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[Ampersand]

Well, Diamod is pure carbon, no hydrogen bonded to it. If you look at industrial diamond, it's not nearly as impressive.

Rubies however, aren't even made out of carbon. Actually, they don't even contain any carbon. They're made of Aluminum Oxide, or Al2O3, making them mostly Oxygen, made red with the addition of Chromium. Sapphires are the same, except with different levels of chromium and other metals.

[Virex]

I hate to admit it, but for the moment, probably the safest route to go is natural gas.

There is no real difference between Oil, Coal, and Natrual Gas. They are all hydrogen atoms bonded to carbon attoms. The difference is in the ratio of carbon to hydrogen: Coal has more carbon atoms per hydrogen atom, Oil has roughly twice as many hyrogen atoms, and natural gas has at least four times as many hydrogen atoms than carbon atoms.

If it isn't obvious, the power we get from burning coal, oil, and natural gas does not come from burning the carbon, it comes from burning the hydrogen. The most efficient and cleanest burning fuel is Hydrogen, but it is not efficient to extract it from water. Fortunately, we have many gigawatts raining down from the heavens at any given moment that we've yet to put to any useful work.

You're forgetting one thing: Coal, oil and natural gass arn't purely carbon compounds.
Natural gass is nearly pure light carbon compounds, with a light amount of sulfuric and nitric compounds added in (this amount is usualy neglegible)
Oil is meium and heavy carbon compounds mixed with a nice amount of sulfur containing compounds and maybe some nitrogen compounds.
Coal's a mix of pure carbon types, carbon compounds, sulfur compounds and heavy metals.

So yeah, there's a big difference between coal and natural gas, since when you burnt he coall you get a LOT of side products that are usseles, toxic and generaly anoying. When burning gas you get pretty much only water and carbon dioxide (and maybe a bit of sulphuric oxide but that's easely removed with a gas scrubber)

As for the different types of carbon, Graphite, amorphous carbon and diamond are all carbon but their cristal latices differ quite a bit (Complete chaos for amorphous carbon, sheet like for graphite and fused pyramids for diamond) and this gives them wildly different properties.

[Eidalac]

Hrm.

I so want to build a lake of coal sludge in DF...


OT...


Meh, people are stupid.

Every form of energy generation we have or know of has some type of byproduct that is Bad, and we never have any real way to deal with the stuff.

I never did understand the big issue people have with the spent rods from nuclear plants.  Sure, rads is badz, but at least they are solid, discreet matter.  Stuff like this lack-o-coal-death?  Not much easier to deal with, and not a whole lot healthier, al-be-it in a different way.

[sneakey pete]

I like how Sneakey Pete says that all that's needed is more inspections when, as the articles, I think even the ones I linked to, pointed out that there were MANY inspections over the course of the past few years of this very same dump that pointed out massive problems, leaking sludge, poorly constructed levies to hold the sludge, and other problems that inevitably led to this disaster.

Yet, they let it go. It's like George Bush saying that no one anticipated the breaking of the Levies in New Orleans when we have video recordings of him sitting in a meeting days earlier with people telling him the levies might break.

Well true, inspections are useless unless they are acted upon. I guess I should have said "better inspections". My point still stands. It isn't matter of when, its a matter of if.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Most coal generally contains C-12, since most of the C-14 has decayed over the 150 million years or so in the ground.
However, that doesn't mean that other radioactive junk isn't sitting in there.

[Zironic]

Coal, being carbon, is radioactive.  Mildly so, but more than most stuff.  Coal dust and sludge is a bit more radioactive, because of the whole particulate thing and some factor of it's processing.  Still much ado about nothing, compared to the plain old chemical toxicity of the mess.

Scientists have discovered over time, that burning coal releases radioactive isotopes and such. This adds up over time. My scientist used as a description of why nuclear fission - highly controlled and managed, is more useful and beneficial than coal burning. Because the radioactive isotopes go into the air. Radioactive nuclear powerplant waste is solid and much more easy to contain ( relatively, finding a place to put it is hard. My history teacher suggested lower the entire state of nevada 10 feet, and place it all there. His reasoning: It's already a wasteland.)

[JoshuaFH]

How does he plan to lower the state of Nevada 10 feet?

[bjlong]

As before, I throw in my hat with nuclear power as well as recycling the fuel, which would get rid of the "where do we store these heavily radioactive isotopes?" problem.

Seems more and more places are being told that they have massive building problems, and noone's doing anything about it. I almost hope there's a depression soon, so that we can organize CCC like brigades of fixing America's shit.

[Leafsnail]

None of the options for storing isotopes look great, to be honest.  I mean, we could store them underwater, or underground, but that could leach out and cause damage.  I did see someone who suggested they should be fired off into space, but this is currently prohibitively expensive.

[Ampersand]

I remember discussion about storing nuclear waste under a mountain in Nevada, or something like that. One of the primary concerns was the possibility of people getting into the facility in the future. And I don't mean like next week. They have to make warning signs at the entrance of the facility that people will understand for the next ten thousand years or so. It's kind of awesome when you think about it.

[JoshuaFH]

What do you think of throwing all of our waste into the sun?

[Leafsnail]

They could do it Indiana Jones style and put down lots of non lethal traps to stop people from getting in.

Of course, if in 9000 years time someone manages to get past all these traps, they may be dissapointed...

[cowofdoom78963]

What do you think of throwing all of our waste into the sun?

What a waste.

[Osmosis Jones]

What do you think of throwing all of our waste into the sun?

Until we have non-rocketry based methods of leaving earth's atmosphere, pure fiction. If we had a giant coilgun however...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...it's still ridiculously expensive, but cool enough to be worth it.

I remember discussion about storing nuclear waste under a mountain in Nevada, or something like that. One of the primary concerns was the possibility of people getting into the facility in the future. And I don't mean like next week. They have to make warning signs at the entrance of the facility that people will understand for the next ten thousand years or so. It's kind of awesome when you think about it.

The hilarious thing was the idea that, if they make a huge monolith covered in pictographs of people wasting away and dying, future archaeologists would probably be more inclined to dig it up, just to see what the fuss was about.

[Leafsnail]

There is a theoretical way of taking stuff up to space with almost no energy - a space elevator.  Unfortunately a) it would take a huge amount of energy to start and b) we don't have any rope even remotely strong enough for it.

Still, the idea of a geostationary satellite with a rope threaded through it that takes one thing up into space and uses a counterbalance to avoid using much energy is too awesome to resist.