Coal is dirty, gets almost a billion dollars from "the GubMint"

[txlibdem]

Here are the top 10 reasons why coal is the dirtiest, most harmful energy source ever:

http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/the-coal-hard-facts

...

[PDJane]

1. You mean like the mercury in freshwater fish,

and the heavy metals in the drinking water, and the arsenic all over the place, and the black lung, and .......

[TheWraith]

2. And the uranium and thorium...

Most people don't know that coal plants pump uranium and thorium directly into the air, from the coal they burn. Only trace amounts, but "trace amounts" are enough to add up to 2,000 tons a year.

[txlibdem]

3. I think that figure is for the US only

Worldwide, that is close to the amount of nuclear reactor fuel, Uranium-235 (a natural component of coal too), that oozes out into the environment from coal plants worldwide.

Why are some folks jumping up and down about nuclear power when there is more radiation coming from coal each year, and coal doesn't do a single thing to contain it: just out into the air through the smokestack or dumped into open pits. Imagine if a nuclear power plant announced that they were going to dump their least radioactive waste out onto the ground. What would be the public reaction...

[kristopher]

4. Perhaps you forgot that it was explained to you here

struggle4progress wrote on Mon May-02-11 at 03:50 PM in this thread you started on the same topic: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x292136

S4P: post 107. Here's Gabbard's estimated global total radioactivity release from coal, 1937 - 2040:
... Thus, by combining U.S. coal combustion from 1937 (440 million tons) through 1987 (661 million tons) with an estimated total in the year 2040 (2516 million tons), the total expected U.S. radioactivity release to the environment by 2040 can be determined. That total comes from the expected combustion of 111,716 million tons of coal with the release of 477,027,320 millicuries in the United States. Global releases of radioactivity from the predicted combustion of 637,409 million tons of coal would be 2,721,736,430 millicuries ...http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

So, over a century, he estimates a cumulative worldwide radiological "release" (mostly in ash) under 3 x 10^6 curies

Let's compare that to just a few bad days at Chernobyl, where perhaps 14 EBq (14 x 10^18 Bq) was released -- or over 3 x 10^11 curies

So if we had been burning coal, at present rates, since humans first walked the planet, the coal burning wouldn't have had as much radiological impact as the Chernobyl accident. (And actually, that's simply an impossible scenario: if we burned all our coal at present rates, we'd run out in a century or two)

Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to hate coal, but comparative radiological hazard isn't on the chart


The Gabbard webpage at ORNL is the source of the whole discussion, and it is linked
Posted by struggle4progress on Mon May-02-11 08:39 PM
by the link in the OP

So most of this thread is debating Gabbard, whether or not people recognize it, and for that reason, I cite Gabbard's numbers: they are the numbers under discussion

I rather dislike the Gabbard webpage, as it rather incoherently wanders between mass, radioactivity, and dose estimates, and because its discussion of doses from nuclear plant relies on design basis estimates, rather than on actual emissions.

********************
Coal ash consists mainly of compounds like silicates, alumina, and iron rust:
Posted by struggle4progress on Tue May-03-11 01:09 AM
a rather glassy or ceramic material, which has been formed at high temperature in an oxidizing environment, so it won't be very reactive. The first challenge is to extract a trace element from it

Coal ash is (say) 10 ppm natural uranium. A good quality uranium deposit is about 20% U308 -- say, 20 000 times richer in uranium than coal ash. The chemical problem of extracting an element, from a sample which is 20% of that element, is quite different from chemical problem of extracting an element, from a sample which is 0.001% of that element. Coal ash contains almost everything at low concentrations, so in the initial stages of a separation attempt, you're going to get a "soup" that contains all manner of stuff at very low concentrations. To overcome the entropic barrier presented by the extreme dilution, you will need some very favorable reactions

Weapons-grade uranium is about 85% U-235, with a critical mass of some tens of kilograms. Natural uranium is about 2% U-235 49% U-238, and 49% U-234. Thus, you need to start with at least 40x more natural uranium than the amount of weapons-grade uranium you hope to obtain

