Incinerators, the hidden truths
Antoine Lavoisier was 46 years old when, in 1789, he published his Traité de Elémentaire Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry). A treaty that opened the doors of modern chemistry and holds one of the most important laws on which it based research: the law of conservation of mass. Some of you may remember her from the studies of high school, maybe others will have heard in some scientific transmission; at Palazzo Chigi in Lavoisier not seem to have never heard about.
long our politicians speak of "energy plants", a term that does not exist in both the technical jargon in the same language is Italian, who had taken by force of circumstances, there being a public debate in Italy between the different opinions in the game. Even in these days, while hardly trying to bring the situation back to normal Naples, the buffalo is revived as a solution. Incinerators - let's call them by their real name - follow the same laws of chemistry of all other processes in nature, reducing the volume of waste for combustion entered a modified chemical composition, but not the mass. Nothing is created nor destroyed, but everything changes.
inauguration of Acerra incinerator, Mr Berlusconi called him "a gift of God", an innovative technology adopted from around Italy that "the polluter as two mid-sized car placed at 110 meters high. "
The truth, as often happens with respect to the statements of our politicians, is quite another. The Acerra plant is far from a wonder of technology: the energy produced, only one quarter is used to produce electricity. The excess heat could be recovered for district heating, is disposed in the air and water, further contributing to lower production efficiency, unlike the statements by some politicians. The electricity produced very little, partly absorbed by the plant for its operation, is encouraged beyond measure with funds from the Cip6, for the paper on renewable energy sources, whose 92% - more than 2.5 billion € per year - is instead done to enrich the companies that built incinerators.
At a low energy efficiency is added to the extreme danger of waste products. In the Acerra plant should only be processed 81.21 tons of solid waste per hour, which have been deleted (unless you dispose of the same ecoballe Fibe, plant construction company, has produced for years illegally) the so-called " wet fraction ". In essence, the calorific value that allows the partial recovery of energy is mainly based on materiali come plastica, legno e carta, ampiamente riciclabili e dalle quali si potrebbe risparmiare fino a 7 volte l’energia impiegata per produrne di nuove e allo stesso tempo dare un serio apporto all’occupazione, visto l’indotto che si crea intorno alla filiera del riciclaggio.
Tuttavia, non si tratta unicamente di un problema energetico. In uscita dall’impianto, tra scorie provenienti dalla camera di combustione e dalle ceneri ottenute dal trattamento dei fumi, escono circa 21 tonnellate di rifiuti speciali, il cui smaltimento resta un compito difficile, generalmente affidato ad impianti di stoccaggio dedicati. Il problema di eliminare le discariche, quindi, è solo ridotto al costo di un aumento della tossicità del waste to be stored.
The hundreds of different materials that are combusted in the plant include heavy metals and chlorine - to name a few - which inevitably emerges from the chimney, often by binding chemically away from monitoring stations to create toxic compounds in humans and bioaccumulative (eg . dioxins) or reduced in size so small as to deceive the sensors provided by law (nanopowders), but enough to overcome our ematocerebrale barrier and cause an increased incidence of diseases oncogene.
It is about 65 tons per hour, should be added reagents placed in treatment, to about 80 tons per hour of various compounds nature emitted into the atmosphere, which then fall on the ground of an area estimated at several hundred square kilometers. Despite the certainty of science, the strategy to address the issue of waste in Italy is always the same: the pivotal role assigned to the incinerators of the solution, open some new landfill with the excuse of emergency declarations and empty trumpeting the importance of collecting differentiated within the loop.
is a pity that the Italian law - in particular the Decree Law 152/06 and 296/06 - and the European directives to the contrary, requiring a recycling quota of 60% this year. To date, however, only 25 provinces can exceed the quota of 40%. Campania and Lazio are the tail lights between the regions, with just over 10% and does not enjoy the best locations in Sicily: Palermo and Messina did not reach the 5%, saturating landfills should be designed to accept only a small percentage. San Francisco, where the population gathers to Naples and Rome put together, has recently exceeded 75% of the collection, doubling the share in a few months by collecting door to door.
But recycling is the enemy of the incinerators, because it deprives them of their raw material, such as heat, depleting the urban waste and making it inconvenient energy recovery, even in the presence of funds Cip6. The statements of politicians praising a journey that required use both, starting with the construction of incineration plants, shows a clear ignorance of simple principles of physics and chemistry, or worse, bad faith in the planning of waste management.
Italy persists in adopting technologies obsolete and unsustainable, which perfectly reflect the character at the end of its ruling class. Absence of long-term planning, widespread ignorance and corruption may be the true waste to be disposed sit in Parliament
28/02/2011 - The Editorial Board of Metropolis, on behalf of all my colleagues who make up the structure, expressed deep disdain for the vulgar and violent attack suffered by the journalist Fabio Colombo this afternoon, the newspaper reporter, engaged in its work of Sant'Egidio Montalbino. Once again we must acknowledge with regret that information workers are left in the hands of people who, to vent their power, they have nothing better to do than blame those who do just their job. 