Read that Soft Coal delivers radioactive material from Thorium.
Hard Coal is free of the material.
Years ago the fly ash and SO2 and CO2 was abated - the latter the least.
Massive scrubbers where put into place.
Look at the Tenn. valley - you can see the mountains now. In the early 70's
you could not see much beyond the road system - e.g. 2-300 feet.
Martin [ once a consultant in Utility Load Management ]
Gary Coffman wrote:
On 23 Jul 2004 12:08:49 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Roger Shoaf says...
Myself I am not worried about 1 or 2 zoomies, I worry more about all of the
zoomies released from the tons of radioactive material released by burning
coal. this exposes the population to a lot more than 1 or 2 zoomies, it is
probably killing hundreds or thousands of folks per year from there
continued exposure.
Sounds like you have a near-religious hatred of coal-burning
power plants. Doesn't this get in the way of a rational discussion?
I think he is just being rational. Coal fired plant was the best technology
we had 100 years ago, but today we have a much better alternative
which doesn't *routinely* spew all those nasties into the air.
The radioactive emissions of coal fired plant are the least of the nasties
emitted. Megatons of CO2, SO2, fly ash, etc are also *routinely* emitted
by coal fired plants. Then there is the environmental damage caused by
mining all the coal, disposing of the ash, etc. It is a very dirty way to
generate electricity. It has very real health and environmental consequences
that we're suffering *routinely* every day.
Burning oil or gas instead gets rid of the ash problem, but everything else
is the same. You're still releasing megatons of CO2, you're still releasing
radioactive particulates into the atmosphere (not quite so much, but still
some), etc. Adding insult to injury, we don't have nearly as much oil and
gas as we have coal, so at best burning them is only a temporary expedient.
(And besides, we have more important uses for oil and gas as transport
fuels. We really have no viable alternatives there until we have enough
excess capacity non-fossil fuel generated electric power to allow us to
produce hydrogen as a transport fuel, or to electrify our roadways.)
Long term, we have to have a better way to generate electricity. Fortunately,
we already have such a technology, nuclear power. It emits *zero* CO2,
*zero* SO2, no fly ash, the volume of mining activity is *several* orders of
magnitude less, etc.
In normal routine operation, the amount of radioactivity released to the
environment is truly negligible. It is true that there is a *possibility* of
catastrophic accident. But western designed reactors have many safeguards
and passive protection systems to prevent uncontrolled radioactive releases.
Our Fermi plant had a core meltdown, an experimental reactor at the Idaho
test lab had a steam explosion which blew off the top cap, TMI had a partial
core melt. *None* of them released significant amounts of radioactivity to
the environment. That's because our passive engineering safeguards *work*.
Unlike the Soviets, we do *not* design commercial power reactors with
positive void coefficients, and we do *not* house them in tin roofed
buildings. But even if we did, a Chernobyl style accident has health and
environmental consequences no greater than what we *routinely* suffer
globally every day due to the *routine* operations of coal fired electric
plants (measured in terms of global premature deaths per kWe generated).
If people behaved rationally (unfortunately too many do not), they'd be
storming the barricades to shut down fossil fuel fired plants, and demanding
that they be replaced by safer, cleaner, and more economical nuclear
power plants.
Global energy demand is rising every day. There's no viable way of stopping
that rise without requiring billions of people to die. We've long passed the
point where the global population can survive as hunter-gatherers or subsistence
farmers. Most of the people alive today would not be here if we did not have
a high energy civilization. Which members of *your* family are you willing to
see die in order to reduce our energy demand?
Conservation is not an answer, it is a death sentence. We *must* have
gigawatts of power to support a global population. Coal is too dirty. Oil
and gas will soon (40 to 200 years) run out as a cheap alternative. Hydro
is nearly fully tapped. Wind and geothermal are limited in *practical*
application to less than 5% of demand. Biofuels require a fossil fuel
subsidy to be economically viable. Etc.
There really is only one long term choice to meet our base load demand,
nuclear power. We need to accept this, and embrace it. The sooner the
better. We don't have a lot of time. Within the lifetimes of some of the
people here, we won't have any alternatives. When the oil and gas crash
comes, it will be relatively sudden (over a period of no more than a couple
of years oil and gas will go from expensive but affordable to simply not
enough to go around).
We must start preparing now, because when the crunch comes, there may
not be enough time or resources to build the necessary nuclear plants and
support infrastructure. Our civilization may find itself in a death spiral from
which it cannot recover.
Gary
--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder