abranscombe

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23 April 2014

Proposed seawater-based air conditioning could benefit farmers

Discharged seawater pumped from the ocean and used for a renewable air conditioning system would overload surface waters with minerals that could potentially be captured instead for use in agriculture, according to a noted oceanographer.

Cutting back on refrigerants could drop greenhouse gas emissions

Research published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, calculates the environmental impact of phasing down hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, under the Montreal Protocol. The landmark 1987 agreement phased out the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants, like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), leading to increased used of replacements that include HFCs.

Nuclear waste: Goodbye ‘til 1,002,014?

There are so many ways that repositories for canisters of nuclear waste can leak that at least one country, Sweden, is engineering the canisters themselves to last a million years. In general, however, the integrity of nuclear waste repositories depends on a host of geologic factors, Jean Bahr, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said at a briefing earlier this month on Capitol Hill.