Major coal slurry spill in tributary of WV's Coal River!

[benburch]

Once again, the villain is Massey Energy...
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http://www.huntingtonnews.net/state/051211-staff-slurry.html

Dec. 11, 2005

Booster Pump Failure Results in Slurry Spill in Coal River Tributary

By HNN Staff

Pettus, WV (HNN) – A booster pump failure resulted in a slurry spill into Brushy Fork impoundment Saturday morning, Dec. 10, 2005 about 11 a.m., according to Matt Noerpel of Coal River Mountain Watch in Whitesville. The spill at Massey Energy’s Marfork Coal Co. preparation plant was reported to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which ordered the plant shut down until the pump was fixed and the sludge removed.

The DEP said the spill affected a five-mile area, traveling from Little Marsh Fork Creek into Marsh Fork and Coal River. Jessica Greathouse of DEP said. She added that once the slurry has been removed, the cessation order will become a violation.

Noerpel of CRMW said the spill occurred near Pettus, Raleigh County, on Route 3 just south of Whitesville. “From the Marfork prep plant or Brushy Fork sludge dam into Little Marsh Fork Creek and into the Marsh Fork of the Coal River, the river is black,” he told HNN.

Noerpel said the spill raised the level of the creek about eight inches before subsiding. For more information from CRMW, phone [phone].

[GrpCaptMandrake]

1. Doesn't "slurry" have such a lovely sound?

Not like "filthy, toxic, carcinogenic sludge generated as the result of Mountain Range Removal mining."

The river turned black.

Thank God for "clean coal technology."

Thanks for putting this out there, Ben!

On edit: Here's the area in question http://ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/008/index.html

[benburch]

3. We used to have a mask-wearing environmental activist here...

He was called "The Fox".

He did things like collect effluent from Fox River Valley industries in jars, and then carry the jar into the lobby of the business offices for that industry and then pour the effluent onto the carpet.

I think somebody needs to deposit a jar of that slurry onto the floor of Don Blankenship's office.

[benburch]

4. A little more about "The Fox"

http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/summer2002/news/fox.html

[GrpCaptMandrake]

5. That would be a start

But I'd far rather see Don chug a quart or so.

But I'm mean, y'know? :evilgrin:

[benburch]

7. I vote for an enema.

About two gallons should do it.

[GrpCaptMandrake]

8. Sounds great

as long as I don't have to administer it.

A nice Executive Summary will do fine! :rofl:

[benburch]

9. The problem would be deciding where to put the nozzle...

Seems that shit comes out both ends with old Don.

[phantom power]

2. Coal mining is damaging the appalachians beyond comprehension.

Whenever I hear the fools in D.C. talking up fucking coal as the answer to our energy problems, it makes me cringe.

[DBoon]

6. I heard the coal companies went to strip mining to...

avoid having to deal with the union representing the underground miners. The UMW has had a long tradition of militancy, I heard the coal companies just cut them out by surface mining.

Any confirmation of this?

[GrpCaptMandrake]

11. Sorta

Mountain Range Removal (and you can see it plain as day at Google Earth look for Whitesville, WV) requires far fewer workers, and they're mostly heavy equipment operators and demolition teams. The explosives used in Appalachia amount to something on the order of one Hiroshima per week. The greatest offender is Don Blankenship's Massey Energy, who won a bitter union-busting battle in the late-80s early 90s.

Because of the threat of the union, Massey actually pays better money to its demolition workers than that made by experienced, certified underground miners.

[Oerdin]

18. I seriously doubt that was a major concern.

The mining companies like stripe mining because for surface deposits, like the ones in the Virginas, it is way cheaper and faster then shaft mining.

[hunter]

10. A fine stew of carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens.

Some of it actually glows in the dark too.

But it's not "nuclear," so we won't worry about it too much.

(OMG, I'm channeling NNadir!) :evilgrin:

[Massacure]

12. LMAO

:rofl:

[NNadir]

13. Uh oh. I hope it's not the only channel on.

I'm sure it's not.

One way to get people to care about this, is to claim that it's Wyoming coal, which as luck would have it, is radioactive.

[benburch]

14. All coal is at least somewhat radioactive.

But then that is true of most ANYTHING. Including you.

