Posted on 01/14/2016 5:04:56 PM PST by grundle
In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant - a by-product from burning coal for electricity - carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
“so something one hundred times not zero is still something.”
Indeed. but somehow SA’s “one hundred times greater” doesn’t seem quite as significant when you realize it’s 100 times greater than almost nothing.
Remember all those steam locomotives? They didn’t all burn anthracite.
A technically correct statement, but not provided any perspective, so as to be deliberately misleading for propaganda purposes.
Sort of like when the surgeon general says “there is no ‘safe’ amount of cigarette smoke”.
So environmental objections to nuclear power, which has been said to be utterly stupid from the beginning, turns out to be, well, utterly stupid.
And of course, we must act now to prevent global cooling...warming...cooling...change.
Cinder blocks used to be cheaper when they were made from flyash.
No.
Windmills kill more people every year than has nuclear power. Ever.
The Germans used the Fischer-Tropsch process in WWII, and we actually built a plant near St. Louis after the war to test the technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process#History
Oak Ridge Lab Coal Combustion Report
The fact that coal-fired power plants throughout the world are the major sources of radioactive materials released to the environment has several implications. It suggests that coal combustion is more hazardous to health than nuclear power and that it adds to the background radiation burden even more than does nuclear power. It also suggests that if radiation emissions from coal plants were regulated, their capital and operating costs would increase, making coal-fired power less economically competitive.
background on the author
Dr. Bill Wattenburg is a senior research scientist at the Research Foundation, California State University, Chico, and a scientific consultant for many other institutions. Earlier, he was a nuclear weapons designer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; a member of the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board; and a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering. He was co-founder of Berkeley Scientific Laboratories with Dr. Donald Glaser (Nobel Prize, Physics, 1960).
http://wattenburg.us/techreports.html
Facts please? Manmade global warming is not a scientist fact. I don’t care how many government sponsered scientists, movie stars, and liberal politicians says it is so. At best, it is a liberal desire that cannot be proven.
I remember when libs were having apoplexy about Coleman lantern mantles being radioactive.
Then there was RADON in the soil!
Then there was stray voltage from power lines!
I’ve worked around power plant fly ash for thirty one years. Still here! The only thing radioactive in the power plants were the “See-Coal” monitors to monitor coal flow.
The company chemical analysis of the ash showed it to be totally inert.
Once a local city began a paving project of all their dirt streets using bottom ash as a base. Some old busy-body in town came down with a head cold in the middle of Summer and began to blame it on the bottom ash dust, so the city ceased paving the streets to get her quiet.
There are still dirt streets in town because of her.
In writing to persuade, I’ve found that
it’s not what you say but what they assume
that counts. :)
Somebody been hittin’ da happy smoke.
In the 1970’s I was on a Nuclear Submarine out of Groton Conn. There was an anthracite coal burning electric plant up stream. Sometimes, in port, the air particulate radiation detectors would go off, and we would have to don emergency breathing apparatus. The Duty Officer would send the Engineering Laboratory Technician up on the pier to take an air sample. If the sample came back with the half life of decay products of radon gas, we could take off our mask. The radiation was “natural” and even though it was above the levels allowed to be breathed if it came from our reactor we were allowed to breath it.
That is a very good point! I started reading SA back in the early 70’s when I was a kid. My, how they’ve fallen.
“St Louis is the poster child of what can go wrong with safely disposed atomic waste years after its ‘safe’ disposal. The Manhattan Project waste is there and is next to an underground burning landfill. Once released into the atmosphere, there will be a dead zone in the US bigger than that of Chernobyl.”
Our government: 0 for 2!
How is Gitmo going? Make that 0 for 3.
How is that Iran Treaty going? Make that 0 for 4. [Is that why they call him Zero?]
Correct. Coleman Lantern mantles ARE radioactive (Th323)
In fact, the Radioactive Boyscout managed to create U233 and U232 by bombarding Coleman mantles.
Nearly killed him with the Gamma coming off U232
What about the natural nuclear reactor in Gabon, Africa?
Then there is that giant nuclear reactor that crosses the sky every day and continually showers the earth with radiation.
Oh no...now the Iranians will be making bombs out of the fly ash.
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