Excerpted due to AP origin.
Why are we? The stuff is dangerous and has led to utilities not using coal.
IIRC, fly ash is used in some formulations of cement, and is used to make cinder block.
Why? Same reason we are burning food in our gas tanks due to agricultural subsidies. Our environmental policies are broken because common sense policy is fought at every turn in the courts. The environmental lawsuit industry is a self-perpetuating cycle of lawyers getting paid, workers getting screwed, and taxpayers picking up the bills.
If we created enough American coal ash for our construction demands, we wouldn’t have to import it.
Coal ash—once considered a waste product—has found its niche as an ingredient for the manufacture of cement and concrete. I’m surprised China exports it given their own massive demand for concrete in that country.
Used to work for a company that used coal. Too much ash for the concrete industry. We landfilled it.
Just doing the jobs that US made coal ash won’t do?
“These materials can be had for several dollars a ton if trucked directly from a utility to a factory or job site. They’re more expensive to obtain in a useful form after decades underground or underwater. That makes foreign imports economically viable.”
I remember a cat food product that claimed to be “low ash”. They went bankrupt, because apparently people don’t want ANY ash in their cat food.
Coal ash has thorium in it which can be used to create cheap and efficient thorium salt reactors.
Ash Alert!!!