How Green is Herhof?

topgold

I'm wondering if there's anyone who knows how unfriendly the stabilate is that comes from Herhof incinerators? I'm getting some emails from people following some blogged comments I made [1] about the proposed Lusk incinerator.

The residents behind http://www.luskpeople.com don't care for shouldering yet another waste problem from the Dublin area and some think the planning process has violated the statutory review time period. They lashed out at Treasury Holdings, the property developer, by hijacking the www.treasuryholdings.com domain name. That earned a few column inches of coverage. [2] [3] [4].

I remember listening to a Three Mile Island briefing before it was more than a speck on a map. Nobody in the audience thought to ask what becomes of the spent rods. The utility won gold stars from the attendees for its comprehensive explanation of nuclear safety standards. Although incinerators don't produce nuclear waste, the super-incinerated residue is difficult to scrub. So where does it go? Into the bog?

wondering in Kilkenny
Bernie Goldbach


[1] http://www.topgold.com/blog/2002/05/18.html
[2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25340.html
[3] http://www.thepost.ie/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-46371
[4] http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/finance/2002/0518/1373588294BZTREASURY.html

stackboundary

As far as I am aware, the idea behind an incinerator is that you take a pile of refuse of mass x and reduce it to roughly 30% of it's previous mass.

Then this highly toxic byproduct that has high traces of substances such as cersote and other highly toxic and or carcinogenic compounds is typically buried in landfill.

'Modern' incinerators are meant to produce 'less' (read 'safe') amounts of byproducts such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide (contributory subsctances in acid rain) and cerosotes (recently dumped in Waterford bay), but I would suggest that this is a highly subjective definition of 'safe' as 'old' incinerators were also meant to be 'safe', and this assertion was found not to be the case.

You say tomato I say tomatoe, in any case recycling is by far the ecologically concious choice to waste disposal, incinerators work to reduce the mass of what gets put into landfill, nothing more, no matter how much big brother government droids attempt to sell incinerators demagogicaly as a pseudo environmentally friendly solution to waste disposal.

Yes it does dispose of waste and reduces the mass of what gets put in landfill, no, it is by no means an environmental solution to waste disposal.

Now choke yourself