From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 16:38:39 MDT
Damien Sullivan wrote:
> claims coal in fact dumps more radioactive material into the environment, due
> to uranium and thorium in the coal. And
Nevermind the vanadium. Or sulfur, arsenic, or thallium, or another random crapola,
depending on where it's mined.
> http://www.epa.gov/radiation/students/calculate.html
> an EPA background radiation calculator, has coal plants contributing 3x as
> much radiation as a nuclear plant.
All very well, but you may observe that the Chernobyl reactor -- that a
scant a few MCurie that it dumped into its *immediate* surrounding, nevermind
that the coal plants in the western hemisphere might have dumped more in the
course of the last decade -- did in fact roast quite a few people, literally
so. And caused some 10 km zone around the reactor to become uninhabitable,
literally so. Which would be interesting to compute in raw $$$s if it
did happen somewhere in Holland, or in Germany somewhere around Ruhr.
And of course this doesn't address the issue of uranium ore mining, the issue
of trace radioactivity release due in course of normal operation, the
occasional core gone China, etc.
In other words, it's propaganda. And of course burning coal with
filtered (all modern plants are filtered, whatever Chine does is
their problem entirely) exhaust releases less, and of course
burning oil releases even less, and of course burning methane in gas
turbines releases even less, and of course metabilizing methane in
fuel cells releases essentially zilch, so please allow me a polite
guffaw, while I go pour another cold one.
> It would seem that logically an acceptable disposal of nuclear waste would be
> to grind it up fine and spew it in the atmosphere, or dump it where we dump
> coal fly ash. Which the ORNL page says is actually a good source of
Logically, the acceptable disposal of nuclear waste would seem to
vitrify it into appropriate borosilicate glass pearls, and put it deep down
below in a suitable place, where it takes the slow shuttle to the mantle,
before resurfacing several (ten) MYears downstream.
> fissionables, and not very guarded...
Just as is Joachimstal pitchblende. They must cover the coal ash lest
it gets wet, then we've got rain water moderating it, and the whole
ash heap goes supercritical, blows, and dumps radioisotopes into the
winds, oh my.
ORNL saith so? So it must be true, I guess.
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