[NNadir]

15. Coal ash, however, is much more radioactive than me.

It happens that I have calculated my specific activity, and it is less than 1 Beq/gram, most of it attributable to potassium-40, which is a constituent of all potassium. A typical 70 kg human being has about 4000 Beq of activity. The specific activity in me attributable to potassium-40 in me is somewhat higher than the activity of seawater attributable to K-40 although seawater, in addition to potassium, contains uranium, thorium, all of the decay products of thorium and uranium including radium and radon, and other radioactive species like rubidium-87 and the many naturally occurring radioactive lanthanides. Note that the activity of K-40 in the ocean amounts to over 500 billion curies, an enormous amount of activity that far outstrips the entire inventory of so called "nuclear waste." (Chernobyl released about 100 million curies, however most of this activity of this decayed away within a few weeks - the more radioactive a species is the faster it decays and the lower its radioequilibrium concentration.)

Uranium is present in seawater to a significant extent and can, in fact, be commercially recovered from it at a price of around $200/kg, a cost which is significantly higher than the current price from available low and high grade ores (approximately $50/kg).

However, the uranium in coal ash is much more concentrated than it is in seawater. Each year coal plants in the US discharge over 4000 metric tons of uranium and its radioactive daughters - including radon - much of in the form of aerosol. Moreover this uranium is NOT depleted, meaning it is even more radioactive than the much discussed depleted uranium used in tank shells. The amount of thorium and thorium daughters is much greater. The activity of unburned coal (0.00427 millicuries/ton or roughly 160,000 Beq/ton) is about equivalent to my radioactivity, however, the uranium is concentrated significantly by burning, both in fly ash and hopper ash.

As there is little fractionation of the daughter species, and since coal also contains significant quantities of potassium, the amount of radioactivity released each year by coal fired power plants dwarfs that released by nuclear power plants. A nuclear plant that released as much radioactivity as a coal plant would be shut down.

This matter is discussed at length in one of my favorite links on the internet: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

[progressive_realist]

16. Any idea how much it would cost

To commercially recover the uranium from coal ash? Since the coal is already being mined and the uranium concentrated by burning, it seems like a no-brainer.

[NNadir]

17. It is not necessarily a no brainer.

The world price of uranium is very low, about $65/kg, but it is rising. The feasibility of recovering the metal from coal ash is very much tied to the price, and the price is in turn, tied to the difficulty of obtaining the metal from the ore. I really don't know what the costs associated with refining uranium from coal ash are, but I expect that they are higher than the world price supports.

For the last several decades, the world has been basically living off uranium inventories. Uranium mining has been way down. Currently most US reactors are supplied by Russia, which has been blending down the highly enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear weapons and selling it to the United States, where it is fissioned in our commercial nuclear reactors. This, of course, is a happy thing.

[amandabeech]

19. There is also reported to be considerable uranium in the tailings

from phosphorous mines in the U.S. south and southeast.

Extracting it was discussed on a Yahoo energy group where I frequently lurk and infrequently post.

[NNadir]

20. This is true, but again, the cost of uranium is too low to support the

recovery of this uranium in the foreseeable future.

I very much doubt that uranium prices will rise in the next century or so to require access to these sources. Several ceilings exist on the price of uranium. The first is the cost of lower grade ores that are now now nor currently ever have been mined. The second is the cost of exotic sources like uranium phosphate deposits. When the price of uranium reaches about $200/kg, recovery from seawater becomes feasible.

Another ceiling exists in connection with the price of plutonium, which is about $1000/kg, or 20 times higher than uranium. However only 30-50 kg of plutonium are required to make 1000 kg of fuel from spent or depleted uranium, which may be thought of as being "free." Moreover no expensive isotopic separations equipment need function. This reduces the risk of diversion for weapons.The economics of additing 30-50 kg of plutonium to spent uranium is equivalent to a price of enriched uranium at $50/kg, a good price. Some plutonium is destroyed, and what remains is seriously denatured as to increase the difficulty of designing weapons using it considerably.

If this binary alloy is made into a ternary alloy containing also some thorium, very high burnups can be achieved, with considerable amounts of energy recovered beyond what we normally recover for a given mass of uranium or a uranium/actinide mix. Under these circumstances plutonium is consumed more completely and the remainder is a particular intractable mix of isotopes for weapons designers. The fuel becomes increasing difficult to handle surrepitiously because of the presence of Tl-208 from the U-232 decay cycle.

