there's nothing you can do. They are not capable to realize that the car will stay on that narrow strip of stone and won't follow them out of it.

... I wonder if it would be possible to program avoiding cars / turbines using genetic engineering. But I suppose that's even more in future than the fusion plants.

15 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

With the low rotational speeds and massive architecture, there must be some incredible infrasonics going on. I wonder what effect that has.

I suppose noone knows.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I think the problem is that it's not similar to any danger they evolved to avoid. It's permanent, so it's not like storm, and it's big area. It's similar to the reason why highways kill wildlife: the cars move TOO FAST. If predator moves towards you this fast, you can give up already, there's nothing you can do. They are not capable to realize that the car will stay on that narrow strip of stone and won't follow them out of it.

Deer seem to have calendar technology, they disappear during hunting season. Does wildlife avoid railroad tracks? Rails have been around a good hundred years or more longer than highways.

Honestly, the drivers do not learn much faster. A collision with a deer is usually expensive, even a smallish mammal can mess up your suspension and steering. It generally takes some hits and some expense before drivers learn to respect the potential presence of wildlife at night.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
43 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Deer seem to have calendar technology, they disappear during hunting season.

The hunting season was not selected randomly, and yes deer have quite good integrated calendar telling them when the mating season starts.

43 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Does wildlife avoid railroad tracks? Rails have been around a good hundred years or more longer than highways.

Not in Sweden, at least. Despite the fact that trains have no ability to dodge and can't change speed fast enough to matter. In most cases, train can't stop before hitting animal unless you drop two or three tanks into the way.

43 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Honestly, the drivers do not learn much faster. A collision with a deer is usually expensive, even a smallish mammal can mess up your suspension and steering. It generally takes some hits and some expense before drivers learn to respect the potential presence of wildlife at night.

It's hard to learn without experience. Drivers generally believe their car is more sturdy that it is and that deer in night is more visible than it is, until personal experience convince them otherwise.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Rail vehicles also have devices attached to their fronts which we in USA call "cowcatchers"--basically like a snowplow that pushes wildlife and other track obstructions off the track. It doesn't save the animals from being killed by the impact, but it saves the vehicle from being damaged.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
37 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Rail vehicles also have devices attached to their fronts which we in USA call "cowcatchers"--basically like a snowplow that pushes wildlife and other track obstructions off the track. It doesn't save the animals from being killed by the impact, but it saves the vehicle from being damaged.

True and at back in the day they were a large feature of early steam locomotives, the classic big driver wheel Civil War locos and on into the prairie crossing era. at the time, free range and wild stock, especially bison, crossing the rails was not uncommon. I suppose that was part of the motivation for the massacre of the bison.

But surely you've noticed that over the years, the cowcatcher got much smaller, and on a modern diesel, there is no cowcatcher per se. The metal enclosure is massive, you can tell from the light damage to the train when one hits a vehicle. And the locomotive needs mass to do it's job, more weight is better, to a point.

Cowcatchers had an open construction, not a solid wedge, although you could probably search and find a counterexample. Actual snowplows are always solid, not mesh, and range from small, about the size of a cowcatcher, for regions with light snow, to massive plows, often on the front end of a separate plow car (I had photos of a beautiful old time wooden one that my ex managed to loose), to rotary snow throwers. All locomotives past some very early stage of development carry sand that the engineer can release onto the tracks for traction; one of the domes on steam locos is the sand dome. The train passing will heat the rails well past the melting point of any ice.

The point of the comment, re: birds and turbines, deer and highways, cattle and trains, is that life will evolve to fit the environment. It happens fairly fast, but maybe not so much in a hundred years or two. I think mitigating the cattle on the tracks is the expense to cattle ranchers and subsequent building of adequate fencing to contain the cattle. Those cattle blocking tube steel entryways for ranch fields would be worthless if the cattle could easily go around them. Birds are pretty smart, maybe they'll learn faster than deer.