What's it going to take to produce ten kilograms of weapons-grade uranium from coal ash? At 10 ppm natural uranium, you can't get more than 10 g natural uranium from a metric tonne of coal ash, so 10 kg of natural uranium requires at least 1000 metric tonnes of coal ash; multiplying by 40, you'd need at least 40 000 metric tonnes of coal ash to produce ten kilograms of weapons-grade uranium. The actual numbers will be much worse, since you cannot expect quantitative extraction of a trace element, and you can't expect easy isotopic separation. You're actually contemplating a very substantial industrial enterprise

For perspective, consider this: the average abundance of uranium in crustal rock is about 2.5 ppm. If you can figure out a feasible way to extract uranium from coal ash, you can probably figure out a feasible way to extract uranium from most rocks: there's only a factor of about four in the trace concentrations.

*****************************************

In fact, much of what is on the Gabbard page is simply nonsense; here, for example, Gabbard suggests coal ash poses a nuclear weapon proliferation threat:

Because electric utilities are not high-profile facilities, collection and processing of coal ash for recovery of minerals, including uranium for weapons or reactor fuel, can proceed without attracting outside attention, concern, or intervention. Any country with coal-fired plants could collect combustion by-products and amass sufficient nuclear weapons material to build up a very powerful arsenal, if it has or develops the technology to do so. Of far greater potential are the much larger quantities of thorium-232 and uranium-238 from coal combustion that can be used to breed fissionable isotopes. Chemical separation and purification of uranium-233 from thorium and plutonium-239 from uranium require far less effort than enrichment of isotopes. Only small fractions of these fertile elements in coal combustion residue are needed for clandestine breeding of fissionable fuels and weapons material by those nations that have nuclear reactor technology and the inclination to carry out this difficult task

Such claims are simply laughable: extracting enough fissile material, from coal ash, in order to make a nuclear weapon, would require enormous financial and energetic and technical resources -- with enormous facilities for chemical separation and isotopic enrichment

Estimates for the Chernobyl release vary by perhaps two orders of magnitude; I found the 14 EBq figure on a standard nuclear industry site. Divide it by ten or a hundred or a thousand: the Chernobyl release still dwarfs coal releases

Since we are all discussing Gabbard, I quoted Gabbard as saying coal burning will release 2.7 million curies between 1937 and 2040

If you don't want to discuss Chernobyl, we can discuss TMI or Fukushima

For comparative purposes, consider the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island:

The total radioactivity released during the accident was 2.4 million curies. See: Thomas M. Gerusky. "Three Mile Island: Assessment of Radiation Exposures and Environmental Contamination." In: Thomas H. Moss and David L. Sills: The Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident: Lessons and Implications. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences,1981, p. 57 http://echo.gmu.edu/tmi /

For further comparative purposes, releases of a single isotope (I-131) from Fukushima may exceed 2.4 million curies; see http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2206

[txlibdem]

5. Comparing the worst nuclear disasters in 50 years, versus the normal operation of coal power plants?

Exactly how is that a logical comparison??? Why not do a simple google search for coal disaster?

How about comparing one of the countless coal disasters?
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December 2008, "Clean Coal" disaster

wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

...from http://www.celsias.com/article/clean-coal-disaster-100-times-larger-exxon-valdez/
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Natural coal, (per the source you cite) is anywhere from 1 to 10 ppm Uranium and 2.5 times that amount Thorium. It also contains 0.071% Uranium-235, aka nuclear reactor fuel. We also know that coal ash concentrates the Uranium and Thorium between 10 and 100 times the amount that naturally exists in the source coal.

5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash would be either 54 cubic yards of Uranium, 540 cubic yards, or 5400 cubic yards depending on the source coal and the amount of concentration. The amount of Thorium would be 2.5 times as much.

It also means that the amount of Uranium-235 (you know -- nuclear bomb material) is either a cube of nuclear bomb material that is 4 inches on a side, or a 3.4 foot cube, up to a 34.506 foot cube. Of nuclear bomb material!

See, coal IS safe after all, folks.