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Toxic waste

Taking the mountain to...
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Where a country does not have a toxic waste disposal plant it will pack up it's nasty filth, put it on a boat and send it to a country where there are the facilities to process it (or Nigeria, which ever is cheaper/easier (to get away with)). This obviously involves quite a bit of risk to the oceans. Once I had a look around a toxic waste processing plant (which basically burn the stuff at very high temperatures) and, in betwen challenging the guide to tell me the function of random pipes (there were lots), I found out that one of the safety measures at such plants (apart from having a huge sump beneath the whole plant to catch any umska lost in a leak) is that there are no pipes running in or out of the plant to make accidental leaks into other systems impossible. The idea I had at the time, and which I now present for your comments, is why not stick the whole thing on the back of a boat and transport the waste processing plant across the oceans to where the waste is? The boat/ship could be drydocked, process the waste, scrub up and go somewhere else.
Mony a Mickle, Nov 12 2008

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       sorry...newbie
Mony a Mickle, Nov 12 2008
  

       Welcome to the 'bakery Mony! I like - a mobile waste processing facility makes kind of sense, it makes me think of a sort of Tarkus/Aquatarkus type thing.
zen_tom, Nov 12 2008
  

       Thanks. I was thinking that it could have domestic waste processor on board too to turn local rubbish into fuel pellets to supplement the fuel needed to process the toxic stuff.
Mony a Mickle, Nov 12 2008
  

       Can't pay, won't pay ........ ?
8th of 7, Nov 12 2008
  

       Why not stick it on the front of a boat?
daseva, Nov 12 2008
  

       ....vaguely recall the portable part being baked for contaminated soil reclamation, but the ship idea's a new one.
FlyingToaster, Nov 12 2008
  

       // If the country can't afford to destroy its own toxic waste how will it pay to have someone else do it for them?//   

       Nigeria gets around 40 million dollars a day from it's oil revenue. It also gets money from 'storing' other countries' toxic waste. Sooo...   

       Get the EU to pay for it
Mony a Mickle, Nov 13 2008
  

       Most hazardous waste is hazardous because it contains a metal like mercury, cadmium, chrome VI, lead, etc. Incinerating this kind of waste will just release the metals into the atmosphere. This is a bad thing.   

       As I understand it, most of the waste that gets incinerated is not classed as hazardous - it's mostly stuff like household scraps, plastics and oils. (The exception is medical waste, which is definitely hazardous).   

       So incineration is not a good way to deal with most of the waste you are talking about.
FishFinger, Nov 13 2008
  

       The idea is not to edit the current toxic waste processing methods. These are already well understood. The idea is to put a processing plant on a boat.
Mony a Mickle, Nov 13 2008
  

       Contrast with [UnaBubba]'s recycling whale, and I think it's not too dissimilar in that it recognises the issue that often the waste is in an entirely different place to the facilities capable of processing it.
zen_tom, Nov 13 2008
  
      
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