The introduction of thorium - which is now considered a nearly useless element and is frequently dumped - into the nuclear fuel cycle will probably keep uranium prices low for many centuries. In any case, even if the price increased by a factor of one thousand, the price of uranium would have little effect on the price of fuel. A typical reactor burns about 3.5 kg of nuclear fuel a day, producing 1000 MWe for 86400 seconds/day or 86 trillion joules. As there are 3,600,000 joules/kw-hr

[amandabeech]

21. Aren't the Indians (subcontinent) developing a reactor that will

run almost exclusively on thorium? My understanding is that thorium is very plentiful in India.

I'm generally with you NNadir on the necessity of using nuclear plants for electrical and process heat generation, particularly for baseloads. However, I see renewables contributing more to the energy mix than you do, at least on a regional and/or seasonal basis. (I've read your considered arguments, but still don't completely agree with you.) Renewables would be even more appealing if better solutions with electrical energy storage could be developed, obviously. I also see continued fossil fuel use at a considerably lower level particularly for transportation, off-road use, peak electrical loading and seasonal power needs.

I don't think that fuel is the limiting factor. Rather, I see understandable opposition from those who sincerely do not like nuclear for whatever reason. I also see problems concerning sufficient time, materials, skilled humans and energy, particularly transportation fuel, to replace our current nuclear plants as they age, build new plants to take over the majority of our fossil fuel generation, and build even more nuclear plants to cover much of our transportation needs as well. I have seen estimates ranging from 500 to 800 nuclear plants operating at one time taking into account serious conservation and considerable lifestyle changes. Please feel free to comment.

[NNadir]

22. The Indians are developing thorium loaded CANDU reactors.

Candu reactors fueled by thorium are essentially thermal breeder reactors, although their doubling time is much longer than fast reactors. They do have huge thorium resources. Their program promises to be the most fuel efficient nuclear program in the world assuming that no one builds fast fission reactors of any type.

There is no technical reason that the United States could not build CANDU reactors. I am disappointed that none of the 8 or 9 reactors now proposed in the United States are CANDU's. We also have considerable thorium reserves. Of course we are very close to Canada, which is almost exclusively CANDU in its reactor technology.

I have done some calculations from these two web sites giving capacity and generation figures from various types of energy in the United States.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html

We see that the capacity loading for the three major types of electrical generation are nuclear (#1, 85.2% capacity loading), coal (#2 67.3% capacity loading) and gas (#3 35.1% capacity loading.)

In terms of generation, coal is the largest contributor, producing 7.12 exajoules of electricity, nuclear, the second largest, producing 2.84 exajoules of electricity, and gas producing 2.55 exajoules of electricity. (I have converted from million kilowatt-hours to exajoules.)

My own feeling is that nuclear should immediately replace coal, just as it did in France. Note that coal and nuclear are closely matched in capacity loading (although nuclear is superior for economic reasons connected with capital cost) suggesting that both are base load capacity. The number of additional reactors to completely eliminate coal burning in the United States is about 180-200, assuming large reactors of the Gen III type now proposed constitute the majority of these reactors. This would not have been a particularly daunting task for the previous generation that built 120 reactors in about 20 years in the United States. However, compared with the previous generation we are technically, morally and financially weaker, so it is difficult to say whether this can be done now. As 9 new reactors have had COL filings in 2005, we will see very shortly how well we can accomplish this task and what public attitudes are. My own impression after 20 years of discussing this topic is that public attitudes are increasingly positive toward nuclear energy. If we fail with these 9 reactors, in my opinion, we will certainly slip deeper into third world status.

The low capacity loading of gas plants reflects the fact that they are primarily used for peak loading. They are superior to renewable resources in capacity, but if - and I am skeptical on this point - renewables can be made to work, they would best be suited to replace gas capacity.

I have examined the viability of the much hyped renewables industry and its capacity in another thread currently running. There is no need to repeat my comments in detail here, so I refer to that thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=37086&mesg_id=37086

The use of nuclear power to replace transportation demand is somewhat speculative so I will not comment too much on them, except to say that I believe it would take about 750 reactors to accomplish this. Because the proposed types of nuclear reactors would perform at better than 60% efficiency, much higher than any known thermal capacity, coupling thermochemical hydrogen production with an electricity side product, the actual work produced per exajoule would probably keep US energy demand from rising too far above 100 exajoules.

Note that I truncated my last post in this thread. I was adding some comments in edit mode, got called away and fell asleep. I had a huge workload yesterday and had to travel quite some distance by train through NYC by train.