OTOH, it's obvious squirrels do not understand electricity. They conduct numerous experiments (conduct, chuckle) and yet keep getting themselves fried.

 

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
3 hours ago, ijuin said:

Rail vehicles also have devices attached to their fronts which we in USA call "cowcatchers"--basically like a snowplow that pushes wildlife and other track obstructions off the track. It doesn't save the animals from being killed by the impact, but it saves the vehicle from being damaged.

True and at back in the day they were a large feature of early steam locomotives, the classic big driver wheel Civil War locos and on into the prairie crossing era. at the time, free range and wild stock, especially bison, crossing the rails was not uncommon. I suppose that was part of the motivation for the massacre of the bison.

But surely you've noticed that over the years, the cowcatcher got much smaller, and on a modern diesel, there is no cowcatcher per se.

I would suspect that the effectiveness of cowcatcher is diminished with higher speed of train. I wouldn't be surprised that if train hit cow in 300kmh/160mph, the cow will be thrown hundreds of meters away.

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The point of the comment, re: birds and turbines, deer and highways, cattle and trains, is that life will evolve to fit the environment.

Life will adapt, which may include some evolution, but also extinction of animals who were not able to evolve fast enough.

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

It happens fairly fast, but maybe not so much in a hundred years or two.

Thousands or ten thousands of years is more likely estimate for animals who need multiple years for single generation. Evolution is definitely not fast.

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Birds are pretty smart, maybe they'll learn faster than deer.

... also, they mature faster.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I would suspect that the effectiveness of cowcatcher is diminished with higher speed of train. I wouldn't be surprised that if train hit cow in 300kmh/160mph, the cow will be thrown hundreds of meters away.

 

Cowcatchers are made to protect the train from damage, not to protect the cows.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
19 hours ago, ijuin said:
19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I would suspect that the effectiveness of cowcatcher is diminished with higher speed of train. I wouldn't be surprised that if train hit cow in 300kmh/160mph, the cow will be thrown hundreds of meters away.

Cowcatchers are made to protect the train from damage, not to protect the cows.

Most of locomotive doesn't need protecting. Cowcatcher is device mounted at the front of a locomotive SPECIFICALLY to deflect obstacles (like cows) on the track that might otherwise get between the wheels and the rail and therefore derail the train.

If the cow hit by train is thrown away, it can't end up on rails.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
32 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Most of locomotive doesn't need protecting. Cowcatcher is device mounted at the front of a locomotive SPECIFICALLY to deflect obstacles (like cows) on the track that might otherwise get between the wheels and the rail and therefore derail the train.

If the cow hit by train is thrown away, it can't end up on rails.

I'm pretty sure that's what ijuin meant by protecting the train from damage. Cus a train is likely to suffer quite a bit of damage if it got derailed.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Scotty said:

I'm pretty sure that's what ijuin meant by protecting the train from damage. Cus a train is likely to suffer quite a bit of damage if it got derailed.

That's true, but I wanted to explicitly mention the mechanism because it explains that the reason traditional cowcatcher is no longer needed on high-speed trains may not be related to probability of collision.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That's true, but I wanted to explicitly mention the mechanism because it explains that the reason traditional cowcatcher is no longer needed on high-speed trains may not be related to probability of collision.

They may not have the traditional style cowcatchers anymore, but most trains have a form of plow blade that still does the job of clearing debris and stuff off the tracks.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, Scotty said:

They may not have the traditional style cowcatchers anymore, but most trains have a form of plow blade that still does the job of clearing debris and stuff off the tracks.

Hard to say ; it's definitely not true that ALL trains would have, and it would need expert in field to say if "most" do or if, for example, this is difference between trains in Europe and US.

Compared to old steam locomotives, what ALL trains seem to have is something in front of wheels ; for steam locomotive the cowcatcher might be only thing in front of wheels, while modern locomotives usually have wheels partially inside the main body of train. But seems it's not always "plow-shaped", that sometimes it would direct the debris under the train which seem counterproductive ...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now